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Book Review
Narayan, S. 2019. Dravidian Years: Politics and Welfare in Tamil Nadu.
Oxford University Publications, New Delhi.
-Rahul N.
Institute of Management in Government
S. Narayan’s book “Dravidian Years: Politics and Welfare in Tamil Nadu” is a
welcome addition to the ever-burgeoning literature on Tamil Nadu’s successful
populist and welfare measures. It tries to answer the ubiquitous question: How have
welfare policies been successfully implemented despite rampant political corruption?
The book, written by a civil servant turned researcher, provides fresh information,
anecdotes and analysis of the state’s trajectory of health and nutrition administration.
Providing an insider perspective, it throws light on the various factors such as
political ideology, lower caste mobilisation, centre-state relations, messianic
populism and electoral compulsions in shaping the state and society as it stands
today.
The book is presented in nine chapters covering TN politics, from the rise of DMK
as a political party to contemporary times. The author has thematically dealt with
the Dravidian political time into the Early DMK Period, MGR Period and later
Karunanidhi-Jayalalitha Period. He observes that the turn towards welfare was
initiated by the early DMK government which built upon the infrastructural and
administrative foundations of the colonial and Kamaraj periods. The response of
DMK in opposition to the food crisis of 1964 and the backward classes movement
spearheaded by the party will shape its policies when in power. Once in power by
1967, DMK will implement several reforms such as reservations in recruitment to
public office, expansion of the public distribution system, tenancy, the appointment
of village officers in revenue administration at the lowest level and institutional
capture of agri-cooperatives. The author notes that the Madras bureaucracy, which
was known for efficiency, also adjusted to these reforms, actively aided by the change
in the social background of the new officers.
The lion’s share of the discussion in the book revolves around two programmes
that redefined the welfare policies in the state and will become an international model
– The Noon Meal Programme (NMP) and Tamil Nadu Integrated Nutrition Programme
(TINP). These chapters bring out the various negotiations the political class and the
administration engaged with each other and the centre in successfully implementing
these programmes. Post-emergency, the DMK lost its power to its splinter, MGR’s
ADMK, following accusations of corruption and growing discontentment among the
poorer sections of the non-brahmin masses. While MGR will face initial setbacks due
to his attempts to alter socio-economic reservations and end prohibition, he will
venture on to introduce major programmes aimed at ameliorating women and child
health and promoting literacy rates.
The flagship Noon Meal programme was designed to provide noon food to children
and thereby retain them in schools. The book reveals that the decision to implement
the scheme was unilaterally taken by MGR, with none of its technical details being
supported by any research or recommendations. The NMP and TINP will go on to
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boost the human development indices of the state in terms of maternal and child
health. These schemes also created lakhs of local social welfare workers, creating
vote banks for the ruling party, stakeholders for the programme and accountability
to the local community. Interestingly, the book brings out fascinating backdoor
discussions that occurred between political bosses in realising these programmes.
Two such meetings of MGR, one with Indira Gandhi and another with Manmohan
Singh, reveal not only the individual interests of MGR, the politician, but also the
role of geopolitics. Apart from these programmes, the book also throws light on
several other commendable commercial initiatives, such as the establishment of the
Tamil Nadu Papers and Newsprints Limited and the Tamil Nadu Medical Supplies
Corporation. While the Newsprints became a highly successful public sector entity,
the TNMSC along with the sturdy medical infrastructure, ensured a patient spends
only one-tenth for medical treatment compared to UP or Bihar.
The author notes a crucial shift in Tamil politics when the ideological orientation
of welfare gets replaced by freebies with neoliberal reforms and the rise of Jayalalitha.
These chapters have only broadly covered the events in this period, making them
appear thin. Written by a career bureaucrat who has turned to research, the book
shows limitations with respect to establishing an interrelation between nutritional
development and other developmental parameters. A more elaborate discussion on
the role of various political actors and influences on the budgetary allocations and
implementation of the schemes is found wanting. More importantly, the role of
popular mobilisation and the pressure from below though acknowledged is not
adequately explained.
The work is a welcome addition to the debates on the ‘Periyar Hypothesis”, a term
coined by Sarah Hodges (Hodges, 2008) to denote the academically ubiquitous
tendency to ascribe the exceptional developmental indices of Tamil Nadu to the Self
Respect Movement led by EVR Periyar. The author argues that the decisive impact
on the democratic trajectory of the state was affected by the Dravidian Movement,
especially DMK. However, the book establishes the quintessential role of MGR’s
personal dispositions towards the poor in addition to political compulsions as the
quintessential factors in launching the most important programmes of social welfare
in the State. He also suggests endurance of the cultural effect of the Dravidian self-
respect movement, a socio- political movement. One must remember that MGR’s
political victory over DMK is partly a legacy and partly a counter-movement to
DMK’s politics and the ideology of the Self Respect Movement. It was only after
facing popular backlash to his attempts to introduce a creamy layer to backward
classes reservation and reservation for weaker sections in upper castes did MGR
resort to such comprehensive popular welfare measures.
On the one hand, it would be interesting to juxtapose the arguments in the book
with the “Dravidan Movement as left populism” thesis put forward by A. Kalaiyarasan
and M. Vijayabaskar in their book “Dravidian Model” (Kalaiyarasan & Vijayabaskar,
2021). They argue that the Dravidian Movement has impacted and shaped the overall
policy framework of the peculiar developmental trajectory of Tamil Nadu right from
its inception by collecting multiple oppressed and marginal sections in a flexible
umbrella alliance. Thus most of the developmental measures taken even during the
Pre-DMK period are ascribed to the forces of assertion, aspiration and
entrepreneurialism thrown open by the Dravidian movement. This line of argument
would also minimise the individual role of charismatic leaders, including MGR to one
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as a political response to a much diffuse but concrete popular assertion of backward
classes against upper caste and North Indian social and economic domination. On
the other hand, the role of MGR in improving women and child health in the State, as
the book presents, stands as a corrective to the ascription of MGR’s mass appeal
among women majorly to his charisma, as argued by the historian MSS Pandian in his
book , The Image Trap (Pandian, 1992). The book is a very valuable and timely
exposition of the role of various socio-political factors, including ideology, committed
bureaucracy and individual charismatic leaders, in shaping the Dravidian
developmental model.
Reference
Hodges, S. (2008). Contraception, Colonialism and Commerce: Birth Control in South India,
1920-1940. Routledge Publications.
Kalaiyarasan, A. & Vijayabaskar, M. (2021). Dravidian Model: Interpreting the Political
Economy of Tamil Nadu. Cambridge University Press.
Pandian, MSS. (1992). The Image Trap: M.G. Ramachandran in Film and Politics. Sage
Publications.
