Dravidian leaders have perhaps placed greater emphasis on urbanization as an ideal outcome, while still not paying enough attention to the urban processes themselves.
Dravidian leaders have perhaps placed greater emphasis on urbanization as an ideal outcome, while still not paying enough attention to the urban processes themselves.
aCases of Dravidian mobilization in Tamil Nadu have mainly focused on their achievement of economic development and welfare outcomes. The centrality of urbanization in delivering growth and development benefits in a more inclusive manner is less recognized. The urban trajectory of TN has been different from most other parts of India in two respects. One, TN has consistently attempted to break down traditional caste-based hierarchies to enable upward mobility of common people, turning them into agents of urban change. Second, urbanization is more broad-based, driven by several urban centers rather than a few metropolitan cities, as is the case with Maharashtra or Gujarat.
Over the past 70 years, Dravidian parties have capitalized on adopting a multi-pronged strategy to transform the common people into agents of urban change to adapt to the historical situation. This includes provision of physical and social infrastructure to accelerate urbanisation; redistribution policies such as affirmative action, especially in education; and spreading a productive ethos. These measures are at least partly responsible for the fact that 48.4% of Tamil Nadu’s population lives in urban areas, compared to the all-India average of 34% (2011 census). Seven out of eight households are dependent on the non-agricultural sector. The urban character of Tamil Nadu is not as dependent on a few large metropolises as in Maharashtra or Gujarat; There are many urban centers under a network of small towns and strong rural-urban connectivity. It is important to understand how this was enabled.
Historical Conditions and Dravidian Policy
As an important colonial city, Madras had some industrial strength and physical infrastructure. Later, K. During Kamaraj’s rule, TN benefited greatly from efforts to build infrastructure for industrial clusters and mass education. DMK came to power in 1967, TN. further expanded the industrial base of
Agricultural modernization was fueled by access to irrigation and motorized power technology, among other things. Different parts of the state have historically specialized in particular strategic forms of irrigation, such as canals and wells. This has given rise to diverse cropping patterns with distinct cropping specializations emerging in different regions. This made possible the emergence of ‘agro-towns’ associated with the crop, processing, marketing and selling – or entrepreneurship from below.
The intervention of Dravidian parties through physical and social infrastructure further facilitated this transition, while the absence of a major business community – a Vaishya vacuum – allowed entrepreneurship and ‘democratisation of capital’ from the lower castes. Investment in infrastructure also enabled artisans to enter the industry. Anthropologist Yan Philip Testwin explains that carpenters and blacksmiths have become ‘self-made engineers’, setting up a number of temporary repair shops of transportation services, which have turned into a truck body-building industry, and further mobile drilling rigs. are in the assembly. This has changed the industrial landscape of Namakkal and Salem districts, reflecting how urbanization in TN has evolved from small towns, with each region having a distinct industrial cluster. The state has the highest proportion of Dalit and OBC entrepreneurs, many of whom are from small towns.
The Dravidian discourse saw the village as a site of oppression and the urban as liberation, in contrast to MK Gandhi’s vision of village reconstruction. Inclusion in TN has been promoted through deliberate, ideologically supported state processes to spatially incorporate multiple parts of the state into urban processes and socially incorporate multiple caste groups. Dravidian mobilization worked on two planks. The first was the spread of a productive ethos that broke down existing social hierarchies and helped to envision new social relationships. The second was public investment in infrastructure which allowed the entry of diverse actors in the field of capital accumulation.
Development of various facilities – transport connectivity, access to electricity, access to medical and educational facilities – is relatively impressive and widely spread across the state. Some important examples include the increase in the percentage of minor roads from 47% in 1961 to 80% in 1991. Thanks to recent policy interventions to build broad-based road transport infrastructure including a network of minibuses, the state has managed to connect rural and urban areas and expand the scope of non-farm livelihood options among rural households. Doing. Similarly, linking villages with towns helped people access outside employment, loosening the caste barriers to some extent.
While the post-colonial Indian state relied on planning tools to stimulate development, it could not change the course of outcomes. Congress in TN dealt with inherited colonial and elite-controlled bureaucratic structures and processes. After the DMK came to power, the policy agenda began to be thought of by the needs and demands of the people. Over the next few decades, there was an increase in recruitment in government services from backward and downtrodden castes and from small towns and rural areas. It increased the accountability of the administration to the needs and aspirations of the marginalized. The conservative financial management of the state was changed to accommodate welfare distribution by the state.
While this urban transformation was in line with the Dravidian vision of ousting the subalterns from caste-based traditional occupations, those unable to transition were to be provided with a degree of social security. The state was indeed a pioneer in the creation of a vibrant public distribution system and welfare board which provides many protections to informal workers.
road ahead
Liberalization also promoted existing manufacturing industries, such as textiles and leather, and service industries such as IT and financial services. All this led to further urbanization. Decades of gains in the development of technical education, reservation for middle and lower castes in higher education and public health, to name a few, liberalization in economic, social and geographical terms have paved the way to benefit more people. ,
However, poverty has now been urbanised, with new, precarious jobs created largely in the informal sector. This indicates that eviction rates from traditional and agriculture-based occupations have been higher than decent job creation in urban areas, pointing to the need for urban employment guarantees. While the caste hierarchy has weakened to an extent, caste segregation continues, including the urban TN. The DMK regime has rightly been criticized for allowing the eviction of the urban poor from Chennai, citing the successes of the Dravidian model.
The Dravidian leaders have perhaps over-emphasised urbanization as an ideal outcome, while not paying enough attention to the urban processes themselves. The absence of adequate participatory governance, such as the implementation of the 74th Amendment, has increased dependence on bureaucracy and political actors rather than empowering the people. Dravidian urbanization now has to contend with these structural problems as well as massive rent demands, particularly in natural resources, to plug gaps in the face of Tamil Nadu’s relatively better development results.
Kalaiyarasan A. is an assistant professor at the Madras Institute of Development Studies, India, and a research associate at the South Asia Institute, Harvard University, US; Preeti Narayan is a Faculty at the University of British Columbia, Canada