When children are playing, two or three of them will be diligently ‘constructing’ a tower or fort model either with sand or cards and suddenly a perverted child will land there and kick out destroying the ‘fort assiduously built by constructive minded kids. The misfortune of Tamil Nadu is that the people here had a elected such a pervert minded person to the helm of governance!
There were two most distressing reports in dailies in this week. One was about the threat looming large for the closure of Chennai port. Situated in the Coromandel Coast in South-East India, the port of Chennai has more than 100 years of tradition. Strategically located and well connected with major parts of the world, it is today the hub port on the Indian subcontinent. But the chosen saboteur has wrought havoc to this historical port.
The latest report stated, “In what could be a glimmer of hope for the stalled Chennai Port-Maduravoyal elevated road project, Union Minister of State for Road Transport, Highways and Shipping Pon Radhakrishnan on Mar 28 called upon the Tamil Nadu government and National Highways Authority of India (NHAI) to reach an “out-of-court settlement“ to resume the work.
The elevated road project, planned to provide uninterrupted connectivity between Chennai’s suburbs and the port, got embroiled in a court case after the ADMK government assumed office in May 2011. The project was stalled by the State Public Works Department -which gave consent to the project during DMK rule -citing environmental concerns.
Radhakrishnan expressed fear of closing down Chennai port if the road is not completed at the earliest. Owing to heavy traffic and narrow roads, it takes about two days for a truck to cover the 19 km distance, said port officials. “Port-Maduravoyal elevated road will lessen traffic jam in Chennai port to a great extent. I have told the officials to get the project going at any cost,“ Radhakrishnan told media persons on the sidelines of a review meeting with NHAI officials.
Due to the State’s objection, the Rs 1,815 crore project with a grant of Rs 499 crore from the Centre came to a standstill in 2012, that too after 683 piles, 56 pile caps and 15 pillars were built. Between Koyambedu and Maduravoyal alone, 617 piles and 120 pillars were built on the national highway.
After the elevated road fiasco, NHAI has been demanding that TN government sign a State Support Agreement (SSA) as a pre-requisite to start any project under PPP mode. Radhakrishnan said the Centre was willing to declare and upgrade East Coast Road, which connects Chennai and Kanyakumari, as a National Highway if the state government submitted necessary proposals. “The road has lots of tourist attractions and religious places,“ the BJP leader said. At present, only 153 km of the 738 km stretch is under NHAI. The remaining stretch is with the State Highways department”. During the meeting, contractors said there was a delay in getting permission from government for mining for NHAI projects. NHAI officials also pointed out the delay in getting government clearance for widening roads across water bodies”.
The report clearly brings out the fact that though the present ADMK regime had not taken up any infrastructure development works on its own, it had been hindering the ongoing works started during the previous DMK rule, thus reversing the wheels of progress; one of such important infrastructure project is this Port-Maduavoyal elevated express way. People who visit Chennai after a long time will be bewildered to witness unfinished huge pillars erected in the middle of the Poonamalle High Road off Koyambedu and the Cooum river on Spur Tank Road. The steel rods protruding out of the concrete pillars had started rusting during the last four years when the ADMK regime stalled the progress of the work. Had the project been allowed to be executed by now Chennai city’s landscape would have totally different look, with thousands of vehicles passing at high speed without any hindrance and traffic jams form Maduravoyal to Port, serving industries and people on the way.
Immediately after assuming office in 2011, the very first punishment she meted out to people who elected her was throwing into dust bin their precious tax money to the tune of Rs.600 crore by abandoning the New Secretariat-Assembly complex on Anna Salai. Her similar effort to abandon Asia’s biggest library in the name of Anna in Chennai constructed and established at a cost of nearly Rs.300 crore was stalled by the High Court. Similarly their attempt to give up Samacheer Kalvi scheme was thwarted by the Supreme Court. But for these vexatious litigations from court to court engaging senior lawyers of Supreme Court for the State government, several crore of public money was unnecessarily wasted to appease the ego of an individual.
