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Amid delimitation, language rows, Tamil Nadu minister says: ‘Centre must focus on North’s progress instead of threatening us’

Net transfers from rich states to the poor states is increasing… And the gap has kept on widening, says P Thiaga Rajan

delimitation Senior DMK leader and Tamil Nadu Minister for IT and Digital Services Palanivel Thiaga Rajan

Senior DMK leader and Tamil Nadu Minister for IT and Digital Services Palanivel Thiaga Rajan. (Photo: Facebook/P Thiaga Rajan)

With the DMK raising the pitch against the Centre over impending delimitation and the National Education Policy (NEP), party leader and Tamil Nadu Minister for IT and Digital Services Palanivel Thiaga Rajan indicated there was no question of a climbdown, pointing to everything from devolution of taxes to population mismatch across states.

Speaking at The Indian Express’s Idea Exchange session, Thiaga Rajan, who was earlier the Tamil Nadu Finance Minister, said there were “increasing net transfers from the rich states to the poor states”. “And the gap has kept on widening,” he said. “When this government came to power, for every Re 1 of total grants and schemes’ taxes given to Tamil Nadu, UP got Rs 2.90. By 2024, it was Re 1 to Tamil Nadu, and Rs 4.35 to UP,” he said.

Despite this, Thiaga Rajan claimed, UP’s per capita GDP relative to Tamil Nadu had fallen. “The question arises, how are we ever going to get equal if you keep on taking the money and you keep on not being able to produce any result? Where does this end?”

He was “saying this as a patriot”, the DMK leader said. “There is no future for this country if the poor, high-population northern states don’t see significant improvement in their per capita incomes and overall outcomes. That is the reality… The point is we don’t get to fix that because we are a regional government… And the party in Delhi that should be focused on this is instead focused on trying to berate us, browbeat us, threaten us, extort us and blackmail us. So we say we don’t want to lose any more representation.”

Tamil Nadu’s stand on delimitation was not new, the Minister for IT and Digital Services said, asking why the Centre had not been able to find a way despite a freeze on the exercise for 50 years. “The problem has become worse. Now if we don’t even have a voice in Delhi… All the money is there, all the power is there, all the national policy is there. What happens to us if we (don’t) fight for our rights?”

On the language row, with DMK chief and Tamil Nadu Chief Minister M K Stalin opposing the NEP on these grounds, Thiaga Rajan argued: “The problem is not whether Tamil Nadu adopts the NEP or not. The problem is, can you teach enough children one language properly in UP and Bihar? Can you improve the rate?”

Thiaga Rajan also questioned the very basis of the NEP. “Under the original Constitution, education was a state subject, and the outcomes across states have been tremendously different over the last 75 years… We have been consistent from day one that we don’t think that somebody else sitting in Delhi should tell us how we should run school education,” he said.

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Tamil Nadu led other states in most parameters of education, Thiaga Rajan said, dismissing the BJP claims that Tamil-medium enrolment had declined in the state under the DMK or its standards had fallen as per the ASER 2024 report.