Freebies, the “real hero”
If you cannot beat 'em, join 'em. This simple logic seems to be behind Amma’s bounty in her election manifesto released in Srirangam after she filed her nomination and launched her party’s election campaign. Freebie for freebie from a woman who criticized all the sops lavished by CM Karunanidhi. She had memorably said that the goodie-rain by Karunanidhi was “making people a society of parasites, dependent on freebies, doles and sops”. But after virtually snatching defeat from the jaws of victory she has decided to listen to bête noire, home minister P Chidambaram who called freebies “the real hero” of the 2009 Lok Sabha poll.
Advertisement
Here’s a glance at some of the stuff on the lists:
Grinder, mixer and fan (AIADMK): Grinder and mixer (DMK); 20kg rice free (Rs 35 kg rice free plus anything extra at Re one per kg); Senior citizens get free bus passes (ditto); Laptops for students of 11th and 12th standard (Laptops to all students); marriage assistance of Rs 25,000 and four grams of gold (marriage assistance of Rs 25,000), 20 litres of drinking water (none), Rs 12,000 assistance to pregnant women and six months leave (assistance to go up from current Rs 6,000 to Rs 10,000); 3 cents of land to those who don’t have a house (Kalaignar Housing Scheme grant to be hiked from Rs 75,000 to Rs one lakh).
Jayalalitha’s political advisor Cho Ramaswamy justified her about turn on sops saying, “When the ruling party continues to play populism, how can the opposition keep silent? It has become an inevitable game.”
There ain't no such thing as a free lunch
Maybe, but a tweet reacting to these sops says TN will become bankrupt, so Nithish Kumar, CM of Bihar, better be prepared for an influx from here. Jayalalitha’s answer is that she will raise funds by increasing productivity and growth rate. “Only those really in need will be the real beneficiaries”. But travelling in several parts of TN I found that the real beneficiaries often get bypassed by partymen and beyond the colour TV (which kicked off the freebie spree in 2006 when Karunanidhi promised it first to all BPLs and expanded it to all with ration cards later). Besides, people complained the TVs were of poor quality/ complained of poor electricity supply and that they therefore they could not really watch TV/ that Karunanidhi was inducing laziness/ that children were getting addicted to the television and so on. Often I came across people who said they did not want freebies, just good governance. But the DMK and the AIADMK seem to know better.
Reservations on women
Recently, Tamil Nadu CM M Karunanidhi hinted that he did not think the women’s reservation bill would be passed, although he and his party had made the right noises on the bill. Typically, he couched his scepticism in language that’s open to interpretation. So even if one gives him the benefit of doubt on that cryptic retort, check this out to see whether he was being facetious. His scepticism seems to have has found reflection while he distributed tickets for the forthcoming assembly poll. Of the 120 he allocated, only 11 were women that included the three incumbent women ministers, which comes to barely 8.33 per cent. Which, incidentally, is better than the 13 seats AIADMK chief Jayalalitha gave out of the 160 she is contesting viz. only 8.12 per cent.
Incidentally, this time both the opposing Dravidian parties and even the DMDK had more women aspirants. The DMK received16,000 applications, of which 1,800 were filed by women, while of the 12,000 the AIADMK received, 35 per cent were women. Vijayakanth’s DMDK got 7,000 applications of whom 1,500 were from women. So much for women’s hope that crossing of the first hurdle in parliament by the bill some months ago would make them count in the poll stakes.
During the 2006 assembly election, the DMK allocated 12 seats to women out of the total of 132 that it contested. The AIADMK allocated more than 20 seats to women out of the 182 seats it fought. In 2006, 400 women filed nominations, of whom 156 women contested and 22 women were elected to the house.
Incidentally, except its three women ministers, the DMK has not given tickets to four sitting woman MLAs — Prabhavathi P (Dharapuram), A Angaiyarkanni (Sankarapuram), R Rani (Uppiliapuram) and Sankari Narayanan (Acharapakkam). As for the AIDMK, both the amma and chinnamma (Jayalalitha’s friend Sasikala) who decide tickets, ignore most women nominees because they were not “winnable” candidates.
Look at the Lok Sabha picture: 47 were in the race for becoming MPs out of 824 (constituting 5.5 per cent) who contested as compared to 20 in 2004, 15 in 1999 and 10 in 1998. Of the 47 who contested, 26 were independents, which means parties only gave out 21 tickets. The DMK which contested 21 and the AIADMK which contested 23 respectively, gave 2 seats each, that is 9.25 per cent and 8.69 per cent of the seats. Congress gave 1 out of 16 while Vijayakanth’s DMDK gave 1 out of 39. The Left gave nothing in 2004 and 2009, the same with Vaiko’s MDMK and PMK. BSP gave 2 and so did BJP.
Advertisement
Nuts and Bolts
Nutjobs contesting elections is nothing new. This is the time for their 15 minutes of fame and they revel in it. But 41-year-old Back Mani alias Manidhan’s hilarious nomination papers enraged an official on duty sitting at the Vellore collectorate. “We are not jokers that people can come here and pull off such idiotic acts,” he said, recommending action against these “loosu” characters. Manidhan is a veteran of elections: he has filed once for the post of President of India and Vice-President of India, twice hoping to get elected as an MP and four times to become a member of the legislative assembly.
Here’s why the official got livid. Manidhan put his age down as 2,20,75, 268 minutes and caste as Manitha Sadhee (Human Being) and made it to the collectorate at 11.01 on March 19, the first day of nomination, to be an Independent from Jolarpet constituency. He plans to file nominations against CM Karunanindi (Tiruvarur), former CM Jayalalitha(Srirangam) and deputy CM M K Stalin (Kolathur). Not that any of these protagonists are going to lose sleep over Manidhan. “I am the first candidate to file the nomination for the April 13 polls,” he boasted. But his nomination is surely going to be rejected because he refused to pay the deposit. “I am the future president of the country, why should I pay a deposit?” he asked. He wanted the money for his deposit to come from all the seizures the EC is making across the state. (Rs 20 crores at the last count). And get this, Manidhan wants his symbol to be Aishwariya Rai’s photo or as a poor second, a picture of the new secretariat complex.
This is not the first time Manidhan is seeking to be the centre of attention. He has done that by walking backwards for the last 10 years! Now he says he will walk normally when he becomes President of India!
Then there is U Nagoor Meran Beer Mohammed from Krishnancoil who has thrown his hat in the ring for the 44th time (15 parliament and 29 assembly elections). He is an independent candidate from Nagercoil assembly constituency. His manifesto is that he will not give Nagercoil bus shelters, auditoria and burial grounds but infrastructure including roads!
