Chennai Corner

Back to school

CM Jayalalitha this week had to eat humble pie at the hands of the Supreme Court, which ordered her government to implement Samacheer Kalvi (uniform syllabus system of education). She has backed off quietly and even the education department employees this week have begun the process of distributing textbooks to children. It’s almost three months since the academic year began.

Several academicians have welcomed Supreme Court’s order covering classes 1 to 10. “It is a victory for social justice and equality,” says SS Rajagopalan, educationist. “Teachers have a major challenge ahead of them – they have to complete the syllabus within 150 days which was originally planned for 200 days without omitting any lesson as the purpose of uniform schooling is to enhance the present quality”, he says.

PB Prince Gajendra Babu, general secretary of the state platform for common school system, who has been fighting for implementation of Samacheer Kalvi, reassures that with the distribution of textbooks, the government would start implementing first phase of uniform schooling system.

Eat your heart out Kalmadi

What Suresh Kalmadi could not do, DMK MLA from Chepauk-Triplicane and south Chennai district DMK secretary J. Anbazhagan, pulled off. While the court nixed Kalmadi’s petition to attend Parliament from Tihar, the Madras High Court allowed Anbazhagan to come to the Assembly from Puzhal, where he is cooling his heels since his arrest on charges of land grab 10 days ago.

On Wednesday, Anbazhagan was brought in a police van from Puzhal prison with tight security to Fort St George. He, however, went to the lobby of the Assembly and merely signed the register to mark his attendance. He did not participate in the Assembly proceedings as his party had been boycotting the session protesting “improper” seating arrangements in the Assembly. The MLA said he would attend the session only when the Speaker allots seats to DMK legislators in a block. A possibility that is unlikely to happen.

Later in the day, the Madras high court granted him conditional bail in the land grab case but told him to undergo three days of custody with Tirupur police before seeking bail.

Big Brother is watching

What Jayalalitha does not need at this time when she is attempting to take the moral high ground is dodgy partymen, although there has been a whiff of a scandal within her party of cadre being involved in land grab cases. There was a complaint that minister for commercial taxes and registration SS Krishnamoorthy, had grabbed land in Thiruvannamalai belonging to Vengikkal panchayat vice-president C Moorthi, who is an AIADMK member. In a petition to Tiruvannamalai SP, Moorthi said Krishnamurthi had “forced” him to part with a 1.86-hectare plot of land in Thenpallipattu. The minister claimed the charge was “politically motivated.” His explanation, since the complainant belongs to his party, seems lame but the CM has bought his explanation because he continues to be a minister.

But, she used her first meeting with party cadre recently, to read out the riot act. “Amma said she has changed a lot for the sake of the party and she expects us to change too. She told us that running a government is like building a house.” In other words, the foundation should be firm for the building to stand.” And Big Brother is watching, she told them, underlining that she received reports regularly about them and their activities. As a party office bearer confessed, “We were very tense because she has expelled many members of the cadre for unlawful activities. She did not even spare a minister (she dropped law minister Esakki Subbaiah from her cabinet over his alleged links with DMK functionaries) and has removed a few district secretaries.” With Jayalalitha being the supremo, there’s little chance of crossing her, and her message is clear: Don’t say I did not warn you.

Jail tourism

'Jail tourism' came into currency the day Rajya Sabha MP Kanimozhi went to Tihar jail, viz. on May 20.

Former law minister and a powerful leader in the DMK, Durai Murugan ,went last week to visit Veerapandi Arumugam in Coimbatore Central Prison. He looked in on Chennai MLA J Anbazhagan too. Both have been jailed in land grab cases. “No government which is keen on foisting fake cases against opposition party leaders has survived for long,” he said after visiting the duo. He was accompanied by former minister Pongalur N Palanisamy, Chennai mayor M Subramaniam, former MP M Ramanathan and Veerapandi’s wife Leela.

When Veerapandi was between jail terms – he was first arrested for two cases of alleged land grab and bailed out before being arrested for a third case of land grab – he had a visitor in union minister Azhagiri at his village in Poolavari in Salem district on July 29. That was not all. Nine days before Azhagiri used his Range Rover with a beacon and national flag fluttering to go and visit his “friends” in Palayamkottai and Madurai jails.

