Jayalalithaa: An undaunted administrator

Chennai: Peter Brook, the celebrated English theatre personality-, whose epic creation ‘The Mahabaratha’ in 1985 had won universal acclaim -, has among his many reflective gems, this memorable quote: “Time, which is so often an enemy in life, can also become our ally if we see how a pale moment can lead to a glowing moment; and then turn to a moment of perfect transparency, before dropping again to a moment of everyday simplicity.” These words ring in with awesome aptness now, somewhat with an amazing precision as it were, in looking back at the administrative abilities of Ms. Jayalalithaa Jayaram. Viewing four Chief Ministerial tenures since she ascended the ‘Gaddi’ of the State first in June 1991, —, — as a Correspondent covering Tamil Nadu, one could see that Jayalalithaa was always unflinching with her bold decisions, unmindful of consequences even if they were bitter. But cut back a little into the formative factors, just to help place in context what defined her 68 years of a tumultuous public life: From her punishing, alienated childhood days, her mother Sandhya’s influence and what the value of motherhood meant to her, being unwittingly pushed into the dog-eat-dog world of cinema after a brilliant school record, reluctantly landing in the much bigger world of politics after being mentored by the legendary actor-turned-politician MGR without any political family to back her, and later ascending to a new phase that promised to give ‘Amma’ a pan-Indian profile to the point of being considered a possible Prime Ministerial candidate of non-Congress/non-BJP alternate front in the run-up to the 2014 Lok Sabha polls, Jayalalithaa had seen it all. If the launching of the ‘All Women Police Station’ in that phase of her tenure won her accolades even from Pakistan’s Benazir Bhutto, the way the Jayalalithaa administration worked had to bring the first big ticket industrial investments to Tamil Nadu in the wake of the economic liberalization — Ford Motors and Hyundai-, propelled the State into a fast-track of economic growth.