Jobs, the silent factor in Tamil Nadu polls : India

By Papri Sri Raman

Sivaganga (Tamil Nadu), May 6 - Finally the deciding factor for 46 million Tamil Nadu voters in the May 8 assembly elections may be something no one is really talking about - jobs.

The Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) in a recent skill mapping study here has said there will be 15 million jobs going in Tamil Nadu by 2015 in the textile, automobile, leather and light engineering industry, financial services and construction.

In the coming years, the party that promises jobs and can deliver will form the government of the future.

In Sivaganga district, 600 km south of state capital Chennai, in the heart of opulent Chettinad where rich merchant homes are made of teak and ebony, the fields are withering.

'As many as 70 percent of people here live by agriculture,' points out All-India Kisan Sabha member P. Kalidas. 'But now most people in this district have become 'coolies', unorganised labourers doing odd jobs who do not have work for even 200 days a year.'

The region is the home turf of several important politicians, including India's visionary Finance Minister P. Chidambaram. But the only industry here is a sugar mill.

The area is unsuitable for water hungry paddy and sugarcane, but this is the only kind of crop grown in the region. 'No one here has yet brought us an alternative,' says farmer Sethuraman.

'There is no reservoir in the region and the groundwater level is very low,' points out Communist Party of India (CPI) activist Kuppusamy.

'Employment is the single largest issue in all areas in and around Madurai,' P. Mohan, a Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPI-M) MP, told IANS while campaigning in Madurai district.

'Because of the poverty of the region, no one wants to start any new industry here. There were four textile mills which once provided 18,000 jobs, now only 1,500 are employed in these mills.'

'In Madurai, once there were 50,000 handloom workers, now there are only about 3,000 of them are left. Rural unemployment is the single largest problem today.'

'The AIADMK at a stroke of the pen sacked 10,000 road construction workers, attempted to retrench 200,000 government staff following a general strike,' Mohan points out.

His party is in the DMK-led alliance along with the CPI. The DMK has promised to fill up 300,000 government posts that are now vacant and reinstate the road workers if voted to power.

'If the DMK government comes to power, we will act as a pressure group. We will keep our promise to generate more jobs in Tamil Nadu and change the socio-economic profile of the southern districts,' Mohan insists.

The two left parties are contesting 23 seats in the southern districts in textile belts like Tiruppur, Avinashi, Kovilpatti, Srivilliputhur, tsunami devastated Nagapattinam, Dindigul, Chidambaram, Mannargudi.

Sivaganga CPI candidate S. Gunasekaran said: 'I want the graphite factory in Kumarapatti reopened. The mine here yields world-class graphite that can be used to make rocket and aeroplane parts, camera parts. It can be developed as a major industry'.

'The National Textile Corporation mill here is sick. The Sivaganga general hospital is not sufficient to meet peoples' needs, it needs to be modernised.'

In close by Ramanathapuram district, fishing communities say their livelihood is threatened by the Sethusamudram canal project. The 1,000-km long Tamil Nadu coast brings in about $8 billion in seafood export every year.

IT is expected to play a big role on the jobs front in the state.

In Tirunelveli district, the Nungunery IT park is expected to generate thousands of jobs.

The ruling AIADMK has promised to create 500,000 IT jobs in the next five years if it is voted back to power. The CII study says there will be 800,000 IT and ITES jobs in Tamil Nadu by 2015.

The AIADMK manifesto also points out that in the year 2005 alone, 400 new IT firms have come up in the state.

Big companies like Hewlett Packard, Philips, Accenture, General Electric, Microsoft, TCS, Wipro, Satyam, HCL, Infosys are setting up offices not only in Chennai but also in cities like Coimbatore and Tiruchi. Software exports from the state stood at Rs.150 billion at the beginning of 2006.

The AIADMK is contesting 182 of the 234 assembly seats while the DMK has put up candidates for 129. But jobs will be what the next Tamil Nadu government will have to deliver on, no matter who wins.