India: Why Tamil Nadu stands firm against centralised control

Dr Palanivel Thiagarajan (PTR), 58, a senior minister in M.K. Stalin’s DMK government, is an articulate and passionate defender of the Tamil identity.

PTR, as he is universally called, is a chemical engineer with an MBA from the Sloan School of Management, MIT, in the United States.

He currently has huge brand recall among the next gen Indian politicians, but, unusually is extremely modest, asking not to be questioned about being an icon.

Elections are due in Tamil Nadu next year and the Stalin-led government is locked in a huge face-off with the Narendra Modi government at the Centre over redrawing constituencies, imposition of Hindi and how the state is being shortchanged.

Here, PTR explains why in an exclusive interview with Gulf News.

Dr Palanivel Thiagarajan (PTR): We appreciate the value that migrant labourers are adding to our economy and our society. Even during the Covid-19 pandemic, we were among the states providing the maximum benefits, repatriations, and so on. Through that experience we learnt many ways in which we could support the migrant community, and we have been continuing to establish programmes and processes to improve their quality of life when far from home.

To answer the second part of your question, it is mathematically true that the funds transfer from the south subsidises the north substantially. Such transfers are common in all federal set-ups. But of much greater concern to us is that increasing net transfers are not resulting in any narrowing of the gap between the relatively well-off and the left-behind states. In most places in the world transfers result in a narrowing of the gap between the net contributor and the net recipient. But in India, at least 25-30 years of continuously increasing transfers has only resulted in a continuous acceleration of the widening of the gap. Therefore, we are extremely concerned with the future trajectory of these patterns.

I think there must be a focus on the most basic principles of building an equitable and harmonious society – social justice, non-discriminatory universal inclusion in government programmes, women’s health and empowerment, children’s health and nutrition, and universal literacy. These are the essential, prerequisites if you will, building blocks for economic progress. There must be an investment in people, our human resources, if we hope to achieve real growth.

It is because of our long-term focus on all of the factors I have explained above (a Social Justice Ideology has informed governance here since the days of the first Justice Party Government of Madras Presidency in the 1920s, under the Diarchy implemented after the Montague-Chelmsford Reforms) - and in addition: a conducive investment climate, with the right balance between the ease of doing business, and providing a social safety net.

India is perhaps the country with the greatest concentration of power at the Union/ Federal level of government (as opposed to devolved to states and local bodies). So, any risk of reduced representation at the Union justifiably causes grave concern to any right-thinking person. As you know, the freeze on such delimitation – first implemented in 1976 by a Congress Government under Indira Gandhi, and then extended in 2001 by a BJP-led NDA Government under A.B. Vajpayee – as a desired deviation from normal practices to avoid penalising the states that had achieved good results in the national goal of population control, is due to expire next year in 2026. As the deadline approaches, the urgency of the issue naturally rises. This is human nature.

Starting in the 1970s, all states were asked by the Union Government of India to lower our population growth rates for the sake of the national interest, and the betterment of our country. We have successfully done so, while many other states, particularly in the north, have not. Therefore, we feel that it is not fair that we should be penalised by being given lower representation at the level of government which wields exceptionally enormous fiscal and legislative powers, relative to almost every other country in the world – simply because we acted in India’s interest.

I was not involved in the decision and therefore I do not know the rationale behind it. However, our chief minister has already put out a statement explaining the rationale, which is in wide circulation in the public domain. But I would like to say a few things. First, the symbol used by the Government of Tamil Nadu is part of the Tamil word for Rupee that is printed on each rupee note. It has also been used by many leaders, including the Finance Minister of India, in their social media posts in Tamil. There are many abbreviations for denoting the rupee: INR, Re, Rs, ₹. For me, this is nothing more than an indication that the same concept can be represented in multiple ways with different symbols, across different languages – and all of these languages are already on the rupee note.

I do not want to answer questions that cast aspersions on others.

Children cannot learn an infinite amount – their absorption capacity is limited, and we must make the most of their time at school; to give them strong foundational knowledge. The imposition of a third language, especially in a system where the three languages come from three different language families, becomes an enormous burden. The (compulsory) three-language formula has been an integral component (in varying forms) of the National Education Policies of 1968, 1986 (amended in 1992), and in the third NEP in 2020. In fact, the prior NEPs (before the current 2020 version) were passed as Bills in the Parliament, unlike the 2020 version which has not been passed as a Bill.

It is also worth noting that the 1986 Bill explicitly states that implementing a three-language policy has been very difficult, not least because of the lack of qualified non-native language (i.e. 3rd language) teachers in sufficient quantity in many places – especially the north. The decades since have shown that most of the northern states, while claiming to implement a three-language policy, are failing quite badly at sufficient proficiency in one language (Hindi), and the dream of a second language (English) remains far out of reach. Look at it this way - had all states been able to successfully implement a two-language (mother tongue plus English) formula successfully, there would be no need for a third language for anyone.

