Chennai: “Nothing significant has been delivered to this state by its rulers these last five decades. Industrial growth and overall development have stopped after Kamaraj’s rule (1954-62). We only saw flood of freebies and tsunamis of corruption scams”. That was Mr. S.R. Balasubramaniam, a senior Congressman at one time but presently an AIADMK member in the Rajya Sabha.
Barring hardcore DMK and AIADMK functionaries, almost all the political personalities—for that matter, the commoner down to the wayside teashop—shared SRB’s sad sentiment. “It’s tragic that this state of almost 70 million enterprising people has witnessed such steady decline in all vital development indices after Anna (the late C. N. Annadurai) won the 1967 elections promising the moon to the common man”, BJP’s national secretary H. Raja told Deccan Chronicle.
“Anna had promised three padis of rice but did not deliver even one padi after becoming the CM. He had complained that the Dravidian south was on the decline while the Aryan north was in ascendancy, but did he and his followers lift the south after coming to power?” he wondered.
It’s not just the rivals of the Dravidian politicos who feel cheated by the rulers of these past five decades. Even their allies say they are shattered by the performance charts on all fronts. “Until they came to power, the DMK politicians were taking up all pro-people issues while slamming the Congress as an ally of Tata-Birla and enemy of the working class. But after they came to power, they forgot the ideals of Periyar and became bourgeoisie. The landlords who had supported the Congress in 1967 backed the DMK in the next election (1971) because the latter supported their cause stronger”, said Mr G. Ramakrishnan, CPI (M) state secretary.
“There is absolutely no difference between the DMK and the AIADMK when it comes to high corruption and lack of economic and industrial growth”, he said, sounding pretty sad.
The truly saddening truth, however, is that the ‘enterprising and enlightened’ people of Tamil Nadu do not seem to have another option, nor have they chosen to create one. The Congress party has only weakened further since its 1967 poll disaster, suffering multiple splits and now ending up under the captaincy of a ‘Dravidian-convert’, former MGR minister S. Thirunavukarasu, who had played a significant role in Jayalalithaa capturing the AIADMK after MGR. “The Congress in Tamil Nadu has been, for quite some years, party with more leaders than cadres”, quipped BJP leader H. Raja.
With the Congress thus placed, Mr Raja’s BJP now feels justified in nursing grand ambitions of squeezing in and gaining some space opened up by Jayalalithaa’s death and the turmoil in her AIADMK. “With such decadence in all the other parties, the BJP certainly has a bright future in Tamil Nadu. With people’s faith in Modi growing by the day, we are sure to come to power in this state. The AIADMK is steeped in corruption and the DMK has sunk in family rule”, said Raja.
But then, the mood in the DMK camp has not been as upbeat as it is now, thanks to the turmoil in the AIADMK and the absence of any other contender in the political horizon. “The AIADMK governments all these years have done nothing for the people.
The administration has been paralysed and people are terribly angry as they have not been able to procure rations from the PDS shops these past four months”, said former Chennai mayor M. Subramanian. “Naalai Namadhey”, declared the DMK legislator.
