If one were to go by a recent survey by the Association for Democratic Reforms in Tamil Nadu, there seems to be a mismatch between the priorities of the people and government action.
Better employment opportunities and better roads are among the top five priorities of both rural and urban voters that they want the government to focus on, the survey says. For 68 per cent of these voters, at least one of these issues was the top priority.
The government’s performance was ranked on the basis of 31 priorities of the people.
Respondents in rural and urban areas were asked to give a score on a five-point scale on government’s performance on these issues and ask to mention two issues in which its actions was good, average and worst.
Over 16,000 respondents from all 234 Assembly constituencies in the State participated in the survey.
While the top three priorities in rural areas were farm loans, power supply for agriculture and better employment opportunities, for urban voters, they were better employment opportunities, reduced noise pollution and supply of drinking water.
Ironically, the “worst-rated performance” of the government was in agriculture loan availability and better employment, say respondents from rural areas. They are concerned about poor power supply for agriculture.
Several issues that matter to urban voters do not to rural voters. Environment and infrastructure issues — noise pollution, drinking water supply, better hospitals, better roads and traffic congestion — are major priorities in cities and towns. Water and air pollution, public transport, law and order and domestic power supply too were high on the urban list. But here too, the government’s performance has been badly rated in noise pollution, with a score of just 1.83 out of 5 and thereby pushed to the bottom on the rank list.
Other priorities of urban voters in which the government’s performance was rated poor were traffic congestion (1.94/5 with rank 30/31), water and air pollution (2.23/5 with rank 28) and better roads (2.81/5 with rank 24).
Certain issues are not among the top priorities of voters but the government has done well in them — in the case of urban voters, terrorism, strong military and rations. In rural areas, only 2.65 per cent of the voters considered terrorism and 1.16 per cent a strong military important.
