Chennai Corner

Back to baiting

It looks like CM Jayalalitha was waiting for the governor’s address to take on her role as baiter of the DMK. After the governor’s address last Friday she got the assembly to pass a resolution so she could send the DMK’s earlier resolution allowing for the start of a legislative council, to the shredder. She was back to baiting the earlier DMK government as a “minority” government and how former CM Karunanidhi had come up with the council proposal so he could keep friends happy since he filled the UPA-2 with his family. She has jumped into the Cauvery waters fight after accusing the DMK government of doing nothing to take immediate steps to notify the final verdict of the Cauvery Water Disputes Tribunal. “To enforce the final verdict of the Cauvery Tribunal, it has to be notified in the Gazette of the Central government. This will make it binding on the Karnataka government to implement the verdict. But the previous minority DMK government failed to take any such step. However, this government will take immediate steps to notify the verdict in the Union Gazette,” she told the legislative assembly.

His cup of woes overfloweth

Like the adage, it just does not rain, it has started to pour for the former CM. Whichever side Karunanidhi looks, there’s trouble. After former Telecom minister A Raja, now it is Textile Minister Dayanidhi Maran who is in deep trouble over the 2G spectrum allocation. Already, Karunanidhi has one member of his family, his dear daughter Kanimozhi, in Tihar over the 2G scam. And now there's speculation over whether Maran will join her there.

And after Raja was compelled to go from the union cabinet, the Congress took back the portfolio. With Karunanidhi becoming aggressive vis-à-vis the Congress, will the DMK lose two other cabinet slots after Maran and Azhagiri, who was forced to surrender in the court this week in a case where a Tahsildar was assaulted in Melur near Madurai during the run-up the elections? Fresh trouble is likely to come via his war with former minister T R Baalu, who is a member of the JPC on the 2G scam, getting cosy in the court with both Kanimozhi and Raja.

Positive Thinking

“To prove that DMK, which has continued to work for the oppressed Dravidian people, has not done away with its efforts to continue working for the Tamil people, we are duty-bound to celebrate the birthday (Karunanidhi’s 87th birthday fell on June 3) of our leader,” party general secretary K Anbazhagan said last week. It made no sense particularly when the party leadership did not offer its demoralized cadre an explanation why the party had lost so badly for at least two weeks. Even after that while there were signs that the DMK leadership came out of mourning – DMK chief Karunanidhi, who has been felled not only by the defeat but by the arrest of his daughter Kanimozhi, showed a semblance of his old spirit when he met the speaker last week and took the oath as an MLA – there was no evidence of introspection. But he is back to being depressed after his feisty speech in his constituency last Sunday where he said that the next change will see the DMK back in power.

Friends indeed

But at least some uncertainty should be over with the party deciding not to pull out of the UPA government and accusing the CBI of adopting "double standards" by arresting party MP Kanimozhi. Perhaps there's a fresh lease of hope with the government at least momentarily having put the civil society activists on the backfoot. M Karunanidhi who had spoken about shunning bad friends - "bad friendship ends in trouble" - last week, said today: "I have nothing against the Congress. I am not disappointed over Congress not helping us in the 2G spectrum issue."

As for the money...

Where did the money come from? Karunanidhi justified welfare schemes saying they were not implemented at the cost of development schemes. New CM Jayalalitha, would beg to differ. She has already claimed that when she was CM between 2001-2006, power was surplus whereas during the Karunanidhi regime, the sector was in crisis because not a single watt was added in five years. She has hinted that several crores meant for scheduled castes ended up being diverted so that the government could give free colour TVs, one of the DMK’s promises in the 2006 assembly elections. Now a lawyer, Raja Senthoor Pandian, has sent a legal notice to the chief secretary seeking an investigation into the diversion of Rs 74.9 crores, information that he has obtained through RTI. He claims that the Karunanidhi government passed a government order on February 24, 2011(less than a week before the Model Code of Conduct came in on March 1) facilitating the diversion of the money from the SC welfare fund of ELCOT (Electronic Corporation of TN) to procure 10 lakh TV sets for the sixth phase of distribution. These 10 lakhs were approved by the government in addition to the over one crore it distributed. But yet, I know of at least one BPL family which did not get a colour TV. Valli, a house-maid, ran from pillar to post and finally got a coupon. But once elections were announced, she said bitterly, “The coupon is a useless piece of paper.” She is one of the 9.1 lakh who got only coupons. “The government should have ensured that all the eligible beneficiaries were covered before the polls, but they gave them away to influential persons. They gave us a promise that they would make good on the IOUs after elections, but see how that went,” says Valli.

