A petition of popularity

By Suresh Nambath

CHENNAI, AUG. 8. In keeping with the unorganised class base of the AIADMK, the Chief Minister, Ms. Jayalalithaa, is giving her government a petition-accepting, favour- distributing image.

Every day she personally accepts hundreds of petitions and directly hands over relief to two or three or four persons. Ms. Jayalalithaa less than three months into office, the Chief Minister's Office has already identified hundreds of `beneficiaries' under one welfare scheme or the other. The Chief Minister's Relief Fund and the Chief Minister's discretionary quota in admissions to educational institutions have also proved useful in awarding benefits to the ``poor and the needy.''

Those who cannot be accommodated within the government schemes are given monetary relief from the AIADMK's MGR Trust Relief Fund.

The Special Cell in the Chief Minister's Office processes and clears the ``deserving beneficiaries'' from the piled-up petitions. From school-leaving students who cannot pay fees for medical college and engineering college admission to freedom fighters who are seeking pension.

Not surprisingly, every working day, thousands of people gather outside the Secretariat with a written list of grievances and wait for a glimpse of Ms. Jayalalithaa. On an average, the CMO receives nearly 3,000 petitions a day.

While a majority of the petitions are forwarded to the District Collectors for action, the ``most deserving ones'' are identified for relief at the hands of Ms. Jayalalithaa herself. Usually, the Chief Minister's Office does not take more than three weeks to dispose of the petitions from its end.

Almost all petitioners are intent on personally handing over their representations to the Chief Minister and stay patiently outside the portico until she leaves the Secretariat.

Although the Government issued orders to all departments that petitions be processed and cleared within 90 days, the people seem to have faith in only the CMO.

As is to be expected, most of the beneficiaries are those who handed over their petitions directly to the Chief Minister. That is why the number of petitions received at the CMO far exceeds those received by the departments or the Collectorates. Most petitioners believe that until Ms. Jayalalithaa personally sees their grievances list there will be no hope of relief.

Ms. Jayalalithaa too is responsible for this deepening impression. Often, there is an impulsiveness in her benefits- distribution. In one instance, she stopped her vehicle to listen to the grievances of roadside residents. And, she ordered distribution of spectacles to an old man, and supply of drinking water to the women who gathered round her vehicle.

Apart from granting relief on the basis of petitions, Ms. Jayalalithaa takes into account newspaper articles on the plight of a handicapped person or a poor student.

Officials say her efforts are to ``touch the lives of the people directly.'' This, they say, is in sharp contrast to the ``excessive stress'' the DMK placed on ``impersonal public utilities.''

Like the noon-meal scheme initiated during the MGR period, and the free sari-dhoti scheme started by the earlier Jayalalithaa regime, ``real'' benefits distributed on the basis of petitions could give the Government its character.

And, unlike as during her earlier stint, Ms. Jayalalithaa is expected to persist with the petitions-accepting exercise till the very end.

Send this article to Friends by E-Mail

Section  : Southern States
Previous : Plan outlay fixed at Rs. 6,040 crores
Next     : Decision only after meeting Ramadoss, says
           Karunanidhi