In conversation with Anbumani Ramadoss, the man who believes his party has a shot at ruling Tamil Nadu

R.Ramasubramanian| The News Minute| February 22, 2015| 8.00 pm ISTThe 46 year old Dr Anbumani Ramadoss is nowadays a busy man with a hectic tour schedule. The Prince Charming of the Pattali Makkal Katchi or the PMK is the Chief Ministerial candidate of the party for the May 2016 assembly elections of Tamil Nadu. On February 15, the PMK at its general council meeting in Salem formally announced that Anbumani is its CM candidate who will lead an alliance headed by PMK to fight the 2016 elections. The former union health minister in the first UPA govt is presently representing the Dharmapuri Lok Sabha constituency and the lone PMK MP in Parliament. The only son of PMK founder Dr.S.Ramadoss, Anbumani is a qualified medical professional.In an exclusive hour long freewheeling interview with The News Minute at his Chennai residence, Anbumani touched upon various issues and reiterated the stand that hereafter the PMK will not join either with the DMK nor the AIADMK.“We are openly apologizing to the people of TN for aligning with the DMK and AIADMK in the past. This is the only party which has apologized openly. We will not repeat this huge mistake in future” Anbumani told TNM, an idea reminiscent of Arvind Kejriwal in New Delhi. Explaining his plans for Tamil Nadu , he spoke of free common education with CBSE Standards, free healthcare with emphasis on preventive health initiatives, proper due for farmers like raising the MSPs for sugarcane and other crops, free solar pump sets, etc. He said today the people of Tamil Nadu are longing for a change as both the Dravidian parties have ruined the state with freebies, maladministration, monumental corruption and demanding 10% commission for clearing any new projects. Today Anbumani is comparing himself with Aravind Khejriwal and says he will repeat the same in Tamil Nadu. Hard proposition indeed, but Anbumani is confident. “In Delhi,people did not want both the BJP and the Congress and thus voted for the AAP. The same is true here as people do not want DMK and the AIADMK and the PMK is the only party which can fill the vacuum”.If Kejriwal has anti corruption as his main plank, Anbumani says he has two prominent issues to galvanize votes. “One is prohibition and the other one is anti corruption crusade. TN has 5.6 crore voters and over half of them are women and 100% will support us on this. Likewise anti corruption plank. We will have special toll free numbers for complaints and redress and this will be monitored by a senior level official in the CM cell. So we have plans to lure youngsters”. But how will the party which is considered as a party of Vanniyars(caste) aim to catch the votes of others too? Of late even Anbumani is not mentioning the word Vanniyar? “No again this is wrong. The PMK is a party for every caste and religion. I have never used the word Vanniyar in PMK meetings and this is from the beginning. Vanniyar Sangam is different and PMK is different. It’s like the RSS and the BJP. But Vanniyar Sangam is not the parent body of PMK”. But how will the party handle the Dalits? After all the PMK is having a running battle with Dalits especially in northern Tamil Nadu for the past couple of years, especially after the infamous Dharmapuri incident wherein a Dalit boy eloping with a Vannier girl created huge caste clashes. Hundreds of Dalit houses were torched, their properties destroyed and finally this culminated in the suicide of the Dalit boy after the girl decided to go with her mother. “This is a media tag. The PMK was never in the past, nor in the present nor in the future an anti Dalit party. We only oppose fringe elements who claim that they alone are the saviors of Dalits. No political party in the country had done so much for Dalits like the PMK. When I was union health minister I implemented the Thorat Committee report which assured adequate representation to Dalits in all segments of health ministry across the country. Our first two union ministers were Dalits and even today our General Secretary is a Dalit and this is nothing but a systematic attack to malign our image”. Now he is the CM candidate of a party which is perceived to be against love marriages. And in a state wherein over 2 crore young voters in the age group of 18 to 30 are going to vote in the next elections, what strategy the party will adopt to lure youngsters and also shed these negative images. “Again this a media tag. I was never against love marriages. I was only against enactment of love marriages for money and properties. My only demand is that the marriage age of girls should be raised to 21”. If it is done then there is no problem for him and he will not demand like his father that parental consent is a must for registering marriages. On political front Anbumani is of the opinion that there is nothing wrong with PMK‘s announcement of its own CM candidate. “The Shiv Sena in Maharashtra, INLD and SAD in Haryana are indeed part of the NDA. But they fought the elections on their own and had their CM candidates. Even here when there was UPA, it was DPA in Tamil Nadu. So where is the question of hurting coalition dharma,” Anbumani says.Is it not dynasty politics? “No way. It’s not like the DMK wherein the father is the CM, one son deputy CM, another son union minister, daughter an MP and grandson, another minister. I was elected by a proper procedure in the party organization. More over my father does not hold any post either in the party or in the government, so where is the question of family rule?” asks Anbumani. On the CBI case pending against him he says it was on a procedural lapse and there was no money trail charges leveled against him by the Charge sheet and assures he will come out unscathed. But whatever may be brave words today, the common perception in TN today is that the PMK will at the last minute join with either one of the Dravidian parties as it did in the past? “So you are saying that we are doing this as a bargaining chip to increase our numbers? Do you think that we will stake our credibility and myself will ruin my own reputation to this much extent? I assure you that we will not do the same mistake. 101% we will not join with the DMK or the AIADMK in future and again reiterate we will not repeat the mistake.” These are brave words by PMK. But the ground reality is that PMK enjoys just 5 to 6% votes in Tamil Nadu. In the 2001 assembly elections it polled 5.2% votes (with the AIADMK alliance), in 2006 it polled 5.7 (with the DMK) and in 2011, it polled 5.2 (with DMK). It’s not exactly clear how a party with just 6% votes is going to capture power. But Anbumani says they will torpedo every calculation and capture power like the AAP in New Delhi. May be a pipe dream,but one will have to wait till 2016 to see if any of it comes true ( ….. One has no alternative either) Tweet