(Each Thursday, as Tamil Nadu prepares for meeting polls Arun Janardhanan Decipher the electoral traits, political indicators, and marketing campaign strikes that form the competition. )
In Tamil Nadu, welfare politics is never debated over whether or not the state ought to spend. It is a contest over the best way to model it, to whom, and most significantly, by whom.
Opposition events are getting ready for the upcoming provincial elections. AIADMK Chief Edappadi Okay. Palaniswami The three-phase manifesto rollout, the final of which was launched on Tuesday, appears to be a well-known Tamil Nadu style. It isn’t a break within the “freebie tradition” however an escalation of it, an try to outbid the ruling DMK, which has already turned welfare provision right into a routine PR train.
And it’s occurring at a troubling time for the AIADMK. In a crowded trilateral political panorama (or perhaps a quadrilateral political panorama with former Jayalalithaa aide VK Sasikala launching a brand new social gathering on Tuesday), the DMK’s prospects seem steady by most views, whilst the federal government’s marketing campaign equipment continues to foretell financial development, a “Dravidian mannequin” and an extended listing of plans already in place.
So Palaniswami, popularly referred to as EPS, chosen the oldest weapon within the state’s political arsenal. It’s about promising reduction that’s fast, measurable, and feels barely higher than what exists. The primary section began with girls. The AIADMK has promised to double the month-to-month money help for feminine heads of ration card-holding households to Rs 2,000 from the DMK’s Rs 1,000 below the Kalaignar Magalir Ulimai Togai scheme. He additionally promised one thing that the DMK has not delivered. It could make metropolis bus journey free for males whereas preserving the prevailing free journey for girls.
His focus has been on housing. These embody land acquisition and free concrete housing in rural areas, flats in city areas, and separate housing for Scheduled Caste (SC) households if their sons kind separate households. This displays the ambition, if not the branding, of the welfare state logic that the DMK has pursued via its personal housing scheme.
The second section then started with social safety pension as much as Rs 2,000, full training mortgage waiver and provision of three free LPG cylinders yearly to eligible ration card holders. The rhetoric was tailor-made and was much less about “slogans” and extra about “measurable reduction.” Not simply compassion, but in addition dignity. The listing of insurance policies additionally included cultural provisions reminiscent of compensation for Jallikattu casualties, backed help for sanctioned occasions, and minority SOPs reminiscent of interest-free loans to girls from Muslim, Christian and different minority communities.
The third section was headlined by a one-time fee of Rs 10,000 to each family as “compassionate reduction” in opposition to rising property tax, housing tax and electrical energy payments. It additionally included month-to-month stipends for job seekers (Rs 2,000 for graduates registered with job exchanges and Rs 1,000 for these with training as much as class 12), elevated ban on fishing, money reward for Pongal, growth of free energy tools for weavers and waiver of cooperative financial institution loans for pavers.
When seen collectively, the three phases usually are not random. These are what kind the ladder. Girls, common family reduction is mixed with sectoral schemes concentrating on teams reminiscent of youth, fishermen, weavers and peddlers, whom Tamil Nadu’s political events have traditionally handled as crucial constituencies.
It additionally reveals the essential tactical challenges confronted by the AIADMK. The DMK isn’t just promising, it seems to be delivering outcomes via credit score transfers, authorities ads, and the persuasive comfort of incumbency. One of many explanation why the ladies’s rights subsidy stays politically highly effective is exactly its measurement, with an annual outlay of Rs 14,400 billion within the state finances for 2026-27, protecting greater than Rs 1 billion girls. The query is now not whether or not the state can present welfare, however fairly who can present it higher and who can declare credit score for it.
That is the place the EPS technique turns into simpler to learn. The logic of “Rs 5 greater than what the DMK provides” is the political grammar of aggressive welfare within the state. If the DMK’s Rs 1,000 is framed without any consideration and recognition, the AIADMK’s Rs 2,000 isn’t just a hike however a problem to the incumbent’s ethical claims.
Nonetheless, even in Tamil Nadu, the place the road between “freebies” and “welfare” has all the time been contested, the numbers find yourself colliding with the state’s steadiness sheet. Current finances estimates put the state’s finances deficit at about 3% of the state’s GDP, and debt and borrowing projections proceed to occupy a outstanding place in political assaults and defenses.
The AIADMK’s proposed one-time fee of Rs 10,000 to each family, particularly when piled up with everlasting month-to-month guarantees of Rs 2,000 subsidy, pension hike, unemployment allowance, LPG help, and so forth., shortly turns into an quantity that appears extra like a fiscal occasion than a welfare plan. The design could also be politically elegant, but it surely’s arduous to cover the accrued payments.
Thus far, just one new escalation has been proposed by Prime Minister MK Stalin. It was introduced on the identical day that the month-to-month subsidy for girls below the Kalaignar Magalir Ulimai Togai scheme of Rs 1.31 billion can be doubled, with Rs 5,000 being credited to girls’s accounts in a single go.
The AIADMK is presently within the midst of an aggressive marketing campaign to increase its pledge, with posters, billboards and hoardings beginning to seem throughout the state, particularly round ration retailers, bus stops and different public gathering locations. The social gathering equipment appears decided to ensure its message will get via quicker than the calculations behind it.
Tamil Nadu has skilled this state of affairs earlier than, generally with extreme penalties and generally with coverage issues. Think about the outdated welfare debate of the AIADMK’s personal tenure: the shift from free chappals to footwear and socks for presidency college college students. The intentions of well being, dignity and mobility had been defensible. Nevertheless, the criticism was nation-specific. Do not copy the aesthetics of personal faculties and name it reform. Sturdiness, hygiene and local weather suitability are vital. Seek the advice of a toddler specialist. Do not let symbolism overtake design. In different phrases, welfare isn’t just about giving, however the way it works on the bottom.
And the lengthy arc to which all welfare discussions in Tamil Nadu in the end return is meal planning. The custom of noon meals is so deeply rooted within the state that it has its personal folklore about skeptics. The story goes that within the mid-Nineteen Seventies, members of the planning fee requested the then CM MG Ramachandran (MGR) if he was planning to run faculties or eateries. Within the language of Tamil Nadu, this line grew to become the punch line for the North Indian technocracy’s lack of ability to learn the state’s social logic. Immediately, the identical logic is invoked to defend new vitamin packages, money transfers, and social safety. Welfare is just not charity, however infrastructure for dignity.
That is why the EPS Manifesto Ladder, regardless of its whiff, shouldn’t be dismissed as mere despair. If the DMK is working a ‘improvement and supply’ marketing campaign, the AIADMK is attempting to recapture the outdated temper in Tamil Nadu – elections as referendums on stress on family budgets, rising costs and every day burdens. Phrases like “decreasing burdens,” “recovering hope,” and “significant welfare” are designed to make discussions about public funds really feel like desk arithmetic.
However the query hanging over the AIADMK’s manifesto is just not whether or not folks like welfare. The deeper query is whether or not voters imagine that the post-election state of affairs being portrayed is feasible, or whether or not its pledge is primarily aimed toward breaking the DMK’s sense of inevitability and reminding voters that the opposition can nonetheless compete on the one platform that reliably sways votes throughout caste and geography: direct reduction.
In Tamil Nadu, outsiders typically discuss with it as a ‘freebie’. Within the state, till a invoice is launched, that is what events name governance.