“I visited them as they are all my friends,” a visibly upset Azhagiri said , after spending 25 minutes with Madurai City district secretary G. Thalapathy, DMK general council member Suresh Babu alias ‘Pottu' Suresh and DMK functionaries Kodi. Chandrasekaran and Krishna Pandi. The four were arrested in Madurai the previous day and brought to the Tirunelveli jail. Azhagiri was accompanied by Tiruchendur MLA Anita R Radhakrishnan (who switched from the AIADMK two years ago). Former minister and Palayamkottai MLA T P M Mohideen Khan, Tirunelveli district DMK secretary V Karuppasamy Pandian and Tirunelveli Mayor A L Subramanian. Azhagiri also went to Madurai jail to meet Kodaikanal Municipality Chairman Mohammed Ibrahim.

Azhagiri was merely following the precedent set by his father Karunanidhi, who has visited Kanimozhi twice since he was jailed. He even spent time with former Telecom Minister A Raja (who has already spent six months in Tihar) and Sharad Kumar, MD of Kalaignar TV. But Karunanidhi’s intention was to present a united family picture. So despite the family’s quarrels and conflicts within, they all showed up to see Kanimozhi.

The first days of Kanimozhi’s arrest saw much melodrama with Kanthi Azhagiri, the wife of the union minister, shedding copious tears when she met Kanimozhi. Along with her came son, Dayandihi, son-in-law Venkatesh. Brother-in-law Stalin and his wife Durga, and another step brother Tamizharasu and wife Mohana and sister-in-law Selvi also visited. Of course Kanimozhi’s mother Rajathi Ammal went a few times too. The stuff that would make soap queen Ekta Kapoor go laughing all the way to the bank.

There have been no family visits recently although DMK MPs such as T. R. Baalu look in Kanimozhi from time to time. After over two months in custody, Kanimozhi is believed to have signed up for candle-making classes in Tihar.

There are reports that Stalin hopes to out-manoeuvre her as well as close contender brother Azhagiri for the DMK sweepstakes. After all with her in jail and Azhagiri embroiled in controversies up to his neck, Stalin seems as pure as driven snow.

Sycophancy thy name is...

Incidentally, while Stalin humoured a devastated father in visiting his step sister on two occasions, it’s the party that is keeping him busy considering he’s the legislative party leader of the 22-strong DMK in the assembly and the budget session has started.

When Karunanidhi accuses Jayalalitha of “vendetta politics”, he might have a point. Consider this: Speaker D Jayakumar refused the DMK’s request that arrangements be made for them to sit together in the assembly. Earlier, thinking that DMK would boycott because of the Speaker’s denial was discarded and the opposition MLAs agreed to be scattered over the house. But that has changed now. Grace is not a word that comes easily in dealings between the DMK and AIADMK. Sycophancy does, check out finance minister O Paneerselvam’s briefcase containing his budget papers. There’s a photo of amma covering three-quarters of the briefcase.

Tryst with the exotic

You know how much of the greenery and forest space in Chennai has gone when exotic animals turn up on your terrace. Two weeks ago, forest department officials rescued a two-year-old Asian Palm Civet, commonly known as Toddy Cat, at the Central Polytechnic ( CPT)) campus in Taramani. The injured two-year-old Toddy cat – so called because it drinks the toddy from the pots kept on palm trees to collect the juice – lost its way from the nearby wooded IIT-Madras campus where many live.

" This is the first time we have rescued a palm civet in the city. It took over an hour to lure the animal into the net,” said Dr S David Raj, Velachery forest ranger.

Three days before that, a housewife who had gone to dry clothes on her terrace in Shastri Nagar, Adyar, found a strange animal and began screaming for help. Her husband alerted forest department officials who rescued a one-year-old slender loris. This endangered animal may have escaped from the Kalakshetra campus.

The Madras Naturalists Society (MNS) is already studying the arboreal primate after at least 20 of them were spotted in Kalakshetra by students in July last year. According to G Vijay Kumar, Secretary of the MNS, the society approached Bangalore-based research organization ATREE for a six month study and the later granted Rs 70,000 for it.

While the toddy cat and slender loris found themselves inadvertently in human habitations, not so the cat-eyed snake which was found in a courier parcel addressed to one Gabriel of Slovakiarecently. Forest officials, however, have their own theory on this one as they claim it may have been sent by someone in Trichy to kill the addressee. The officials still don’t know the identity of the sender because he gave a fake address but are certain that since the snake neither had medicinal n or commercial value, the intention may have more diabolical. Since the venomous snake can kill a human being instantly, forest officials believe the intended recipient would have been "hisstory" had an employee at the Trichy office not got suspicious and opened the parcel to discover the deadly serpent.