MGR ஆட்சி எப்படி கேவலமாக நடந்தது என்பதும் எத்தனை ஊழலும் சர்வாதிகாரமானது என்பதும் நிறைய பேருக்கு தெரியாது. இந்தியா டுடே யில் வந்துள்ள இந்த கட்டுரையை படிங்க உண்மை புரியும்
(கட்டுரை வெளியான நாள் 31 ஜூலை 1987)
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After 10 years of MGR rule, Tamil Nadu presents a very sorry picture
Last month, Tamil Nadu's seriously-ailing and idiosyncratic Chief Minister M.G. Ramachandran completed a decade of his reign over the state. But there was little to celebrate. The region, which still exults in the vibrant memories of the legendary Cholas and Pandyas who excelled in military exploits, learning and trade and commerce, was suddenly left, it seemed, without a modern legend.
When he strode upon the political stage 10 years ago, MGR seemed to be a character right out of the history books - a sage-poet-politician in the mould of the famous Alvars and Nayanars - who would fashion a new era for a region that prided itself as the crucible of indigenous Indian culture. But, a decade later, the only legacy of MGR's one-man dynasty is mindless autocracy and a trail of broken promises.
Analysts of the MGR decade - even the most vituperative critics - will readily admit that, notwithstanding his glaring failures, the fur-capped chief minister still has an uncanny hold over the masses. Because of his welfare schemes - the public dole - they look up to him as the fount of all munificence.
But the MGR welfare formula, just about the only thing his government is now associated with and which informs its very style and functioning, has proved simply a disastrous short - term palliative in which efficient administration and economic development have been sacrificed at the altar of largesse.
The 10 years of MGR's rule have seen:
The institutionalisation of corruption in the state;(அமைப்பு முறை ஆக்குதல்)
Lack-lustre மந்தமான economic growth, with the state income growing at less than the national average of 3.5 per cent;
Low per capita availability of essential articles;
No change in the percentage of population living below the poverty line;
No progress on the critical water and power fronts;
Emergence of a highly individualistic and centralised administration;
Repressive laws to shackle both the press and the flim industry;
Growing tension between the executive and the judiciary;
Total demoralisation of bureaucracy;
A bewildering array of welfare schemes, highly populist in character, but basically short-term palliatives; and
Dilution of Dravidian culture and toning down of anti-Hindi sentiments.
That hardly appeared to be the case when MGR captured power on the promise of eliminating corruption, fighting Brahminism and idol worship, ensuring speedy development and an open government, and opposing the Central Government and its language policy.
But the only thing that MGR provided in the ensuing years, apart from state charity, was stability. But it is the stability of stagnation. The state has become MGR's personal fiefdom and every institution - the judiciary, the bureaucracy, the press - has been threatened or cajoled into obsequious submission to the Tamil satrap.
The 120-odd MLAs and 25 MPs of MGR's AIADMK have been reduced to non-entities. Cabinet meetings are as rare as the visits the chief minister makes to his office. Ten years ago, MGR's absence from his office for a day made news. Now, his visits to his secretariat office make headlines. Six years ago, party functionaries and petitioners had easy access to MGR. Now, with a huge security wall around MGR, the already tenuous link between the leader and his partymen and the public has just about snapped.
And the state is descending into chaos and decay. Almost every minister, including the chief minister himself, is involved in allegations of widespread corruption. The number of people living below the poverty line is unchanged at 50 per cent. The growth of state income has been less than the national average of 3.5 percent as has the per capita availability of essential items, like water and electricity.
MGR's most abysmal failure has been his inability - and perhaps unwillingness - to tackle the two major problems of power shortage and water famine. Last year, State Industries Minister K. Rajaram visited the Hanover Industrial Fair and decided to import several one - mega - watt power generating wind - mills, which could provided power to the coastal villages. He sent his recommendations to MGR, and that was the end of the matter. The file hasn't moved.
Then, four years ago, amidst great fanfare, MGR signed the Telugu-Ganga agreement with his Andhra Pradesh counterpart N.T. Rama Rao. The scheme was crucial for Tamil Nadu as it envisaged the transportation of Krishna waters to cater to the desperate needs of Madras city. It was originally expected to cost Rs 600 crore, of which Tamil Nadu was expected to pay Rs 180 crore to Andhra Pradesh for works to be carried out within its territorial boundaries.
