Dravidian model: Rhetoric and reality

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Published : Apr 30, 2022, 10:19 PM IST

Dravidian model: Rhetoric and reality

Ever since the DMK returned to power after a decade with MK Stalin as Chief Minister, 'Dravidian Model' has become a buzzword of the ruling party and its supporters. However, critics maintain that the Dravidian model is nothing but rhetoric as the development of the state stands on a colonial platform and infrastructural push during the reign of late Congress stalwart K Kamaraj besides its favourable geographical location, writes ETV Bharat's MC Rajan

Chennai: Populist politics and governance define the rule of Dravidian parties for more than half a century in Tamil Nadu, leaving little space for national parties. This long spell of hegemony has given birth to the coinage of 'Dravidian Model' of development with sympathetic academicians and ideologues engaged in giving it wider currency. However, it is not without critics, who argue that it is mere rhetoric without substance, warranting a closer scrutiny.

In education and industrialisation as well as in Human Development Indices, Tamil Nadu ranks ahead of many other states. It can boast of its achievements in development and the credit is taken by the dominant Dravidian parties – DMK and AIADMK who have alternatively been in power. While it is true that the 'model' has helped them to retain an upper hand, the edifice is not without cracks.

The context in which the discourse on the model has returned should not be lost sight of. After the DMK stonewalled the Modi juggernaut in the Lok Sabha elections, this is being projected as an alternative political idiom. For, the DMK, with a long legacy, has been a modernising force and its politics is not simply based on OBC empowerment against upper caste domination and economic populism. Further, an essential core ideological pillar of the Dravidian movement is, Tamil pride and construction of an ethnic Tamil identity which places the 'Aryan' (Brahmin) Sanskrit as the other.

While Dravidian parties should be credited for keeping the pace of development, Professor Velayutham Saravanan of Jamia Millia University says that it was the platform laid during the colonial period that had helped the state forge ahead. “From railways to irrigation projects and English education and a chartered High Court, it was the British rule that had laid the foundation without which Tamil Nadu could not have leapfrogged in development,” he argued adding that the Dravidian rule had only slowed down the pace of growth.

For right wing analyst, Sreenivasan Ravichandran, “it is the location as a coastal state that has helped Tamil Nadu grow faster than those in the hinterland.” He also points out that the push for infrastructure and education given during the rule of late Congress stalwart K Kamaraj prior to the ascendance of the DMK to power, has a far greater role in the development of the state.

However, a far more serious criticism of the Dravidian model is on populism being masked as empowerment. “Welfare initiatives embody civil rights while freebies only cultivate a clientele, which is not an empowered citizenry. In the latter, which defines the Dravidian model, state intervention in the neoliberal paradigm is limited in taking concrete and constructive measures to fulfill the aspirations of the people,” explains C Lakshmanan, teaching at Madras Institute of Development Studies.

The edifice of the model faces challenges not only from neoliberalism, but in political mobilisation as well. It needs to be noted that it is under the watch of the Dravidian majors that the 'cash for vote' phenomenon has got entrenched in the electoral arena. More than anywhere else, politics has become transactional in this Dravidian land. And sharing of power with marginalised communities, with negligible or no representation, is still a dream. And analysts opine that till there is a political and ideological reorientation, the model, at best will remain a rhetoric.

Also read: Caste discrimination more in south: Healthy conflict or exposing underbelly of social reform!

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