Curious case of Vijay Mallya and Tamil Nadu

As we all know it is this time of the year where we have our appraisals. Employees have it in their office with their managers, Entrepreneurs will look at their progress for last year and chalk out the plan for future, and students have their grading examinations now.

All these happen yearly, one will definitely get used to it. But what comes after a well-defined interval is the elections, am not writing about the Cricket World Cup this time :).

It is this part of the year that people have a say in the Government and we get to do something for the society which has made us what we are today. We may crib about a lot of things in the society which we live in but nevertheless whatever we are today is because of the society and whatever we crib is also because of the society that it has made us realize that some aspects in our life are desirable and some the other way around.

It is the election season now in TamilNadu, and this time there is quite a buzz around it. Looking at the current financial status of our state, it is pretty bad.

Tamil Nadu’s debt has ballooned to Rs 2.11 lakh crore, around 19 percent of the state’s Gross Domestic Product (GSDP). 

During 2011, Jayalalitha’s campaign was targeted around the DMK’s scheme of freebies, 2G corruption and other mismanagement of funds , she was over the roof with her statement that ‘ Karunanidhi had gifted the TamilNadu state with a debt of Rs 1 Lakh Crore’. She was given the power with full majority and the 2011 polls was one of the best in AIADMK’s history so far. She got the power in a thunderous manner and she could have done a changeover of the fortunes of the state, but unfortunately she did not.

It has to be noted that she proved that she can do a changeover to the fortunes as during 2001 when DMK left office , TN was in a deficit of some 2000 Crores and when she came in and left office at 2006 TN revenue was in surplus with some 2000 Crores. She had done a MSD with not only clearing the debts but doubled the revenue that TN revenue went into the surplus mode which our batting department used to do considering our bowling attack :).

It is a reality that she faces some issues now, with the state revenue dipping continuously and the coffers are literally empty, and considering the fact she lost the election even after making the coffers ring last time.

I am not an economist and hence I cannot judge those numbers with the current industry trend and GDP etc. There are simply too much of terms around that half of them almost mean the same for me and I am not able to even read and understand the rest of the terms. Now I realize why the department of accounts is always in a mess, and in any office the accounts department will always be in a fragile state, everyone always deep into some set of papers and series of numbers which can be used to test ones eyesight that for normal people all numbers after the second decimal will be the same and no wonder it takes a lot of attempts to become a Chartered Accountant, and most of the accountants wear spectacles :) . These guys are brilliant guys that they remember numbers more than words that they keep referring to all application forms with some numbers like Form 15, Form 16 while they could have named it to what they stood for in normal English.

Never mind, coming back to the topic considering the current status of AIADMK or rather than the party’s supremo Jayalalitha what she faces now is split into these facades in order of significance.

a.       Her health issues

b.      Internal issues in the party

c.       Activities during the recent Flood

d.      Scams which has rocked them

e.      TASMAC issue

It is well known that the party supremo has some health issues and the Chief Minister of the state is present everywhere via Banners and can be seen in interaction only in Video Conferences.
It is this fact that the opposition targets mainly in their campaign, because the current CM is unable to meet people in person, DMK’s heir Stalin is going all over the state under the program ‘Namakku Naame’ .This is fairly a good strategy that you target your enemy’s weakness and whoever thought of this from DMK’s side should be credited with.

It is to be mentioned for sure that some gimmicks which they did in this program was unasked for and resulted in negative publicity than positive.

Vijayakanth the head from DMDK could have again used this to his advantage, but unfortunately did not. He would soon realize that politics is not easy, and it will take a lot of strategy as well as action from himself, and it will not work like films where the hero is always the winner.

The next aspect is the internal issues in the party, there are again various rumors around this, that some of the core loyalists in the party are not happy with the current proceedings and it looks like things are not okay with Sasikala and the core party members as well.

Comparing this with the others, DMK too have issues within the party, that there are various conflicts among the family members and some are in the party and some are already outside. And even for the apparent party heir Stalin there are still issues as not all party members are happy with him. Even yesterday there was conflicting announcements from Karunanidhi and Stalin in terms of alliance.
The other alliance group, will automatically split post the election provided they remain together till electionJ. It is like expecting the opening pair Shikhar Dhawan and Rohit Sharma to bat through the entire innings, it cannot just happen.

The third aspect is the activities during the recent flood, not much can be done by men in times when nature wraths its fury on us, but one can surely make out what one should not do in times of such a disaster by looking the activities done by loyalists of both the parties.

From the little media coverage which Vijayakanth had, I understand that he had done some good amount of relief works and I guess his only hope remains on that for this election. Though whatever good he did was not with political motive or agenda, it will help him at least to hang around for some more time in the political scene of the state.

The fourth aspect is the scams rocking the current government. This is something which Jayalalitha should have clearly avoided. Her party was elected to the power not because that people trusted her to do some good but was to the outrage after the 2G scam. While the ghosts of 2G scam is still haunting the DMK in some means or the other, Jayalalitha if she had been clean during her current term she would have clearly fancied her chances now. But unfortunately things have broken out loose on the wrong time for her, with respect to the Aavin scam where the state’s Dairy Minister Moorthy was involved in a scam of adulteration of milk supplied to the state valued at ₹ 23 lakhs a day.
But then it has been reported that this has been happening in the state for the past 10 years, which means that this has happened during the tenure of DMK as well and hence they will definitely remain silent on this aspect.
Next potential derailer for AIADMK is with the suicide of Agriculture Department Employee. It happened the same time last year and that suicide exposed the scam in appointment of the low level employees like drivers etc. and what it gave was the rough idea of the amount of money involved in those posts which people won’t notice much. There may be lot of news about the vacancies of an officer post or clerical post but on the other hand very hardly there will be any advertisements about those posts which does not require much of education qualification. Those are posts which the educated won’t think of and hence the scam. Though not much of money is involved for a post in one office, the amount of money involved considering all such positions in the state in all departments will be very huge.

The other scam is the money which the Government is paying the private vendors for procurement of power especially the Adani group and PPN power company. This scam is estimated to be around at ₹ 1 lakh Crore where money has been paid by the Government to these private vendors in surplus and many Government projects have been stalled purposefully to create the demand artificially.

The last aspect around this election will be the TASMAC issue, though all parties were very adamant about the ban of liquor sometime back, now everybody keeps mum on this. Like they say the real battle between good and bad is determining which is which, it is very difficult to decide where TASMAC fits in.

 The issue with TASMAC is that like the Aavin scam, all the parties have some part in this and all of them know that and only we the normal common public suffer here. It is very difficult to get the stats of the people who consume liquor regularly from TASMAC to analyze the pattern there, but why would someone bother to do that when the business is booming and one is enjoying a monopoly there.
The interesting aspect around this is that the state’s election will influence the stock price of Vijay Mallya’s UB group. Historically it has been proven that with the change in power, some liquor companies have an increase in their profits while some bite dust.

May be the party which is going to come to power can have a ‘business agreement’ (actually a fix, but for legal reasons it is to be written as an agreement) with Vijay Mallya so that we can recover the ₹ 9000 crores from Kingfisher beer which will definitely make people fly, which the Kingfisher airlines could not do now :)




Bye till next,