In addition, the MGR Government was expected to arrange to dig canals from Tamil Nadu's border with Andhra Pradesh to the city. But a dispute over payments for the project between the two states halted the work. To resolve the issue, NTR visited Madras to confer with MGR. But MGR failed to attend the scheduled meeting at the secretariat. His gimmicky answer to the water famine in the city, which smacked ominously of a if-they-don't-have-bread-let-them-eat-cakes attitude, was the announcement of a scheme of giving plastic kudams (water containers) to families living below the poverty line.
MGR'S Government, if it can be called that, is difficult to assess according to known administrative yardsticks, for it works according to the whims and dictates of the chief minister. As a former top police official put it: "All MGR's decisions are sudden and illogical. He will keep files pending indefinitely, and suddenly, come out with 50 decisions. But he has a way of carrying them all through, and he will always appeal to the poor rural people."
As a result, the bureaucracy is languishing with virtually no work and no decision-making powers. No secretary can leave to attend official meetings outside Madras without MGR's permission. In the past two years, Tamil Nadu has not been represented in over a dozen important conferences in New Delhi because none of the invited secretaries could get approval in time.
The civil service has, therefore, totally withdrawn from participating in the administration of the state. It no longer makes preparations of the notes and agenda even for cabinet meetings, if they are held. And MGR appears to take a special delight in being rude to officers. Often, he will not even offer a chair to an officer he has summoned. Until 1977, only one IAS officer had resigned from service in the state. Since MGR took over, more than 20 have resigned.
But the main reason that MGR continues to rest easy on his laurels which, by all logic, should have become a crown of thorns, is the success of his welfare schemes. Centres have been set up where parents and children can avail of a free meal a day.
Over half the state's population now depends, directly or indirectly, on state charity. More than three - fourths of the state budget is spent on subsidies: free noon meals, textbooks, tooth - powder and, to a lesser extent, rural housing. In addition, the Government supplies highly subsidised power to farmers. Education up to the ten-plus-two stage is also free: an annual cost of Rs 450 crore.
But these schemes have been at the cost of the infrastructural development of the state. Though two lakh people are employed in the noon meal scheme, the state Government has neglected the development of industry and its consequent employment generation.
The people, however, view the welfare schemes as a religious benediction. And in this atmosphere, the AIADMK's traditional antipathy for religious institutions has declined to the point of apostasy. Under the late E.V. Ramaswamy Naicker, its motto was: 'There is no God, No, no, not at all.' Under the late former chief minister C.N. Annadurai, the motto became: 'There is only one caste, and one God.
Under MGR, however, religious fervour reached an untrammeled acceptance. Once, when the chief minister returned from a trip to the US where he had gone for medical treatment. S. Raghavanandam, former state housing minister and AIADMK general secretary, got himself tonsured at Tirupati as an offer of thanks for MGR's recovery. The chief minister himself regularly visits the Mookambige temple near Mangalore, and he is also credited with building golden chariots for 12 temples in the state.
The state has become MGR's personal fiefdom and every institution - the judiciary, the bureaucracy and the press - has been threatened or cajoled into obsequious submission to the overlord.
When he first came to power, MGR vowed to exterminate the twin devils of religion and corruption. Now, with the recrudescence of religion, corruption has also made a come-back. Says Cho Ramaswamy, satirist and editor of the fortnightly Tughlak: "Corruption has been institutionalised under MGR's rule. Apart from all the scandals which have been written about, the chief minister has recently begun gifting wads of currency notes to the bride and bridegroom of every wedding he is invited to preside over. You should remember that MGR once said he had no money to pay his income tax."
Corruption has become part and parcel of MGR's Government now," observes DMK Assistant General Secretary Nanchil K. Manoharan, the former number two man in MGR's 1977 cabinet before he returned to the DMK in 1980. "During his first term of office, MGR was okay. But after he got re-elected in 1980, transport permits, admissions into medical and engineering colleges - everything was turned into a money spinner," he adds.
The early scandals began with allegations that rectified spirits worth crores were diverted to other sources with the knowledge of the Government. Commissions of inquiry were appointed by the Centre but their operations were stayed by the courts.
