Tamil Nadu : Some positive aspects

Hi,

I’m Sethupathi Balakrishnan. I am a Tamil Guy. I have been a strong critic about TN for quite some time. However, I must admit that TN has definitely got some USP’s that I admire. They are →

1. Getting rid of the surname.
2. Exceptional medical infrastructure and quality of doctors.
3. Staggering Road Infrastructure.
4. It’s been leading in the “Mechanical” Design and Manufacturing sector.
5. TN Chief Minister’s (EPS) emergency response to COVID19. (The govt’s response was however very poor during the time of Chennai floods)
6. Humility among the public (Be it a millionaire or a daily wager)
7. The Transport infrastructure has significantly improved over the past few years.
8. Crime Rate (It’s very minimal when compared to the Northern States)
9. TN Police Force (Arguably one of the best in the Nation)
10. Discipline : The people in general tend to adhere to law and order.
11. Tax Payers. The southern states contribute to approx. 40% of the entire taxes collected in the Nation.
12. Movie Ticket Pricing. Movie tickets have gone upto Rs 180–220 here in Bangalore. I believe they are still priced at Rs 120–150 in Chennai.
13. “Zoho” originated from TN and is headquartered in Chennai. It has rocked the startup space and can no longer can be called a startup. It has scaled beautifully and is profitable.
14. The general quality of life has improved. There are almost ‘0’ households in TN where people are not getting food. There is at-least one guy who is educated in a family. However, this might not be the most optimal solution. We need to be moving towards getting better quality education and doing better quality jobs.
15. Power Cuts in TN have significantly gone down in the recent years.

I would also like to state some of the things that I do not like about TN.

1. Removal of Entrance Exams → I am not saying that Entrance Exams are the best way to judge the capacity of a person. However, not having an entrance exam is also not the solution.
2. As Balaji Vishwanathan rightly says “The modern Tamils are not aligned to do/achieve great things”. Most of them are jobless or doing very trivial jobs. There are fights over Celebrity Stars.
3. The behaviour of the so-called modern Tamils in CMBT bus station when the lock-down was announced was pathetic. And these are the “salaried” crowd I am talking about. The crowd that was present at Delhi’s Anand Vihar Bus Station and Mumbai’s Bandra Bus station were that of daily wagers. They didn't have anything else but to go home. This attitude of the new Tamils is just gross.
4. Increase in the number of service oriented organisations in Chennai. The no. of product based organisations in TN is very less AFAIK.
5. Resistance against Hindi. This was started decades back when Hindi was forced upon us. Agreed that Tamil is the oldest and the purest. However, strictly ignoring to learn a language where a significant portion of the population speak is probably not a good idea. People from Kerala, Karnataka, Telangana or AP are equally south-indians. However, I did not observe resistance of this scale in these states.
6. Representation in Central Institutions/Organisations → Be it the Indian Defence, Indian Space, Indian Nuclear Programmes, IITs, IIMs, AIIMS, even VIT for that matter, the representation from TN is far far less. However, 30 years back, there was a significant representation from TN. In-fact there was a domination. I have seen people arguing that one need not prove his/her self-worth by only going to these institutions. This is the consequence of not having an entrance examination right after 12th grade. I was struggling to face these entrance exams because I never had any prior experience preparing seriously for these exams before. Since there is very less representation of TN junta in IITs, IIMs, as an after effect there would be very less representation in Big Corporates like McKinsey, Google, Adobe etc from TN. If and only if there are people from TN in big corporates, they can influence their bosses to funnel/pump money into TN.
7. Little to no motivation to participate and win Olympiads. (IMO,IphO,IOI,NTSE,KVPY etc) I know this is too much to ask. However, people in Delhi do prepare for these exams from a very young age.

There is however one counter-example. (West Bengal). They have the best education, best institutions, best scholars India has ever seen but Kolkata is not so developed. This is purely because of the ignorance of the politicians.

These are just my observations. I maybe wrong.

— Sethupathi Balakrishnan