No more Colour TVs

And finally Jaya's scrapped another one of Karunanidhi's pet schemes -- the free colour TV distribution on which over Rs 3,600 crore was spent in the past five years Her rationale? That for nearly 1.60 crore TV sets, people paid Rs 4,000 crore annually for cable connection, the business of which is controlled by the DMK families -- (Karunanidhi's grandnephews) Kalanidhi and Dayanidhi Maran (who own Sumangali Cable Vision) and (Karunanidhi's grandson) Durai Dayanithi.
Which of course also explains why she had already announced that cable services in the state will be nationalized. As for the over one lakh colour TV sets already procured in the sixth phase, she had a ready solution: they would be distributed to orphanages and anganwadis among others

Expanding Chennai

A day after the Chennai Corporation churlishly refused to pass a resolution congratulating the AIADMK government, Jaya demanded Dayanidhi Maran’s resignation from the union government among swirling allegations – denied by him – that there was a quid pro quo involved in him giving licences to Aircel when he was telecom minister. The Chennai Corporation is DMK-led with the mayor, M Subramaniam, being one of former deputy CM Stalin’s loyalists. But this is not the first time when the city fathers have not shown grace. In 2001 too when the AIADMK came to power there was no resolution congratulating it. However, the DMK-led body passed a resolution congratulating the government which was elected in 1996 and 2006. No prizes for guessing that it was a DMK government! But with elections to the local body scheduled for October this year, it’s very likely that the AIADMK will take over there too.

One of the first things it has to grapple with is the ambitious plan to merge nine municipalities, 8 town panchayats and 25 village panchayats into Chennai making it 430 sq kms from the existing 174 sq kms. Since it was deputy CM M K Stalin’s pet project, chances are that this government will veto the expansion which was supposed to happen in October this year. Besides, AIADMK MLAs representing Chennai’s suburban constituencies, don’t want to reduce their area of influence. But AIADMK’s ally CPM believes that suburbs will develop faster if the expansion happens. Maduravoyal CPM MLA Beem Rao says, “It is my people’s wish. A panchayat cannot be run with a meagre annual income of Rs one crore (including various grants). Whereas expansion means more state and central funds will be allocated.” DMDK is on the fence on this issue. DMDK presidium chairman and MLA from Alandur Panruti Ramachandran says, “I will have to wait for the decision of the new government before making any comment.”

Bite your tongue, sycophants

45-year-old AIADMK loyalist, Vani, who chopped off her thumb at the Shakti Kaliamman temple at Dadagapatti on May 29, as a thanksgiving for bringing Jayalalitha to power, may not be as lucky as K Saritha from Thondi in Ramanathapuram district who had sliced off her tongue at the Gowriamman temple in Veerapandi on May 13 for the same reason. Medically yes, because her thumb was sewn back after a complicated surgery and she will get the use of it while Saritha will go through life unable to speak. But while Jayalalitha has neither met nor rewarded Vani yet, she has paid for Saritha’s surgery at a big corporate hospital, has given her Rs one lakh from the MGR Trust and also has earmarked a government job for her – her tongue could not be fixed back because Saritha had dropped her sliced tongue into the ‘hundi” at the temple. After Vani cut off her thumb, and the CM met her, there was criticism that “instead of condemning such acts, politicians immediately reward the persons encouraging others.”

“The woman has two children to look after alone and no income. I will not encourage such acts,” said CM Jayalalitha this week making it clear that she’s not going to be a sucker for acts that rationalists feel are driven by “obsessions”.

Some also do it for 15 minutes of fame. Committing self-immolation when a leader dies or a party loses in elections is not unusual in Tamil Nadu. But Raj Kannan, a 35-year-old van driver in Coimbatore, consumed cow dung on May 13 when his vow that Jayalalitha be returned to power came true. He did not do his self-sacrificing act at home but in front of the collectorate after telling his family the time and place! So the police shipped Raj Kannan off to hospital where he recovered.