Considering all this evidence, we see no rationale to suggest we should change from our relatively successful (in broad educational outcomes compared to any other state or the Indian average) two-language formula to a proven-to-fail three-language approach. It would require such huge financial outlay as well as introduce massive logistical constraints on staffing, training, testing and so on.

We are more than happy to have any child, voluntarily, learn three, four, five or how many ever languages they want, from whatever source, of their own volition. But I think it is safe to say that Tamil Nadu will never implement a compulsory three-language formula, irrespective of the party that wins any election.

This is an issue that has been vigorously discussed multiple times and the arguments are available in the public domain. For the sake of completeness, I will briefly mention that using Hindi as a homogenising tool is the predictable trait of all who aspire to centralise and concentrate power and control in Delhi. This has been true from the days of the British Raj. This attempt is nothing new. And there have been many agitations against compulsory Hindi here over the last roughly 90 years or so – noticeably in the 1930s & 1960s - with huge unrest and the loss of many lives. Tamil is at the core of Tamilian’s Identity, and we will never allow its glorious journey to be diminished or tarnished.

He has already apologised, and I don’t want to rake this up further. Personalising an issue is the weakest form of argument in a policy debate.

The present Indian government is arguably the most centralising, authoritarian, and anti-states’ rights government in the history of our nation. It is better that the third iteration of this BJP government is more of a coalition (on paper at least) than the previous versions, as there are now two or three regional parties propping up this government to the majority level in the Parliament. We hope it will have some dampening effect on the unapologetic monopolistic acquisition and execution of all power and revenue that has been the characteristic of this Union Government since 2014. I feel it is one of the greatest ironies of the 21st century that the person with such an unparalleled record fighting for states’ rights when he was chief minister of Gujarat, should have changed to such an extreme, diametrically opposite ambition upon becoming the Prime Minister of India.

I am not an economist. My experience immediately prior to elected office was as a Global Investment Banker. But with regards to the comparison, let’s look at China first. China aggressively followed the One Child Policy as a means of population control. They also invested heavily in ensuring near-universal literacy and focused on primary education. In many aspects, this parallels the progression of the southern states in India. But in addition, China was always going to find it easier to effect change because of their communist organisational structure.

But what ought to have been our benefit – integration with the global economy because we are a democracy, widespread use of English, connectivity – should have given us a better outcome than what we have seen. The India-China gap is not the making of one government – it is a 30-year disparity in growth rates. But, in the last 10-12 years there have been profoundly retarding, self-defeating, disastrous, economic policies and decisions – demonetisation, the overnight adoption of an ill-formed GST regime that then required hundreds of amendments, the nationwide lockdown with four-hour notice, in a country with tens of millions of migrant workers living far from home. This government has repeatedly shown a proclivity for the grand gesture – big announcements and big headlines, with little regard for practical feasibility, or likelihood of successful implementation. This has caused the gap with China to accelerate.

Yet, we must remember that the disparity between the relatively developed south and the relatively underdeveloped states is also quite high, and it has been increasing for decades. One could argue that those states that have the ingredients for growth - universal participation/access to education, accelerated a lot faster after the reforms, and the converse is also true. The real issue, therefore, is how the less developed states can be brought to the path of the more developed states – as that is the only way to improve the national average, as well as the national output. And India’s position in the global economy, as well as relative to China.

There is no ambiguity about this - the facts indisputably prove that Gujarat in particular, and states with a BJP government in general, have been massively favoured. It is not an argument for reasonable people, as the facts are crystal clear.

I think it is a bit of a myth that the Hindi-speaking states will keep on voting for the BJP irrespective of the performance of the government or their ability to deliver on the poll promises. I think the results of the 2024 elections in Uttar Pradesh is indicative of the fact that the BJP has no monopoly on any part of this country. If I had to hazard a guess, I would say that the desire for redistricting is of a piece with this administration’s penchant for grand gestures irrespective of feasibility or viability or second/third order consequences. That is not an endless arbitrage. At some point the reckoning – the accounting for the huge gap between promise and reality – will happen.

What worries me is the growing inequality, the increasing separation between the rich and the poor. This issue of inequality is not about region, not about location, not about identity markers. No country can have a stable and calm future or fulfil its development goals if inequality becomes large and unbearable. The way to overcome this is to focus on human development, social development, and economic progress of the poorer states, and thereby make India a more equitable country in terms of actual outcomes. I would go so far as to argue that it is more possible for disgruntlement to erupt into chaos in the less developed states because of the levels of poverty, unemployment, and deprivation.

People decide which issues are important in the elections. In this case, delimitation is on people’s minds because the constitutional freeze is expiring next year. As far as the language issue is concerned, it was thrust upon us by the unconstitutional, illegitimate withholding of previously allocated funds by the Union Government of India, even as the Financial Year is coming to an end in a few days.

I think this question can be omitted from the interview, please.