Southern States - Tamil Nadu-Chennai   

Green flamboyance

By K. Ramachandran

CHENNAI July 16. For sheer colour and flamboyance, the launch of the Rs.1,800-crore Education for All-Movement (Sarva Siksha Abhiyan) should be the grandest show of the one-year-old AIADMK Government.

`Green', the Chief Minister, Jayalalithaa's favourite colour, was predominant on and off the stage.

More than the formal function and speeches, the audio-visual-cum cultural show ``explaining the growth of education in Tamil Nadu'' since the days of Lord Macaulay, stole the limelight.

The show, which had lyrics penned by Pulamai Pithan and tuned by M.S. Viswanathan, was peppered with song and dance sequences mostly eulogising Ms. Jayalalithaa's ``varied achievements''.

A visibly happy Chief Minister, along with her friend, Ms. Sasikalaa, and other members of the latter's family, enjoyed the 80-minute cultural show. It started off with a welcome ``dance'' by school children clad in green saris. From then on, the cultural programme was a trip down memory lane, starting with the ancient form of education, Macaulay's reforms and the Government's efforts at providing education for all.

The final sequences highlighted the development schemes and welfare measures of the Jayalalithaa regime. The grand finale was a dance number by hundreds of children wearing various types of Indian costumes--glorifying Ms. Jayalalithaa, even as white clad girls held aloft dozens of portraits of the Chief Minister.

Hundreds of school students and teacher recruits, who formed a major chunk of the auidence, kept applauding every time Ms. Jayalalithaa's picture or video clipping came up on the massive screens which formed the backdrop of the green-hued stage.

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