 15 September, 2008 marked the beginning of the centenary year of C N Annadurai, the founder of the DMK. The charismatic leader affectionately addressed as Anna (elder brother), built the DMK from scratch. A powerful playwright and orator, Anna earned the respect of parliamentarians including Nehru, in his tenure as member of the parliament. Despite building DMK on the strong plank of anti-Brahminism and anti-Hinduism, he forged an alliance with Rajaji; with the genius of the latter in marshalling anti- communist forces, forging unity among parties opposed to the Congress, DMK ascended to power in the 1967 elections. This strategy of the alliance has stood to the test of time: for forty one years the Dravidan parties have been wielding power in Tamil Nadu marginalising the Congress which lost its stature even as a major party in opposition and had to reconcile to piggy - backing on the DMK or the AIADMK. The latter was an offshoot of the split in DMK when another charismatic leader, M G Ramachandran, fell out with M Karunanidhi (MK) in 1972.
The economic plank of DMK has not been strong. The party that ascended to power on the strength of its mass appeal built through the powerful medium of films in the initial stages was new to administration. Thus the DMK did not have a long term vision for development and built its following through freebies and emphasis on welfare that sacrificed growth and development. The party also adopted the strong socialistic traits of Indira Gandhi who was struggling to establish herself in power in the late 1960s through of nationalisation of several private companies. After the death of Anna in February 1969, MK consolidated his hold on the party and adopted the twin strategies of distributing largesse and pseudo socialistic schemes. Sadly through these four decades the party has not worked on a long term strategy for development. With an ageing leadership thefocushas increasingly been on shorttermsights almostentirely concentrated on the elections.
The party offered as its election plank in 1967, three measures of rice a rupee working out to roughly to 22 paise a kg. It had its tremendous popular appeal in the aftermath of the severe shortage of rice experienced by the state in 1965 under the Congress rule. Anna soon found that it was not practical to implement this assurance: necessary administrative machinery was lacking and the state finances could not afford this. Consequently the DMK government resiled on this plank.
MK tasted great success with the offer of Rs.2 per kg of rice in the 2006 elections to the state assembly. He refined this further and announced offering rice at just a rupee per kg. from 15 September 2008 as homage to Anna's centenary.
Provision of food is the fundamental duty of the government. So the objective cannot be faulted; but sadly lack of efforts to target the benefit to the really needed sections is a serious lacuna. Despite the massive increase in the size of the state budget - presently around Rs.50,000 crore, there have been no serious attempt to identify the large numbers coming below the poverty line. In these days of computerisation, communications and IT prowess, it should be possible to prepare a strong data base on the income characteristic of all the citizens. The state has the resources and has the reputation of being in the forefront of information technology.
Sadly the populist bias of MK and other political parties seems to be content to worship form and not bother about the substance. Look at the wastages and leakages involved: theoretically the entire population of Tamil Nadu, around 650 lakh, of is entitled to receive rice at a rupee per kg.  A beginning can be made by excluding income tax assesses, government and other employees in the organized sector, MPs, MLAs, college teachers and professionals like doctors, chartered accountants, lawyers… Simultaneously efforts can be made to identify those below the poverty line and provide them succour in terms of cash assistance for purchase of food, health care, education… The task is not easy but can be implemented. Large private IT companies like TCS can be entrusted with such a task to be achieved within a short time frame. Only it requires political will; which lacking on consideration of vote bank arithmatic.
Besides being rational the system will also prevent the existing large scale corruption, maladministration and diversion. It is widely alleged that large quantities of rice supplied cheap at the ration shops as also the LPG connections which are heavily subsidized, are cornered by party men and find their way to private trade channels, hotels… Tamil Nadu thus earns the notoriety for institutionalising corruption.
Besides there is also the quality issue: there are widespread and constant complaints on the substandard quality of rice supplied cheap. More serious is the incalculable damage caused to the production of quality rice. The state, which chose to produce for years high quality rice, especially in the Thanjavur delta area, moved away from this and focused on producing rice at the cheapest cost. Unlike Punjab, Haryana or western UP, Tamil Nadu has rarely, if ever, been the beneficiary of rice export. The poor record of the state in food production can also be attributed to the focus on cheap rice. Until the break of green revolution in 1967 Tamil Nadu was a major producer of foodgrains and was ranked sixth. In the subsequent four decades, it has been relegated to a much lower rank below ten. Through these four decades, despite massive expenditure on agriculture, the state has been recording a dismal growth, of just around 1 per cent per annum, pulling down the state's economic growth. In this period Punjab has been registering an average annual growth rate of fifteen per cent plus. Even Gujarat, not so well endowed with irrigation, has been consistently recording double digit growth. Sadly the number of people depending on agriculture still continues to be large. Thus the poor growth rate has not impacted on the living standards of nearly half the state's population.
Subsidies for various types offered by the state are estimated to cost the exchequer around Rs.20,000 crore a year which forms nearly forty per cent of the state's budget. Understandably such a large subsidy denics essential expenditure for development schemes. Neglecting investment on power development for close to two decades has plunged the state into darkness. For close to fifteen years no major investments have been made in adding to power capacity in the state-owned power stations at Ennore, Tuticorin, Mettur and north Madras; there is increasing dependence on the Central power stations at Neyveli and Kalpakkam. The former also suffered stagnation until 1980s and the 470 MW capacity of the Kalpakkam has been massively down-rated.
Anna would certainly like to make Tamil Nadu emerge as a prosperous state. He would appreciate a strong focus on development and proper targeting of the welfare schemes to the most deserving sections. |