Then the state Government-owned Poompuhar Shipping Corporation, set up in 1975 to transport coal by sea to the state's thermal power plants, signed a deal with a Bulgarian firm in March 1979, for the purchase of three ships for $13 million each. The corporation went back on the contract after Karunanidhi alleged that a Rs 4-crore kickback was involved in the deal.
Later, MGR himself figured in allegations of kickbacks in the awarding of arrack bottling and blending licences to highly ineligible parties. Former chief minister Karunanidhi made a blatant charge in the Assembly that he had received bribes up to Rs 25 crore a year for the arrack licences. When MGR challenged Kaunanidhi to repeat the charge in public, he promptly obliged. The chief minister then sued Karunanidhi for criminal and civil defamation but withdrew the case after seven months.
Along with corruption came repression against those who sought to expose it. The state police has been shamelessly used in harassing the media, political opponents and even nonconforming judges. It was MGR who pioneered the anti-scurrility long before former Bihar chief minister Jagannath Mishra even began thinking about it.
He introduced a law in September 1981 making the publication of grossly obscene, indecent, or scurrilous matter a cognizable and non-bailable offence. And the person given the responsibility for making such a highly subjective judgement - a police inspector.
This law had all the potential of being used to harass independent journalists and was repealed after repeated protests. But before it was put into the statute book, MGR issued an order in September 1980 proscribing any government official from divulging information, even of a purely routine nature. Under this, irrigation storage statistics cannot be revealed.
Only the chief minister or ministers - with his approval - can give out information to the press. Recently, the state Government has passed an Act authorising pre-censorship on any advertisement material or films depicting politicians as corrupt.
The MGR welfare formula, the main reason for his continuing popularity, has been at the expense of efficient administration and economic development in the state.
Tamil Nadu is also the only state in the country with a Goondas Act, under which district collectors can preventively detain, for a year, anyone who they suspect can create law and order and other problems. Disclosed a police source: "On an average, the police have been detaining 50 people every month under this Act." The Madras High Court, acting on habeas corpus petitions, has released nearly 200 detenus under the Act. The fact that many of these petitions become in fructuous as the detenu's term ends before the court considers his petition for final disposal shows the extent of arbitrary detention.
The irony of the MGR decade is that notwithstanding repression, corruption, nepotism, maladministration, and religious obscurantism, he continues to be the only popular leader in the state. He has systematically eliminated all threats from within his own party by clipping the wings of future contenders like Jayalalitha and Veerappan, and the Congress(I) has been unable to produce an alternative.
Even though the AIADMK candidates for the 1985 elections were chosen when MGR was undergoing treatment in the US, none of them has the capacity or charisma to replace him. He has also succeeded in insulating the state from the mainstream of national politics and the cross-currents of the southern state politics, where governments have changed in the past decade.
MGR has uniquely demonstrated time and again that a dismal performance in office need not have anything to do with a chief minister's hold over the masses. In 1977, he won 130 of the 200 seats contested by the AIADMK and secured 30.76 per cent of the total votes polled.
In 1980, share of votes polled rose to 38.74 per cent, but he won 129 of the 177 seats contested. And MGR reached his pinnacle of popularity when a sympathy wave hit the state following his illness. While he was in the US, the AIADMK won 133 seats of the 155 seats contested, including the 12 Lok Sabha seats it fought.
Moreover, despite his providing Tamil Nadu an insular flavour, the parochialism has not intensified into anti-Hindi sentiment. The anti-Hindi movement, which he had earlier made full political use of, has almost faded. In fact, he ruthlessly suppressed the DMK-led agitation and even created legislative history by getting almost half the DMK MLAs expelled from the house for burning the Constitution.
MGR presided over a lack-lustre, sleepy decade in which he used his charisma and welfare schemes as a soporific for the masses. There is little doubt among observers that the potion will soon wear out and that the people will awaken to the real demands of water, electricity, efficient governance, jobs and development. But that will most likely happen when MGR, already ailing and now barely able to speak, is no more.
