For close to a year now, Tamil Nadu has been grappling with at least two major crises, one agrarian and the other political. Add to that a seasonal spike in dengue deaths and you have a deadly concoction of problems that demand immediate attention.
After the mother of all farm distresses in the State because of its worst drought in 140 years, Nature appears to have provided relief this time around with unexpected heavy rainfall in the just-concluded Southwest monsoon. While water bodies in a few places are actually overflowing, most districts have enough storage and farmers in the Cauvery Delta area - the granary of Tamil Nadu - can now look forward to raising a decent crop and earn a living.
Chief Minister Edappadi K Palaniswami had wisely utilised the drought year to deepen water bodies across the State by desilting them through a traditional scheme called Kudimaramathu. It created additional storage capacity in most of the tanks and canals, so farmers should get that much more benefit this time around. Also, Mettur Dam water has been released for samba cultivation. And the forthcoming Northeast monsoon is expected to be as much bountiful.
Nature appears to have washed the tillers’ tears. For years together, the administration has been accused of refusing to acknowledge dengue deaths perhaps to sex up its annual health care report. That approach appears to be changing with the health ministry sharing information on the sweep of dengue and fever cases while spreading awareness and penalising a handful of offenders.
Yet the toll is steadily rising and the situation has turned acute in over a dozen districts. Last week, the official fever count across the State stood at 10,000, of which 700 were dengue cases. For a State that prides itself on drawing health care tourists, deaths due to mosquito bites surely are a stain on its apron.
On the political front, the latest point of interest is the jailed and deposed AIADMK general secretary V K Sasikala’s visit to Chennai on emergency parole following a double organ transplant on her husband M Natarajan.
The man had famously pulled strings in Rajiv Gandhi’s Prime Minister’s Office for party icon J Jayalalithaa to get back the Two Leaves symbol when it was first frozen in 1998. Those networking skills were again on display when a poor road accident victim in a critical state was plucked out of the Thanjavur medical college against medical advice and flown to Chennai, declared brain dead on arrival and his organs harvested for Natarajan’s transplants. He has since undergone a tracheostomy procedure (hole in the throat) and is still said to be critical.
Natarajan is known to be a big-time fixer and is the brain behind the Mannargudi clan’s clout in the AIADMK. But the clan’s fabled vice-like grip on the party is slipping and its feud with Chief Minister Palaniswami is heading towards some resolution with the Madras High Court and the Election Commission of India (ECI) hearing various facets of the dispute.
The clan has fielded a battery of top-notch lawyers like Abhishek Manu Singhvi in the high court to challenge Assembly Speaker P Dhanapal’s decision to disqualify 18 rebel legislators loyal to Sasikala for seeking a change of leadership in the government. Why did Dhanapal not apply the same yardstick when 11 MLAs, including former chief minister O Panneerselvam, had voted against the confidence motion moved by Palaniswami, they argued. Panneerselvam later made peace with Palaniswami and is now the deputy chief minister. Together they run the party apparatus as well, which is why the clan is cut up.
The rebels saw in the disqualification an attempt to scale down the strength of the House to help Palaniswami sail through in a trust vote. An interesting courtroom battle is on the cards.
In the Supreme Court, Sasikala’s impetuous nephew TTV Dhinakaran was snubbed when it threw out his petition to defer the commencement of hearing before the full bench of the ECI on the party’s frozen Two Leaves symbol case. The clan is uneasy because the ruling faction has numbers on its side. Since the Supreme Court set a November 10 deadline for the ECI’s verdict, there will be more clarity in a month’s time.
Also, Dhinakaran appears to be heading for fresh trouble and could expect a knock on his door from the Delhi Police. For, a lab report found a positive voice match of his conversations with high-profile conman Sukesh Chandrasekar with whom he allegedly did a Rs 50 crore deal to bribe the EC for getting the Two Leaves symbol before the countermanded RK Nagar by-elections, in which he was the party’s official candidate.
Dhinakaran appears auto-programmed to make the wrong calls. He chose the wrong fixer and is paying the price.
Suresh Sundaram
Deputy Resident Editor, Tamil Nadu
Email: ssuresh@newindianexpress.com