In a veiled attack on the BJP leaders predicting the end of Dravidian parties rule in Tamil Nadu, the ruling AIADMK on Thursday took on the critics of Dravidian movement saying that Tamil Nadu has progressed much better than many other states and achieved stupendous progress on various socio-economic fronts during the last fifty years.
In a veiled attack on the BJP leaders predicting the end of Dravidian parties rule in Tamil Nadu, the ruling AIADMK on Thursday took on the critics of Dravidian movement saying that Tamil Nadu has progressed much better than many other states and achieved stupendous progress on various socio-economic fronts during the last fifty years.
In his budget speech, Deputy Chief Minister O Panneerselvam who holds Finance portfolio said that certain political critics with
myopic vision indulge in fallacious propaganda against the Dravidian rule.
Stating that such critics were living in an illusion and daydreaming about destroying the Dravidian movement, he said, “No person with true conscience will ever deny the progress made by Tamil Nadu in health, education, social security, human development index, industrial and economic development or in providing basic amenities to the people.”
On March 6, 1967, DMK founder CN Annadurai took oath as chief minister after defeating the Congress regime. Ever since only the
Dravidian parties – DMK and AIADMK have been ruling the state. Though Panneerselvam did not specify any "critic" of the Dravidian
rule, political observers infer it as an attack on BJP, PMK and actor Rajinikanth who has promised spiritual politics.
Panneerselvam compared the state with BJP-ruled states like Gujarat and Rajasthan to drive home the point that Tamil Nadu stood better in many social indicators. While the percentage of persons living below poverty line in Tamil Nadu in 1973-74 was 54.94, it has come down to 11.28 percent in 2011-12 as against the national average of 21.92 percent as per the National Sample Survey, he said.
"During the same period, this percentage came down from 48.15 to 16.63 in Gujarat, 54.47 to 20.90 in Karnataka, 61.78 to 31.65 in
Madhya Pradesh, 53.24 to 17.35 in Maharashtra, 46.14 to 14.71 in Rajasthan, 57.07 to 29.43 in Uttar Pradesh and 63.43 to 19.98 in West
Bengal," Panneerselvam said. Further, Tamil Nadu's per capita income at current prices exceeded the national average, he said
In a recent NITI Aayog publications, Tamil Nadu stood at third place in the country in health indicators and first place in the higher
education enrolment, he noted.
AIADMK leader said that all these achievements have been made possible by the social equity agenda provided by the Dravidian movement, without much patronage from the successive Central governments, while such patronage has been extended to many other states. “Such political critics should understand that Tamil Nadu is the crucible of socio-economic transformation, which others must emulate,” he said, adding AIADMK founder MG Ramachandran and late chief minister J Jayalalithaa has contributed to this enormous growth.
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