The All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam government has used the 2018-19 State budget to drive home the point that Tamil Nadu fared better than many others in various socio-economic parameters in the last 50 years when the State had been under the rule of Dravidian movement.
[It was in March 1967 that the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) came to power for the first time and since then, either the DMK or the AIADMK has been at the helm of affairs].
Referring to critics of the movement who had been seeking to indulge in “fallacious propaganda against the Dravidian rule,” O. Panneerselvam, Deputy Chief Minister, in his budget speech on Thursday, gave comparative data covering Tamil Nadu and others such as Gujarat, Maharashtra and Karnataka for the period between 1973-74 and 2016-17 to drive home his point.
Quoting a recent publication of NITI Aayog, he said the State stood at third place among the States in the country in health indicators and the first in higher education enrolment.
In 1973-1974 when the all-India average of persons living below poverty line (BPL) was 54.88%. Tamil Nadu’s figure was 54.94%. As per 2011-2012 National Sample Survey (NSS), it was 11.28% in Tamil Nadu against 21.92% at the national level.
Between the two given periods, the BPL rates come down from 48.15% to 16.63% for Gujarat; 54.47% to 20.90% for Karnataka; 61.78% to 31.65% for Madhya Pradesh; 53.24% to 17.35% for Maharashtra; 46.14% to 14.71% for Rajasthan; 57.07% to 29.43% for Uttar Pradesh and 63.43% to 19.98% for West Bengal.
Similarly, the per capita income at current prices in Tamil Nadu was ₹ 334 during 1960-61 while the national average was ₹ 306. During 2016-17, the per capita income rose to ₹ 1,53,263 against the national average of ₹ 1,03,219. In terms of Gross Domestic Product, Tamil Nadu stood at fifth place during 1950s. Now, it was the second largest economy in the country. “All these achievements have been made possible by the social equity agenda provided by the Dravidian movement, without much patronage from the successive Central governments, while such patronage has been extended to many other States,” Mr. Panneerselvam remarked.
