100 days of Jayalalithaa

It is a ‘country wide festival with half a pint of milk’ in Tamil Nadu as chief minister Jayalalithaa completes her first hundred days in office on Tuesday.

Since she took over as Chief Minister of the State for the fourth time on May 16, Tamil Nadu saw a marked change in law and order as well as governance, even her critics agree.

But what is haunting the Chief Minister is the crunch in resources to finance welfare and social security measures announced by her in the run up to the assembly elections held on April 13.

Last five years of the DMK rule has seen the state’s debts going up by more than Rs 1.5 lakh crore.

The chief minister had to ‘observe’ her first hundredth day in office by sending a letter to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh urging him for a rethinking on the proposed Good and Services Tax(GST) which she fears would impinge on the state’s financial autonomy.

This is the third time Jayalalithaa has upped her ante against the Centre.

Immediately after taking over as chief minister she paid a good will visit to New Delhi with a list of requirements for Tamil Nadu.

The state, once known for its surplus power and cash reserve, is undergoing severe power shortage and financial crisis.

Not a single MW of power has been added to the kitty during the last five years. Infrastructure development had come to a grinding haltin Tamil Nadu which prompted a foreign diplomat based in Chennai to come down heavily on the then Karunanidhi government.

Jayalalithaa got furious when the Prime Minister as well as the Planning Commissionfailed to even acknowledge her memorandums asking for a special package to resuscitate the state’sfloundering economy.

Jayalalithaa fired her second salvo when she wrote to all non-Congress chief ministers and political leaders about the need to oppose the Prevention of Communal and Targeted Violence Bill 2011 sponsored by the Sonia Gandhi promoted by the National Advisory Council.

She termed it as yet another attempt to bulldoze state governments which do not thinkin tune with the party ruling the Centre.

“The chief minister is trying her best to divide the resources in such a way that all segments of the population get a pie of it. The state budget for 2011 to 2012 has unleashed a number of welfare schemes for which she has to find out resources,” said M R

Venkatesh, a chartered accountant turned economist. He pointed out that the Centre was yet to release almost Rs 5000 crore due to Tamil Nadu as share of taxes collected.

The Centre’s approach to Tamil Naduhas upset even parties like CPI. “The Centre’s apathy towards Tamil Nadu started in 1967 with the defeat of the Congress in the assembly elections.

The union government’s attitude towards the Sri Lankan Tamil issue is yet another extension of this discrimination,” said D Pandian, CPI’s state secretary.

Some of the Tamil chauvinist parties like PMK and DK are waiting in the wings with anti-Centre propaganda machines.

“The union government’s indifferent attitude towards Tamil Nadu could lead to another agitation in the lines of the infamous anti-Hindi agitation of the sixties,” warns P Nedumaran, former Congress leader-turned Tamil nationalist.