He will leave behind, for his successors, the burdensome task of dealing with a newly awakened and rebellious electorate. Yet, the irony will remain that in the midst of the turmoil that is surely ahead, MGR will be remembered not as a man who broke his promises to his people but as a giant who presided over a decade of dreamy stability.
https://www.indiatoday.in/magazine/special-report/story/19870731-after-10-years-of-ramachandran-rule-tamil-nadu-presents-a-very-sorry-picture-799093-1987-07-31
(கட்டுரை வெளியான நாள் 31 ஜூலை 1987)
Read 👇
After 10 years of MGR rule, Tamil Nadu presents a very sorry picture
Last month, Tamil Nadu's seriously-ailing and idiosyncratic Chief Minister M.G. Ramachandran completed a decade of his reign over the state. But there was little to celebrate. The region, which still exults in the vibrant memories of the legendary Cholas and Pandyas who excelled in military exploits, learning and trade and commerce, was suddenly left, it seemed, without a modern legend.
When he strode upon the political stage 10 years ago, MGR seemed to be a character right out of the history books - a sage-poet-politician in the mould of the famous Alvars and Nayanars - who would fashion a new era for a region that prided itself as the crucible of indigenous Indian culture. But, a decade later, the only legacy of MGR's one-man dynasty is mindless autocracy and a trail of broken promises.
Analysts of the MGR decade - even the most vituperative critics - will readily admit that, notwithstanding his glaring failures, the fur-capped chief minister still has an uncanny hold over the masses. Because of his welfare schemes - the public dole - they look up to him as the fount of all munificence.
But the MGR welfare formula, just about the only thing his government is now associated with and which informs its very style and functioning, has proved simply a disastrous short - term palliative in which efficient administration and economic development have been sacrificed at the altar of largesse.
The 10 years of MGR's rule have seen:
The institutionalisation of corruption in the state;(அமைப்பு முறை ஆக்குதல்)
Lack-lustre மந்தமான economic growth, with the state income growing at less than the national average of 3.5 per cent;
Low per capita availability of essential articles;
No change in the percentage of population living below the poverty line;
No progress on the critical water and power fronts;
Emergence of a highly individualistic and centralised administration;
Repressive laws to shackle both the press and the flim industry;
Growing tension between the executive and the judiciary;
Total demoralisation of bureaucracy;
A bewildering array of welfare schemes, highly populist in character, but basically short-term palliatives; and
Dilution of Dravidian culture and toning down of anti-Hindi sentiments.
That hardly appeared to be the case when MGR captured power on the promise of eliminating corruption, fighting Brahminism and idol worship, ensuring speedy development and an open government, and opposing the Central Government and its language policy.
But the only thing that MGR provided in the ensuing years, apart from state charity, was stability. But it is the stability of stagnation. The state has become MGR's personal fiefdom and every institution - the judiciary, the bureaucracy, the press - has been threatened or cajoled into obsequious submission to the Tamil satrap.
The 120-odd MLAs and 25 MPs of MGR's AIADMK have been reduced to non-entities. Cabinet meetings are as rare as the visits the chief minister makes to his office. Ten years ago, MGR's absence from his office for a day made news. Now, his visits to his secretariat office make headlines. Six years ago, party functionaries and petitioners had easy access to MGR. Now, with a huge security wall around MGR, the already tenuous link between the leader and his partymen and the public has just about snapped.
And the state is descending into chaos and decay. Almost every minister, including the chief minister himself, is involved in allegations of widespread corruption. The number of people living below the poverty line is unchanged at 50 per cent. The growth of state income has been less than the national average of 3.5 percent as has the per capita availability of essential items, like water and electricity.
MGR's most abysmal failure has been his inability - and perhaps unwillingness - to tackle the two major problems of power shortage and water famine. Last year, State Industries Minister K. Rajaram visited the Hanover Industrial Fair and decided to import several one - mega - watt power generating wind - mills, which could provided power to the coastal villages. He sent his recommendations to MGR, and that was the end of the matter. The file hasn't moved.
Then, four years ago, amidst great fanfare, MGR signed the Telugu-Ganga agreement with his Andhra Pradesh counterpart N.T. Rama Rao. The scheme was crucial for Tamil Nadu as it envisaged the transportation of Krishna waters to cater to the desperate needs of Madras city. It was originally expected to cost Rs 600 crore, of which Tamil Nadu was expected to pay Rs 180 crore to Andhra Pradesh for works to be carried out within its territorial boundaries.
