PM Narendra Modi Dodges Cauvery Protests in Chennai, But Can BJP Dodge the Angry Tamizhan?
“India has not seen such a scared Prime Minister like you. Narendra Modi, you are a coward,” thundered the theatrical Vaiko, lambasting the decision to have the PM fly from Chennai airport to the locations of two events — the Defence Expo and at IIT Madras — in the city on Thursday.

The MDMK leader dared Modi to travel by road and face the black flags that the opposition parties plan to wave during the visit. It is easy to dismiss Vaiko as a paper tiger. His party accounts for next to nothing in the electoral landscape of Tamil Nadu, coming a cropper in the last elections. But the manner in which Modi is accused of lack of sincerity on the Cauvery issue is a pointer to the direction in which the narrative is being spun. More so when the man on the street, too, is convinced that given its political interests in Karnataka, Modi has reasons to support the cause of the upper riparian state and delay the formation of the Cauvery Management Board.

It is also easy to dismiss the black flag protests at different locations across Chennai as politically motivated. You may also ignore the black balloons released in the sky just when Modi landed at Chennai airport, as the handiwork of fringe groups. But what they do is to underline the sentiment that the Centre has been less than fair to Tamil Nadu..