The Dravidian Model, according to Stalin’s Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK), involves inclusive planning and democratic governance for ease in approachability, policy-making, and action.
While announcing his podcast Thursday, Stalin had said it was aimed at bringing out the “voice of South India”. “As the chief of the third largest party in the parliament, and as someone among you, speaking for India is (what) this podcast (is aimed at),” he said.
According to a senior DMK leader, a close aide of CM Stalin, the podcast is aimed at addressing national issues “from the South Indian perspective”.
“It will help people understand the fake news propagated by the BJP and its allies,” the senior DMK leader told ThePrint, adding that the podcast will be available not just in Tamil but will be translated into several languages, including Telugu, Malayalam, Kannada, and even Hindi.
According to Priyan Srinivasan, a political analyst from Chennai, Stalin, much like his late father M. Karunanidhi, is seen as a leader who could unite the Opposition and could play a pivotal role in next year’s general elections.
The podcast, Srinivasan claims, could help raise Stalin’s “stature”. “At the same time there are several issues faced by the non-BJP ruling states, like rights of the state being snatched, the governors’ interferences, and allocation of funds, etc,” he said.
The DMK, he said, is an important constituent in the opposition alliance INDIA. “So, Stalin, and DMK have the duty to take the message of the opposition to the public,” he added.
Indeed, at least two major events have proven how Stalin could bring together the then fragmented opposition — the leader’s 70th birthday celebrations in March and a “social justice conference” just a month later, in April.
The events have been seen as an attempt to project the Tamil Nadu chief minister as a “cementing force”.
Stalin’s podcast comes at a time when his son and the state’s youth welfare and sports development minister Udhayanidhi Stalin has stirred up a controversy over his remark on Sanatana Dharma. In his speech Saturday, Udhayanidhi had said: “Sanatana is like corona, malaria, dengue and it must be eradicated and not opposed”. He had added that it was “against social justice and equality”.
The BJP slammed the remark in an attack led by Union Home Minister Amit Shah.
“Opposition has been insulting this country’s heritage and Sanatana Dharma,” said Shah while speaking at an even Sunday. “Sons of top leaders of Congress and DMK are talking about finishing Sanatana Dharma for the politics of vote bank and appeasement.”
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‘INDIA alliance must win’
In his 8-minute podcast, Stalin accused the BJP of not fulfilling its poll promises from 2014. The party, he claimed, had promised many things — from recovering black money, giving Rs 15 lakh to every Indian and offering 2 crore jobs every year, to doubling agricultural income and making India a $5 trillion economy.
None of these promises have been fulfilled, he claimed.
The 2024 election, Stalin said, should be about “who should not come to power”.
The BJP, he said, was using religion as a weapon to break the basic structure of India and destroy its unity. In his podcast, Stalin also invoked several instances of large-scale violence and riots — the 2002 post Godhra riots in Gujarat, the ethnic clashes in Manipur and the communal violence in Haryana earlier this year.
According to Stalin, it was the BJP that had sowed the seeds of all three incidents, adding that if the country does not act now, “no one can save India and Indians”.
“If we want to prevent the whole of India from becoming Manipur and Haryana, which, unfortunately, fell victim to BJP’s communal politics, and hate-inciting policies, the INDIA alliance must win,” he said.
‘Non-BJP states suffer’
In his podcast, Stalin also lambasted the BJP government of privatising the country’s public sector undertakings.
“The government is misusing its power to transfer the public sector to their corporate friends. The welfare of the entire country has been reduced to the welfare of a few. Airports and ports all over India are going into the hands of private organisations,” he claimed.
He also accused the Modi government of being unfair to non-BJP states like Tamil Nadu. The state, he claimed, had contributed Rs 5.16 lakh crore in Goods and Services Tax (GST) but got only Rs 2.8 lakh crore in return.
“If it is argued that the Union government cannot give the entirety of what they receive from each state, then how is it able to do it in BJP-ruled states,” he said.
In comparison, he claimed a “state ruled by the BJP” — which he did not name — has contributed only Rs 2.24 lakh crore in taxes but got a whopping Rs 9.4 lakh crore in return, he claimed, calling it BJP’s vengeance against opposition parties.
Stalin also claimed that fund allocation for Tamil Nadu had been reduced under the Narendra Modi government, going from 5.305 per cent funds in 12th Finance Commission (constituted 2002) to 4.079 per cent in the 15th Finance Commission (constituted 2017).
“The amount of money that Tamil Nadu loses every year isn’t negligible. We are losing thousands of crores which we should get rightfully,” Stalin said.
‘Vanguard of India’s diversity, federalism, democracy’
In his podcast, Stalin projected the DMK as the vanguard of India’s diversity, federalism, and democracy, claiming that it “stood in the frontline” whenever these were under threat.
Quoting DMK founder C.N. Annadurai, he said the DMK should be taken “to spearhead the opposition to unitary nature”. The party, he claimed, was facing a historic task — to beat the BJP in 2024.
The opposition alliance INDIA had been formed to ensure a country where “social justice, secular politics, socialism, equity, social harmony, state autonomy, federalism, and unity in diversity thrive in its full glory”.
“That is the real India,” he said
(Edited by Uttara Ramaswamy)
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