In addition, the MGR Government was expected to arrange to dig canals from Tamil Nadu's border with Andhra Pradesh to the city. But a dispute over payments for the project between the two states halted the work. To resolve the issue, NTR visited Madras to confer with MGR. But MGR failed to attend the scheduled meeting at the secretariat. His gimmicky answer to the water famine in the city, which smacked ominously of a if-they-don't-have-bread-let-them-eat-cakes attitude, was the announcement of a scheme of giving plastic kudams (water containers) to families living below the poverty line.
MGR'S Government, if it can be called that, is difficult to assess according to known administrative yardsticks, for it works according to the whims and dictates of the chief minister. As a former top police official put it: "All MGR's decisions are sudden and illogical. He will keep files pending indefinitely, and suddenly, come out with 50 decisions. But he has a way of carrying them all through, and he will always appeal to the poor rural people."
As a result, the bureaucracy is languishing with virtually no work and no decision-making powers. No secretary can leave to attend official meetings outside Madras without MGR's permission. In the past two years, Tamil Nadu has not been represented in over a dozen important conferences in New Delhi because none of the invited secretaries could get approval in time.
The civil service has, therefore, totally withdrawn from participating in the administration of the state. It no longer makes preparations of the notes and agenda even for cabinet meetings, if they are held. And MGR appears to take a special delight in being rude to officers. Often, he will not even offer a chair to an officer he has summoned. Until 1977, only one IAS officer had resigned from service in the state. Since MGR took over, more than 20 have resigned.
But the main reason that MGR continues to rest easy on his laurels which, by all logic, should have become a crown of thorns, is the success of his welfare schemes. Centres have been set up where parents and children can avail of a free meal a day.
Over half the state's population now depends, directly or indirectly, on state charity. More than three - fourths of the state budget is spent on subsidies: free noon meals, textbooks, tooth - powder and, to a lesser extent, rural housing. In addition, the Government supplies highly subsidised power to farmers. Education up to the ten-plus-two stage is also free: an annual cost of Rs 450 crore.
But these schemes have been at the cost of the infrastructural development of the state. Though two lakh people are employed in the noon meal scheme, the state Government has neglected the development of industry and its consequent employment generation.
The people, however, view the welfare schemes as a religious benediction. And in this atmosphere, the AIADMK's traditional antipathy for religious institutions has declined to the point of apostasy. Under the late E.V. Ramaswamy Naicker, its motto was: 'There is no God, No, no, not at all.' Under the late former chief minister C.N. Annadurai, the motto became: 'There is only one caste, and one God.
Under MGR, however, religious fervour reached an untrammeled acceptance. Once, when the chief minister returned from a trip to the US where he had gone for medical treatment. S. Raghavanandam, former state housing minister and AIADMK general secretary, got himself tonsured at Tirupati as an offer of thanks for MGR's recovery. The chief minister himself regularly visits the Mookambige temple near Mangalore, and he is also credited with building golden chariots for 12 temples in the state.
The state has become MGR's personal fiefdom and every institution - the judiciary, the bureaucracy and the press - has been threatened or cajoled into obsequious submission to the overlord.
When he first came to power, MGR vowed to exterminate the twin devils of religion and corruption. Now, with the recrudescence of religion, corruption has also made a come-back. Says Cho Ramaswamy, satirist and editor of the fortnightly Tughlak: "Corruption has been institutionalised under MGR's rule. Apart from all the scandals which have been written about, the chief minister has recently begun gifting wads of currency notes to the bride and bridegroom of every wedding he is invited to preside over. You should remember that MGR once said he had no money to pay his income tax."
Corruption has become part and parcel of MGR's Government now," observes DMK Assistant General Secretary Nanchil K. Manoharan, the former number two man in MGR's 1977 cabinet before he returned to the DMK in 1980. "During his first term of office, MGR was okay. But after he got re-elected in 1980, transport permits, admissions into medical and engineering colleges - everything was turned into a money spinner," he adds.
The early scandals began with allegations that rectified spirits worth crores were diverted to other sources with the knowledge of the Government. Commissions of inquiry were appointed by the Centre but their operations were stayed by the courts.
Then the state Government-owned Poompuhar Shipping Corporation, set up in 1975 to transport coal by sea to the state's thermal power plants, signed a deal with a Bulgarian firm in March 1979, for the purchase of three ships for $13 million each. The corporation went back on the contract after Karunanidhi alleged that a Rs 4-crore kickback was involved in the deal.
