Dr Palanivel Thiaga Rajan (PTR)
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As in 2021
Sugata Srinivasaraju, June 9, 2021: The Times of India
American comedian Blaire Erskine put out a tweet, on Monday, saying that she knew it was not healthy to engage trolls, but she sometimes offered a weekend treat to herself. “It takes the edge off a long week of being happily employed and very hot,” she tweeted. One of the respondents to this tweet was Dr Palanivel Thiaga Rajan or PTR, Tamil Nadu’s finance minister, who also holds the portfolio of human resources management. He playfully remarked: “So true… even for those of us who are just plain-looking nerds (unlike you [uses the FIRE emoji to suggest whatever], of course).” The context, and casualness of this response apart, it must be noted that there is, arguably, no other elected representative in India today, with such demonstrable smarts, packed confidence, and slangish coolness when it comes to articulation in the media or on social media platforms.
PTR is about a month-old as a minister, and for practically all the waking hours in his public role, it appears he has not had a quiet moment because his sharp mind has restlessly got entwined with his sharp tongue to roll out a string of controversies. He has been chasing trolls online and offline, naming and (with impeccable reason, deductive logic, and artillery of words) shaming them. At least in the pan-Indian space, the focus has been more on him than his boss, MK Stalin. He was welcomed by a double-tongued media even as Stalin, who led the poll victory, was being falsely characterised as a ‘pappu’ and a ‘rogue student leader’. To get him to shoot more arrows, there has been a winding queue to interview him, and he has had to wriggle out with sweet messages (“request the kind indulgence of my friends in the media to allow me to focus on efforts related to Covid19”). Occasional tweets like these composed in relative calm, and those that invoke nostalgia and offer tribute to elders are rare, soft items on his timeline, which otherwise resembles a battlefield. He could easily be a John Osborne protagonist but for his corporate history.
To his credit PTR, as a minister, has fought public battles but with a slight overzealousness and intimidating bluntness – qualities that we usually do not associate with regular politicians. This has made people say he is refreshingly new and a welcome change. Even P Chidambaram (PC) who hails from the same Madurai region as PTR, and who is equally assured about his intelligence, which has a similar scaffolding of linguistic sting, appears mellow before PTR. Perhaps it is age. In the olden days there was, of course, Mani Shankar Aiyar. The other day, somebody on Twitter said that Shashi Tharoor had competition in an emerging PTR. That is not accurate because Tharoor’s deployment of language does not have the muscle or bone strength of a PTR or a PC. It is imprecise smartness that does not wish to offend anybody but seeks to waltz with everybody. Subramaniam Swamy may be another reference for this archetype, but his volleys are served with personal bitterness.
Here are some arrows that have left PTR’s quiver in the last 30 days: His inaugural ball was with a godman whom he called a “charlatan, publicity hound and a commercial operator”. That was not an arrow but a sledgehammer. Even Kangana Ranaut’s intervention in support of the godman could not take away even a single syllable of his glory. Then, he said Prime Minister Modi’s “reach was greater than his grasp” and made it sound like a truism. He also said he has not heard a single speech-performance of the PM and does not see much value in them. Then came the big moment after a GST council meet, when he was sufficiently provoked by Goa’s transport minister Mauvin Godinho. He issued a full statement which, unlike the standard dullness of the process, was inflammable material. Some of the phrases he used to describe the minister were “largely vacuous”, “supercilious” and an “empty vessel”.
PTR ended the statement by lobbing a grenade at the BJP: “I sincerely request the BJP… to impose some minimal quality control on its ‘MLA acquisition’ procedures”. Nobody checked if the BJP understood the dripping sarcasm. With another woman BJP leader, PTR asked if she was a “congenital liar” or had low IQ. The battle with BJP leader H Raja, who was getting personal with his potshots, went to a new level when PTR said he maintained a certain “standard” and would not answer “barking dogs”. Each of these statements have had a longer-than-usual news cycle and have overshadowed the good work he has done with both financial and Covid management. Recently, even when he took up the case of the states, and correctly schooled a journalist on how Modi was in an elected chair and should spend people’s money to buy vaccines for all without thinking that he was spending from his “ancestral property”, it was his aggression that got clipped into becoming a viral video.
The important question to ask here is what gives PTR this level of unmatched confidence and combativeness? Some would say it is the hubris of a top investment banker who has been to Ivy League institutions in the US. Some say he is MK Stalin’s secret weapon, strategically placed at No. 26 in the Cabinet hierarchy, but most would point to the enormous privilege of his family legacy. PTR’s grandfather was a chief minister in pre-Independence India, and his father was a Speaker of the Tamil Nadu legislative assembly. The family’s contributions to some iconic temples in Madurai and southern India, and its role in nurturing the Justice Party that gradually morphed into Periyar’s Dravida Kazhagam and eventually the DMK, has been highlighted often by him.
PTR calls himself a ‘fourth generation Dravidian in public service’ and as a testimonial, has pinned a tribute that Periyar wrote in 1928 for one of his elders. But PTR is an atypical Dravidian leader, in the sense that he has a fiercely independent and agitational mindset, but has not circumscribed to regional causes. He invokes a rigidly-atheist Periyar and a liberally-atheist Anna Dorai with vermillion and ash across his forehead. In a hyper-nationalistic milieu, this works as a shield for him. When godlessness can make someone anti-national in our time, he is a devout sub-nationalist with a global connection and a technocratic familiarity. The paradoxes are obvious.
However, there is an apparent meritocratic whim in PTR when he charges people with insufficient brain capacity. The educated middle-class and those from the upper castes, the opinionistas (like fashionistas) may applaud this, but it has the real danger of alienating a large, inarticulate audience that quickly develops a low self-esteem and quiet anger against the supreme snobbery of the educated and legacy elites. PTR shouldn’t look like a calcification of both categories. We need to remember that a reaction to a decade of the ‘smart versus dumb’ arguments made Washington appear like a place rigged by elites and led to the creation of Donald Trump as President. This political short circuit happened elsewhere too in the world, leading to populist governments. Perhaps PTR wants to establish that he is ‘self-made’ and his legacy, though welcome, does not contribute wholly to his success. Perhaps this is the root of his combativeness; to establish himself on his own merit. That is fair, but in the anxiety of doing so, he sets exacting standards for others without realising they too can do so, and one tiny slip will end his honeymoon. Perhaps he needs to check his speed. There will be enough people to cheer his verbal gladiatorial instincts, but the political consequences will be reserved for PTR alone. He should preserve himself.
Sugata Srinivasaraju chronicles the south
