The DMK’s ire against Governor RN Ravi is a facade and an attempt to divert the attention of the state’s people from real issues
Suicides are nothing new in Tamil Nadu as the people in the State have a propensity to commit suicides at the fall of a hat. Crop failure and the resultant debt trap make farmers resort to the extreme step. There were instances of youth committing suicide when the Sri Lankan Army battered the strongholds of the Tamil Tigers in Jaffna. When the then chief minister Jayalalithaa died in office, many persons committed suicide by self-immolation. Similarly, every year many youngsters end their lives when they fail to clear the matriculation and Two examinations. There were instances of post-graduate medical students from the State who got admissions to AIIMS and JIPMER committing suicides for their failure in communicating in Hindi. The national language is taboo for the Dravidian politicians.
The rest of the country is unaware of the fact that Tamil Nadu is the only State where the Jawahar Navodaya Vidyalayas are not welcome. There is not even one such school anywhere in the State. JNVs were the dream projects of former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi who wanted all people in rural areas in the country to get public school education at affordable rates. According to the New Education Policy 1987 launched during Rajiv Gandhi’s tenure as Prime Minister, each district in the country should have at least one Navodaya Vidyalaya where students selected from all over India would study together and would be taught to be the best teachers. The alumni from such schools always come out with flying colours in all competitive examinations.
The school syllabus in Tamil Nadu were planned and executed to benefit the management of private educational institutions while the young students end up as canon fodder! This is the ground reality. Dravidian politicians are very particular about Tamil Nadu students staying away from Hindi and Sanskrit (they have offered on a platter the parentage of both languages to the Sangh Parivar!!) and learning only Tamil. But there is a public school in Chennai owned by the daughter of a political bigwig where speaking any language other than English would attract punishment and a five-digit amount as a fine. Strange are the ways of the Dravidian politicians. They remained silent for nearly four decades after Indira Gandhi acceded the islet of Katchatheevu to Sri Lanka in 1976. It was only after Jayalalithaa took up the issue with the Supreme Court and the Centre demanding the retrieval of the islet that DMK jumped into the fray. The DMK was in power at the Centre from 1996-98 and during 1999-2013. On all occasions, the party was agitating for plum and cash-rich ministries instead of reasonable demands like sharing of Kaveri Water from Karnataka and making the Centre take up the Avinashi-Athikadavu River Water project which would have made South West Tamil Nadu an eternal green garden.
At no point in time, the DMK took up the cause of the interlinking of peninsular Indian rivers which if implemented would have wiped out the issue of water scarcity in the State once and for ever.
The DMK’s ire against Governor R N Ravi is a façade and an attempt to divert the attention of the people from real objectives. How many of us remember the walkout staged by Karunanidhi during the swearing-in ceremony of Manmohan Singh as Prime Minister in May 2004? The reason? The DMK was not allocated the ministry of shipping and surface transport which it had set as a condition to support and save secularism. Sonia Gandhi, the charismatic UPA chairperson had to plead with K Chandrasekhar Rao of the then TRS to part with the ministry to make Karunanidhi smile again. That much for socialism, secularism and pluralism!
(The writer is a special correspondent with the Pioneer. Views expressed are personal)