Later, MGR himself figured in allegations of kickbacks in the awarding of arrack bottling and blending licences to highly ineligible parties. Former chief minister Karunanidhi made a blatant charge in the Assembly that he had received bribes up to Rs 25 crore a year for the arrack licences. When MGR challenged Kaunanidhi to repeat the charge in public, he promptly obliged. The chief minister then sued Karunanidhi for criminal and civil defamation but withdrew the case after seven months.
Along with corruption came repression against those who sought to expose it. The state police has been shamelessly used in harassing the media, political opponents and even nonconforming judges. It was MGR who pioneered the anti-scurrility long before former Bihar chief minister Jagannath Mishra even began thinking about it.
He introduced a law in September 1981 making the publication of grossly obscene, indecent, or scurrilous matter a cognizable and non-bailable offence. And the person given the responsibility for making such a highly subjective judgement - a police inspector.
This law had all the potential of being used to harass independent journalists and was repealed after repeated protests. But before it was put into the statute book, MGR issued an order in September 1980 proscribing any government official from divulging information, even of a purely routine nature. Under this, irrigation storage statistics cannot be revealed.
Only the chief minister or ministers - with his approval - can give out information to the press. Recently, the state Government has passed an Act authorising pre-censorship on any advertisement material or films depicting politicians as corrupt.
The MGR welfare formula, the main reason for his continuing popularity, has been at the expense of efficient administration and economic development in the state.
Tamil Nadu is also the only state in the country with a Goondas Act, under which district collectors can preventively detain, for a year, anyone who they suspect can create law and order and other problems. Disclosed a police source: "On an average, the police have been detaining 50 people every month under this Act." The Madras High Court, acting on habeas corpus petitions, has released nearly 200 detenus under the Act. The fact that many of these petitions become in fructuous as the detenu's term ends before the court considers his petition for final disposal shows the extent of arbitrary detention.
The irony of the MGR decade is that notwithstanding repression, corruption, nepotism, maladministration, and religious obscurantism, he continues to be the only popular leader in the state. He has systematically eliminated all threats from within his own party by clipping the wings of future contenders like Jayalalitha and Veerappan, and the Congress(I) has been unable to produce an alternative.
Even though the AIADMK candidates for the 1985 elections were chosen when MGR was undergoing treatment in the US, none of them has the capacity or charisma to replace him. He has also succeeded in insulating the state from the mainstream of national politics and the cross-currents of the southern state politics, where governments have changed in the past decade.
MGR has uniquely demonstrated time and again that a dismal performance in office need not have anything to do with a chief minister's hold over the masses. In 1977, he won 130 of the 200 seats contested by the AIADMK and secured 30.76 per cent of the total votes polled.
In 1980, share of votes polled rose to 38.74 per cent, but he won 129 of the 177 seats contested. And MGR reached his pinnacle of popularity when a sympathy wave hit the state following his illness. While he was in the US, the AIADMK won 133 seats of the 155 seats contested, including the 12 Lok Sabha seats it fought.
Moreover, despite his providing Tamil Nadu an insular flavour, the parochialism has not intensified into anti-Hindi sentiment. The anti-Hindi movement, which he had earlier made full political use of, has almost faded. In fact, he ruthlessly suppressed the DMK-led agitation and even created legislative history by getting almost half the DMK MLAs expelled from the house for burning the Constitution.
MGR presided over a lack-lustre, sleepy decade in which he used his charisma and welfare schemes as a soporific for the masses. There is little doubt among observers that the potion will soon wear out and that the people will awaken to the real demands of water, electricity, efficient governance, jobs and development. But that will most likely happen when MGR, already ailing and now barely able to speak, is no more.
He will leave behind, for his successors, the burdensome task of dealing with a newly awakened and rebellious electorate. Yet, the irony will remain that in the midst of the turmoil that is surely ahead, MGR will be remembered not as a man who broke his promises to his people but as a giant who presided over a decade of dreamy stability.
https://www.indiatoday.in/magazine/special-report/story/19870731-after-10-years-of-ramachandran-rule-tamil-nadu-presents-a-very-sorry-picture-799093-1987-07-31
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