But the damages to public interest did not stop there. When almost all States in India were crying for and seeking Centrally-sponsored mega infrastructure projects, people of Tamil Nadu willfully opted for a destructive regime which sought to hamper and stall huge infrastructure projects, worth several thousand crore, under implementation in and around Chennai and elsewhere in the State, the biggest of them being the 150 year old dream of Tamils, the Sethusamudram project.
One of the important Centrally-funded project remaining struck in the State due the personal acrimony of former Chief Minister Jayalalitha just because the previous DMK rule brought them by persistently pressuring the Centre, was: Rs.1,815 crore Chennai port-Maduravoyal Elevated Expressway.
The election manifesto of the DMK for the 2006 Assembly elections promised to implement Elevated Highways in areas of acute traffic congestion in Chennai city. Immediately after the DMK assumed power in 2006, Kalaignar, in a letter sent to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on 5.6.2006, sought approval for elevated expressway to Chennai port. Following the efforts made by the then Union Minister T.R.Baalu and others, the Centre gave approval for the Chennai port-Maduravoyal elevated expressway and the Prime Minister laid foundation for it at a function on 8.1.2009 presided over by Kalaignar. It was announced then that this would be lengthiest elevated expressway in India.
On 22.6.2007, the State government issued approval in policy level to the NHAI for this expressway along the banks of Cooum river to pave way for unhindered transport of containers from the port. The State government also agreed to share with the Chennai Port Trust in the ratio of 50:50 the expenses incurred in the acquisition of lands and for the rehabilitation of the displaced people. The State government would incur expense of Rs.130 crore towards this. The NHAI was also assured of full cooperation in the works of getting clearance under Pollution Control Act and relocating drinking water and sewerage pipes and lamp posts.
Now,the following report was published in ‘The Hindu’ on August 5:
The NHAI is the implementing agency for the project and the deadline for the 19-km-long stretch was September 13, 2013. “If there is no improvement in the status of the project by then, we will have no other alternative but to terminate the contract,” said an NHAI official then.
Usually, Chief Ministers, Ministers and officials of States had to go to New Delhi pleading for Central assistance and Centrally-sponsored projects for their States. In Tamil Nadu they say the States have to take ‘kavadi’ to Delhi to placate the powers-that-be to get favours for them. But Tamil Nadu being under the regime of cantankerous Jayalalitha, the authorities in the Centre one after the other had to come down to Chennai to get clearance from the lady’s regime for the stalled projects in which funds to the tune of thousands of crore rupees are entangled. After the repeated visits by secretaries of departments of the Central government and their meetings with the secretaries of departments and the Chief Secretary of Tamil Nadu government proved futile, the then Prime Minister himself had to intervene and depute his Adviser and a senior official of PMO as his emissaries to talk to Jayalalitha and get approvals.
Accordingly, Prime Minister’s Adviser T.K.A. Nair and Director in the PMO, Pallavi Jain, met Chief Minister Jayalalitha at her office on November 10, 2012 and discussed infrastructure issues including the Chennai Port-Maduravoyal Elevated Expressway.
Now with the change in regime at the Centre, the BJP Minister has sounded the conch!
If this was a case of material damage inflicted upon the State due to personal acrimony of Jayalalitha, there were also cultural damages borne out of her perverted mentality. On the very day of assuming office in May 2011, she closed down the prestigious Paavanar Classiscal Tamil Research Library functioning in Fort St. George and ordered dumping of precious books and palm manuscripts somewhere in the new Secretariat complex in her anathema for classical language status for Tamil obtained by Kalaignar.
