BAPTISM OF FIRE
IT has been a long wait for 68-year-old Muthuvel Karunanidhi Stalin. On May 7, he will finally assume office and become the third chief minister of Tamil Nadu from the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK), a party that has ruled the state for 21 years since March 1967, when the hegemony of the Dravidian parties began. After a decade in the opposition and having emerged from the shadow of his father—five-time chief minister, the late M. Karunanidhi—Stalin has steered the 13-party Secular Progressive Alliance to a comfortable win (159 of the 234 assembly seats, including 133 on the DMK symbol; five seats are allies who contested under the ‘Rising Sun’) in the April 6 polls.
He would have hoped to do even better, going by the DMK’s sweeping victory in the 2019 parliamentary election, winning 38 out of the 39 Lok Sabha seats. But the rival All India Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (AIADMK), led by the outgoing chief minister Edappadi K. Palaniswami (EPS), proved that
