48 Hours of Stalin’s rule in Tamilnadu

The dawn of the Stalin Era – Kathir RS

Stalin, the leader who promised change, and here is what he has changed in the first twenty-four hours of his leadership.

• Financial relief of ₹4,000 to 20.7 million ration cardholders to manage the hardships faced due to the Covid-19 pandemic. The first installment of ₹2,000 will be distributed in May and the rest will be given later. 

• Travel was made free for women in state-owned buses. 

• Slashed the price of milk produced by state-run Aavin by 10% while increasing the milk procurement rate by 14%.

• The chief minister in your constituency scheme has been announced. A new department will be formed to address people’s grievances within the first 100 days of the new government. The department ‘CM in your constituency’ is headed by an IAS officer, Shilpa Prabhakar. Stalin had collected these grievances during his campaign titled ‘Stalin in your constituency’.

• The Chief Minister’s Comprehensive Health Insurance Scheme will be extended to cover treatment for Covid-19 in private hospitals for existing beneficiaries of the scheme. 

• Journalists will be treated as frontline workers in Tamil Nadu. Journalists of television media, print, and radio would get all the rights and privileges entitled to frontline workers.

• Travel was made free for transgender in state-owned buses. 

• Increased bed and oxygen facilities and drugs. He announced setting up an 800-bed facility with oxygen in Chennai out of which 300 will be opened from May 10.

• He urged Prime Minister Narendra Modi to increase oxygen allocation for Tamil Nadu to 500 tonnes per day

• Announcing a 15-day well-planned lockdown to control corona while ensuring the smooth functioning of public transport across the state.

• Providing PPE kit for policemen to ensure their safety 
• Creating a war room to coordinate COVID 19 control and prevention efforts.
• A total of 1,212 staff nurses, who were recruited on contracts, were regularised and posted in Chennai to address the rising manpower requirements due to the increase in the COVID-19 caseload. 
• Allotment of 59 crores to  prevent and control COVID-19 spread across the state
• Amma hotels will function during the lockdown.
• Monitoring the sale of anti-viral Remdesivir and see to it that the medicine is not sold on the black market. Ensure Remdesivir is being sold by the government in Chennai, Coimbatore, Salem, Tiruchirappalli, Madurai, and Tirunelveli.
• The closure of TASMAC until lockdown prevails
• Ensuring the uninhibited supply of oxygen in hospitals

In the next 24 hours, he announced the chief secretary and temporary assembly speaker and ensured the first session of the 16th Tamil Nadu Legislative Assembly will take place at the earliest on May 11 at Chennai’s Kalaivanar Arangam. He requested the support and cooperation of the people of Tamilnadu while addressing the public. He went ahead and further states that he is not the chief minister but a chief front-line worker. Meetings with bureaucrats and ministers have been convened on Sundays. Fine and imprisonment of six months for private bus operators charging high and unfair ticket prices has been put in place.

We have watched the miraculous transformation of the state by one-day superhero chief ministers in movies but in real life, if the media will be fair and will bring to light the efforts, development, and progressive changes put to work by the chief minister is a question out there at large. 

The saffron army has been running an organized attack to blackout the accomplishments of Stalin through malicious media trials in the past and will all the more do so in the future. It’s high time people understand the malignant manipulation of the saffron brigade that happens behind the scenes. The communication strategy that is widely criticized by the opposition is in fact one of the best decisions of MK Stalin, for it has sown hope into the minds of people by keeping them aware of what is done for them and how it is being done. It is the first time in the history of Tamilnadu politics that a chief minister talks the language like a common man! No wordplay, just action as he promised.
Billy Don Moyers the American journalist and political commentator states” And here is the crisis of the times: We talk about problems, issues, policies, but we don’t talk about what democracy means—what it bestows on us—the revolutionary idea that it isn’t just about the means of governance but the means of dignifying people so they become fully free to claim their moral and political agency” These policies have once again restored faith in every section of people across the state by restoring democracy in its true sense by dignifying people and giving them center stage in governance. A promising start of the Stalin era.