If there is one thing on which all the 'Dravidian parties' of Tamil Nadu stand united today, it is their criticism of the Union budget, presented by fellow Tamil leader Palaniappan Chidambaram. In doing so the DMK, the PMK and the MDMK, allies of the Congress at the Centre, have restricted their criticism to the proposed tax on the daily withdrawal of money from one's own bank account. The ruling AIADMK has even gone to the extent of calling the budget directionless."This is because the Dravidian parties see in Chidambaram a Congressman capable of restoring the Kamaraj rule in Tamil Nadu," says a state leader. "In all such cases, their fear of the 'Chidambaram threat' does not stop at political and ideological differences but goes on to challenge the personal ambitions of the party leaders, either for themselves or for their progenies," he adds
In a hard-hitting statement issued hours after Chidambaram had presented the budget, Tamil Nadu chief minister Jayalalithaa described it as a "lack lustre exercise, renaming old schemes in a new avtar". She said: "What we see in the Union budget is that nation building is being forsaken to cater to the pulls and pushes of the Irish stew of the coalition at the Centre. There is no clarification on how the nation can be taken forward on a higher economic growth." In this context she also claimed that in some cases the finance minister had just renamed the already existing schemes or had not given enough thought before proposing some of them.
Jayalalithaa found fault with the Centre upbraiding the states on fiscal discipline, when the finance minister had conceded failure on the former's part and said that the proposed law on banking would interfere with the existing borrowing norms of the states. DMK president M Karunanidhi, however, was not so harsh on the budget. Addressing a party rally in Chennai, Karunanidhi wanted the proposed tax on the withdrawal of every Rs 10,000 to be dropped. He said the tax would hit the middleclass hard. PMK founder S Ramadoss and MDMK supremo Vaiko too expressed similar sentiments. Vaiko, whose once held Sivakasi Lok Sabha constituency is the hub of the match industry in the country, also regretted the excise duty cut on machine made matches, saying it would affect the cottage industry in the sector.
Apart from a few hook ups, the Congress' allies, including the Left in the state, have good words for the budget on the whole. To be fair to the allies, Chidambaram has not given them much cause for criticism and they have not criticised the budget for the sake of criticism. In the case of the AIADMK too, there is an academic validity to some of the arguments put forward by Jayalalithaa. As a champion of the state's rights in a federal set up, she has taken up many issues, particularly those related to environment- a portfolio held by its rival DMK at the Centre. She has even written several letters to fellow chief ministers and also to the Prime Minister from time to time.
"But going beyond that, there is a lurking anxiety in the Dravidian political circles that Chidambaram could be one Congress leader capable of leading the party back to power in the state after 37 long years," says a Congress leader. "They similarly feared the late G K Moopanar in the 1990s and that was one reason why the DMK, despite being an ally of the Tamil Maanila Congress, worked behind the scenes to ensure that he did not become the Prime Minister," he adds.
The author is Honorary Director, Observer Research Foundation, Chennai Chapter.
Courtesy: Sahara Time, New Delhi, March 5-12, 2005.
* Views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of Observer Research Foundation.
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