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Tiruchi prays for Kumaramangalam

Our Correspondent in Tiruchi

"He is a nice man and I will add a prayer for him this morning," said Ranganayaki Ammal, an old Brahmin woman at the Srirangam Temple, outside Tiruchi town, the Lok Sabha constituency of Union Energy Minister Rangarajan Kumaramangalam.

"I do not know him personally, nor do I care much about politics, but everyone at home says that he is nice and good. Nice people need to live longer. Yet, what can you say? This is Kaliyug, after all."

The lady seemed to reflect sentiments of many a resident of Tiruchi, who outwardly is busy attending to daily chores, but is hurt deep down inside him that "such a thing should befall a man at so young an age. I cannot say that he is like my son and things like that, but I have sons and daughters in that age group, and drawing comparisons is but natural," added Ammal.

At Rangarajan's constituency office, the telephone never stopped ringing, with constituents and friends alike, apart from media friends from across the state, and even family members ringing up, for the latest on the minister's health.

"People sound shocked and disbelieving," said the young cadres attending to the telephone ceaselessly. "And the telecom strike, which has hit telephone services has not helped, at least from the point of those wanting to know the latest."

"It came as a shock, when I first heard about it at the marketplace," said Radhakrishnan, a Bharatiya Janata Party cadre. "I tried telephoning his office, but there was no response. Either the telephones were busy or they were silent. Hence I came down to find out his condition. We just cannot believe that he could be so ill suddenly," he said.

For all this, however, Rangarajan was not known much among the constituents. "He is an outsider who tried to become acceptable to the voters of Tiruchi," said resident Bharati.

"He promised a lot for the constituency and also ensured that many of them are put on the rails. The flyovers in Tiruchi, without which traffic congestion was becoming a nightmare, the cold storage to help neighbourhood farmers intending to export fruits and flowers, upgradation of the airport... he had pushed them all through in less than three years, of his two terms in the Lok Sabha."

Rangarajan carries with him a history of the family, which is only one of its kind, at least in Tamil Nadu; and possibly the second across the country, after the Nehru-Gandhi family, where three successive generations held ministerial office.

Rangarajan's grandfather, Dr P Subborayan, was Justice Party minister in the then Madras Presidency in the twenties. His father, the late Mohan Kumaramangalam, was an aide of the late Indira Gandhi, and coined the term 'committee judiciary'.

"To that end," said A Ravindran, a local academic in Tiruchi, "even Ranga crossing over from the Congress to the Bharatiya Janata Party on the eve of the 1998 Lok Sabha polls, made history." Given the Dravidian background of the family, combined with its adaptation of the Congress and also Mohan Kumaramangalam's better known leftist leanings, Rangarajan shifting political leanings to the BJP heralded the changing mood of the state's upwardly mobile middle class in urban centres, which has been fast expanding.

The results of the 1998 Lok Sabha polls proved it and confirmed it a year later. On both occasions, Rangarajan won the Tiruchi seat by spectacular margins.

"My guess is that the party was preparing Ranga to take up greater responsibilities, either in the state or at the Centre.''

Today, with Ranga confined to the hospital bed, Tiruchi is praying for him.

Says Kannamma, a flower vendor: "I voted for him twice, despite the BJP changing its allies between the AIADMK and the DMK. Maybe because he was an outsider, maybe because he comes from a good family. Somehow, he looked sincere and honest. I have not heard anyone say anything since that went against this first impression of mine. And he stood by Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee, when we needed no more elections."

Added Anbarasan, at a local ration shop queue: "Maybe God will spare him and he will be around to do good things for us all, as his partymen promised us before the elections, and serve not only the constituency but also the state. After all, a minister at Delhi can do so much for his state, I have read in newspapers, and he is good enough to do good things for the state."

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