"Ideas have consequences" - Richard Weaver
The 2026 Tamil Nadu elections were unlike any I had seen since I started following politics in 1996. More personal. More tribal. Friends argued, families debated at dinner, young colleagues clamored for change. Everyone labeling everyone else Sanghis, Adimais, Zombies, Tharkuris, Oopies. Everyone in a camp. Everyone proclaiming their tribal loyalty.
But why do we have such tribal loyalty to political parties? What does brand loyalty even mean in a modern democracy? And how did I end up with such loyalty myself?
Politics has always been a marketplace of ideas. Multiple competing supermarkets, all vying for the same addressable market. The only difference is the product they sell are "Ideas", and ideas are not trivial things. They are raw materials with which you build your life, your family, your society.
In a democracy, you are free to walk into any store. You pick what you want, at the quality you want. The store with the highest sales wins.
Some stores are on the right side of the market. They stock nationalism, strong borders, Hindu civilisational pride, a closer relationship between faith and governance, a muscular unitary state where the centre holds firm. If that's what you're shopping for, that's a legitimate cart to fill. Some stores lean left. They stock redistribution, social equity, state welfare, the separation of religion from power, the upliftment of those left behind by birth or circumstance. That is also a legitimate cart.
In Tamil Nadu, for the last 60 years the two large stores have been stocking broadly similar products for decades. Social justice, Equity, Welfare, Women Empowerment, Linguistic pride, Strong State identity. A certain suspicion of northern centralisation. You can argue one of the two stores has often sold a lower-quality version of the same products. You can argue both have had rotten items on their shelves. But the society that shopped from these stores has, by and large, done well on social and economic outcomes compared to many states that bought from very different national chains.
And life itself teaches you what ideas to shop for.
Growing up in a household of empowered women who were the only reason for my family's upward mobility. Turning atheist in my twenties and discovering the value of nonconformity. Born into a privileged caste but having seen people treated as lesser because of their birth. Growing up Hindu in Madurai, where the mosque and the church were just part of the neighborhood skyline. Living through the 90s and 2000s in Tamil Nadu, I watched the state prosper and realised my own growth was part of that larger tide. Roads, schools, public systems, social stability, and economic momentum the things that we take for granted all played a role in where I ended up. It taught me that an aspirational middle income society needs one north star metric - broad-based economic growth, not religious or social tension.
All of this made clear to me which ideas I stand for and which store I will keep coming back to.
Maybe your life may have taken a different path. Different lessons. Different fears. Different loyalties. A different product on your list. That's valid. The marketplace exists precisely for this, so no single store gets to decide what everyone needs.
I am in the political marketplace for ideas. I will go to the store that sells what I want.
You can complain about dynastic politics. I understand the critique. But honestly, I don't care who is the storekeeper. What matters is what's on the shelf. As long as you sell me the products I want at the quality I expect, I am a repeat customer. It doesn't matter if the storekeeper inherited the keys. It doesn't matter if there's some spillage at the counter, which happens irrespective of who manages the store.
The moment the quality drops or if the shop no longer stocks what i want, I'm back in the market. Looking for a better store. What I won't do is buy inferior products or outright harmful ones. And I certainly will not walk into a store just because the owner is handsome, charismatic, cinematic, or dances well but his shelves are empty.
The law of the marketplace is simple. Informed customers looking for competing stores. The best product wins. That's the governing law of capitalism, and it should be the governing law of democracy too.
Shop with your head. Switch when the shelf fails you. But never let the storekeeper convince you that loyalty to the store or worse, to them personally is the same as loyalty to the ideas. It never is.
The ideas are everything. The store is just where you found them.