The war of nerves is still on in Tamil Nadu. The two factions of the All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam recently appeared to have reconciled to the fact that they needed to come together in order to retain the party's symbol and political relevance. But the distance that keeps them away is turning out to be unbridgeable. At the heart of the matter lies the dogged insistence of O. Panneerselvam, who heads the AIADMK (Puratchi Thalaivi Amma), to get rid of V.K. Sasikala and her proxy, T.T.V. Dinakaran, the party's deputy general-secretary, and to initiate an inquiry into the death of J. Jayalalithaa, former matriarch of the undivided AIADMK. The ruling faction of the party led by E.K. Palaniswami, the current chief minister, is willing to distance itself from Sasikala's Mannargudi clan, but is either unwilling or powerless to dispense with it altogether. It has been easy for the Palaniswami group to dump Mr Dinakaran, but only because he is himself willing to play the scapegoat. Hand-picked and nurtured by Sasikala, the jailed general-secretary of the party, most members of the ruling AIADMK (Amma) are yet to fathom the possibility or the repercussions of the faction's existence without her.

Apart from it being proof of the control that Sasikala retains from prison, this crippled imagination is also evidence of the leadership culture that has virtually destroyed the AIADMK. Without its loyalty pledged to a larger-than-life figure, the AIADMK is a fractured lot. The trouble is that without regaining its unity, the AIADMK has little chance of completing its term in office, leave alone stand up to its chief rival, the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam. The party must also have weighed in the other threat - the chance its disunity grants to the Bharatiya Janata Party of deepening its influence in the state. The BJP-led dispensation at the Centre has already shown an unusual interest in the goings-on in Tamil Nadu. It may even be looking forward to the possibility of adopting a pliant faction of the AIADMK that is accommodative of its political interests. An AIADMK merger would, naturally, upset such plans. To survive the political competition, unity may be the only option for the AIADMK factions.