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Wednesday, May 18, 2011

Jai-Lolitha

Tamilnadu Chief Ministers have been so generous to the voters who helped them to get back power. Today, I came to know the reason behind a few rusted Dish TV Antennas in rural part of TamilNadu during my SEB field visit last year.

I read in the newspaper today that Mr. Karunanidhi had promised people to give them colour TVs if he comes to power. Guess what! He didn't breach the voters and colour TVs worth Rs. 4,000 Crore were ordered and delivered. Actually he had two benefits. One that he was seen as a politician who stood to what he promised and the other one was that it would help increasing the TRP of his television channel SUN TV. That's what we say "Ek teer, do nisaane".

Going along with the traditions of the state, Amma too had promised that she would provide students of class XIth and XIIth with a laptop. Now, 14 Lakh laptops would be ordered to keep her promise. I was thinking of the company who would get this huge order. They would be lucky enough to get the single largest hardware order ever in the history of India's e-inclusion programme. The order could be anywhere between 150 Crore to 350 Crore (huge enough to change the P&L figures for the company for this Financial Year).

There were some other promises too made by Amma during her election campaign which she announced to start soon after she was sworn in as the Chief-Minister of the state. Such as free rice, subsidised other cereals to the poor.

What I think is that just a formal declaration of these freebies won't help. Improvement in the PDS system is what India needs. There have so many welfare programmes running all across India. But, without proper watchdogs, they have been just a tool in the hands of officials handling those programmes as a means of increasing their personal wealth.

Hoping of some steps in this direction too.

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