TN Governor's controversial take on Dravidian Model ignites anger

When economists A Kalaiyarasan and M Vijayabaskar of the Madras Institute of Development Studies (MIDS) published a book titled Dravidian Model in 2021, they perhaps did not imagine it would be the eye of the storm between the state government and the governor. 

In a freewheeling interview, Tamil Nadu Governor RN Ravi termed the DMK’s ‘Dravidian Model’ narrative divisive and outdated. Ravi, who has had repeated run-ins with the DMK government, also took a dig at the law and order situation in Tamil Nadu apart from its state of education. Predictably, the DMK and its allies have hit back.

Governor ill-informed?

The Governor is so ill-informed and so politically motivated that he doesn’t see the difference between ideology and the economic model of its implementation, said Prof J Constantine Ravindran of the DMK media relations wing.

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“Ravi should read up first. Even though he wants to give the term Dravidian Model a political colour, it was first voiced by economists. They weren’t pro-DMK. Former IAS officer S Narayanan, once the economic advisor to then Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee, talked of it in his book Dravidian Ways,” Ravindran told The Federal.

That book praises the way rival Dravidian parties DMK and AIADMK empowered the backward classes of the state. “It is the exemplary case of Tamil Nadu which has managed to effectively integrate economic and development agenda for the backward classes into state policy…to deliver a social welfare agenda,” Narayanan says in the book.

On the contrary, Ravi dubbed the Dravidian Model an expired ideology…“only a political slogan”. He went on to say it stands for divisiveness. But Narayanan praises the Dravidian method of governance as a social agenda taken up by leaders like M Karunanidhi, MGR and J Jayalalithaa.

The Dravidian Model is about equality and social justice and not what the Governor claims it to be, said senior DMK leader TKS Elangovan. “Unlike what Ravi claims, even North Indian states today follow the Dravidian Model.”

To Ravi’s charge that the Dravidian ideology promotes “rabid…linguistic apartheid,” political activists point out that the Hindi Prachar Sabha in Chennai, which promotes Hindi, celebrated its centenary in 2018. The Sabha flourished in Tamil Nadu despite anti-Hindi protests that have rocked the state. The resistance in the state has always been to the perceived imposition of Hindi, and not the language per se.

Status of education 

An academic by profession, Ravindran objects to the Governor’s statements on the status of education in Tamil Nadu.

“It is a blatant lie to claim that the state is going down in education. Tamil Nadu’s Gross Enrolment Ratio (GER) is 53 per cent while the national average is just 27 per cent. The state also has the highest number of medical colleges. Out of 100 universities in India, 20 are in Tamil Nadu. Employability ratio cannot alone be a yardstick because the purpose of education is to infuse knowledge,” said Ravindran.

DMK leaders claim that the real erosion in quality of education is on the national scale and that too because education has been made a concurrent subject to be handled both by the state and the Centre, from being a state specific subject earlier.

Also read | ‘Dravidian model’ the governance formula for all states: Stalin’s rejoinder to Governor Ravi

The book Dravidian Model provides some pointers towards a dispassionate understanding of Tamil Nadu’s growth. It talks about a development strategy powered by populist mobilisation around regional cultural identity. Partha Chatterjee of Columbia University says the book is a must read.

“Tamil Nadu, the authors argue, has created more effective institutions and delivered better outcomes on food, health, education and poverty reduction than other Indian states,” Chhatterjee pointed out.

DMK fury

DMK leaders are aghast that the Governor is crossing constitutional boundaries by poking nose into the domain of the elected legislature too. It was wrong of the Governor to have spoken the way he has, said P Wilson, the DMK’s Rajya Sabha member. “People elected DMK based on the idea of development proposed by the Dravidian party. He (Ravi) lives with an ill-conceived notion that he knows everything about Tamil Nadu and its people.”

But the DMK government is on the backfoot with regard to allegations of failures in maintaining law and order. Recent sensational killings in the state are pushing the ruling party on the defensive.

Recently, a Village Administrative Officer (VAO) was hacked to death in his office by people from the sand mafia. Ravi referred to this incident in his interview. There have been various other incidents of murders including of functionaries of BJP and VCK. Ravi narrated how he himself was attacked when he went to meet the Dharmapuram Atheenam. Ravindran claims it is one of the many falsities in the interview.

‘Twisting facts’

“First, the Governor’s vehicle wasn’t even touched. In the convoy there was a car belonging to a BJP functionary. Why was the car of a political leader present in the supposedly apolitical governor’s convoy? It was objected to, but the governor’s car was never attacked,” said Ravindran.

“Also, just because there are sporadic incidents of violence, you cannot say that the entire state is plunged into lawlessness. Crime records show that Chennai is one of the safest cities of India,” he said.

The National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) data for 2021 shows that BJP-ruled Gujarat is worse than Tamil Nadu in annual crime rate. If there are 989.5 incidents of crime for 1 lakh population in Tamil Nadu, it was 1,044.2 in Gujarat.

The DMK passed a resolution last year in the state assembly making the Chief Minister the chancellor of state universities, in an attempt to take away the powers of the governor in appointing Vice Chancellors of state universities. Ravi took exception to this in the interview saying he put on hold various bills for the formation of new state universities as he felt they breached the UGC rules.

Tamil Nadu Health Minister Ma Subramaniam says Ravi is wrong. “Nowhere do UGC rules say that a governor alone could be the chancellor of state varsities. So, we have sent the bill for the formation of Siddha University and sent seven reminders. It hasn’t been either given ascension or sent back,” he said.

Madurai CPI-M MP Su Venkatesan has shared a quirky tweet on the issue. “It is no surprise that the governor is fuming. He said Marxism has destroyed India in the past. Today he says that the Dravidian model is dead. It’s not a wonder that a weed is upset with a brush cutter. We relish your (Ravi) anger).”