T.T.V. Dinakaran (AIADMK)
Won from Periyakulam: 1999
Votes for Dinakaran: 46.15 per cent (last elections)
- The Varisanadu area remains the ganja capital of TN
- There is no major industry in the area and the few big mills are closing down
- What little development exists is caste-oriented. Only Thevar segments benefit.
- Severe untouchability prevalent in many villages
On the surface, Periyakulam, represented by Puratchi Thalaivi J. Jayalalitha’s close associate Sasikala Natarajan’s nephew T.T.V. Dinakaran, appears "well-developed". If development is defined by miles and miles of well-metalled roads. Says anNGO worker: "Even if there are no buses, there are roads to every village."
Agriculture and spinning mills have been the staple, but the mills are closing down. There has been no effort to generate new avenues of employment. Only many new "marriage halls" (as community halls are referred to here) and renovated or newly-built temples. Given that under the Jayalalitha regime 2,822 temples have been renovated in Tamil Nadu, Dinakaran’s development priorities do not surprise.
Another key ‘development’ is in building bridges and laying roads. "For, it is in these activities that contracts can be cornered and commissions made," says Ilampirai Gunasekaran, president of Ammachiapuram panchayat. Ilampirai’s grouse, despite being a worker of Dinakaran’s party (the AIADMK), is that the little development there unfolds along caste lines. "We badly need a bridge," he says. "But Dinakaran will build bridges only in villages where the Kallars (the MP’s caste group) need it." He also complains that the contracts are cornered by "outsiders" and mostly the dominant Mukkulathoor community—comprised largely by the better known Thevars.
Sometimes, even roads are laid only up to the caste Hindu part of a village. Thimmarasanayakanur, in Andipatti taluk, being a case in point.
The road to the Dalit colony, on the other hand, was completed with an NGO’s assistance.
Selvi, the village’s Dalit woman president, was not allowed to sit on the chair in the panchayat office. According to Panneerselvam of Network Theni, anNGO, there are at least 20 villages where the two-glass system is practised in teashops, and in some villages there’s even the three-glass system, where the dominant backward caste Kallars and Dalit subcastes are each given separate glasses.
