Amma Canteens help AIADMK win the election

The exit polls in Tamil Nadu have totally failed to gauge the importance of daily bread that the AIADMK government had made available to the people in the name of Amma Canteen all over the State. Particularly the pollsters bungled on the power of Re 1 idly sambar. The hot dish had made the people, from the rickshaw-puller to the techie, look to Chief Minister Jayalalithaa as Amma. Like the mother serves you food, when you want, Amma canteens provided the people with an elaborate menu, sambar rice for Rs 3, palak rice for Rs 5, curd rice for Rs 5, food pack for Rs 5 and so on. With so much food made available so cheap, the canteens were visited by millions of people each day. When the time came for voting, naturally they preferred the Two Leaves symbol to any other, giving Jayalalithaa a morale-boosting success after the disproportionate assets case went in her favour by way of bad arithmetic by the Special Court. On the other hand, the exit pollsters depended on the non-performance during the deluge in Chennai. Naturally, the voters took it as Nature's wrath against the corruption of political leaders in general, not the AIADMK in particular. In the film-mad Tamil country, the only image that was outstanding during the electioneering was Amma serving a ladle full of sambar rice.