Another report in ‘Dinamalar’ daily is the wanton ruining of prestigious Anna Centenary Memorial Library, Kotturpuram in Chennai due the personal acrimony of this cantankerous lady. Kalaignar has issued a statement on this. (See p.5)
It transpiresd that Anna Centenary Library constituted by Kalaignar was also an eyesore for Jayalalitha from the beginning since she assumed power, in her scheme of ‘undoing everything done by Kalaignar’. Instructions were given to scrutinize all files pertaining to the library. Officials of the DVAC were also entrusted with this task. All documents exchanged among different departments right from the time the project was conceived to the point when books were procured were read with utmost care to look for lapses. Obviously they could not find anything.
Some officials also observed that while a total of five lakh books were purchased ahead of the inauguration on September 15, 2010, the process of sourcing the remaining nearly seven lakh titles slowed down significantly after the ADMK came to power. “There were administrative delays at every stage. Everybody’s hands were tied” an official had said.
The administration of the air-conditioned auditorium, famous for having hosted US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and hailed by her, was quietly shifted from the Public Libraries Department to the Information Department. This shift happened around the time Clinton visited the city. Anyone who wished to hire the swanky space must now go through the Information Department. In addition, any attempt to get feedback on the library from users seen on the premises was met with severe resistance by the staff at the library over the last few months. Some staff members told press reporters that they could not speak to anyone even at the parking lot of the library. Photographers, too, were asked not to take any visual of the facility.
All the same, readers and users of the facility loved being there. Whether it was about civil service aspirants who spend hours together at the facility daily or students and professors of engineering, medicine, other sciences and humanities who regularly visited for references to advanced books, e-journals and e-magazines, which they claim were not available in their colleges, universities and any other libraries, or children seen sitting beneath the artificial tree created at the library, legs stretched and lost in their books, and some engrossed in computers sitting relaxed on cosy furniture, the public who regularly visited to read news magazines, journals, novels, literature etc. - everyone clearly wanted it to stay.
Jayalalitha’s announcement evoked spontaneous protests from scholars, writers, educationists, students, political parties and the public. There were statements resolutions, meetings, demonstrations and proposed sustained agitations by various associations/ organizations and groups of individuals.
As Kalaignar pointed out, the move to convert Anna Centenary Library, could not be seen in isolation but as part of Jayalalitha’s attempt to destroy symbols of Tamil culture one by one –beginning with vacating Pavendar Classical Tamil Research Library overnight from the Assembly hall in Fort St. George and dumping rare books, manuscripts and ancient palm manuscripts somewhere, showing contempt for classical status for Tamil, not only because it was achieved by Kalaignar but also because of her innate antipathy for equating Tamil with Sanskrit, out of which the very name and symbol of Classical Tamil in school text books and in all government records and displays were covered up or removed, portraits of Tiruvalluvar and Tirukurals were obscured in text books and from government buildings, Tholkappiya Poonga was put on hold, the name board of Classical Tamil Poonga was covered up, withdrawal of armed guards for the magnificent Tiruvalluvar statue in Kanyakumari and abandoning Anna Centenary Library.
Collective memory is an important feature of group (race or community) identity. The collective memory or common history of a group is represented by its cultural institutions, including libraries. In history, numerous instances of genocide, or attack on groups occurred. This continues even now. These attacks often include aggression against the cultural institutions which, as evidence of a separate cultural identity, are seen to give political legitimacy to the group under attacks.
History is replete with instances of inimical attacks on libraries and other cultural identities of a group of people by alien forces from within and outside, in order to subjugate the group and establish the hegemony of their alien cultures.
Jayalalitha’s onslaught on Classical Tamil Research Library and Anna Centenary Library should be seen in this perspective. Besides her antipathy for classical language status for Tamil, and portraits and monuments of Tiruvalluvar, reversing the decision of starting Tamil New Year from the first day of Thai month and reverting back to the Hindu mythological calendar against the wishes of renowned Tamil scholars is yet another attack on the cultural identity of Tamils.
These moves of Jayalalitha as a whole constitute onslaught against Tamil language, culture and racial identity. A challenge ought to be faced and overcome united cutting across political and social divides! (05-04-15)
No comments:
Post a Comment