T N Highs

My visit schedule was two days in Madurai and two days in Salem.

The outskirts of both the districts and the way to surrounding villages had a lush green appearance because of the acres of paddy fields, sugarcane crops, fruit orchards and the coconut palms. Looks like the state is busy producing food abundantly. That’s quite an encouragement for the growing food insecure population.

The highways are a plus point of the state. They look well maintained and are quite wide. I loved the Volvo bus ride from Madurai to Salem, the many places that we passed by. There were numerous residential schools, training institutions, higher study institutes etc lined up all the way till Salem. The town roads had concrete pavements, which acted as speed-breakers,  made provision for water seepage and also provided a neat look to the town. It called for less annual maintenance too. 

I was impressed by the women in the villages. They meant business. Most of them were part of the self help groups and they did well in terms of saving, accessing matching grants and benefiting from all schemes of the Govt. They lent money to people in need within the community at low interest rates. They were into income generation programs too.

Met quite a few PLWHAs and it was encouraging to see how their lives have changed from a discriminated and stigma affected lot to people who lived with dignity. One thing that really stood up was that they kept themselves updated on all the new medicines and research that came up on this and were inquiring about it to the staff of the organization.

The freebies of Tamil Nadu’s political parties has been a topic of debate for sometime now. Almost all the houses had colour TVs, free gas connection, all the school going (9^th grade above) and the college going young people have laptops, free bicycles,  , and so on…The freebies are promises kept by the political parties in their manifestos.. The issue may hinge on what a freebie is, what constitutes a social security net, and defining the thin line that separates the two.

The sudden increase in the levels of education in the state is surely contributed by the schemes like granting Rs 500 a year for girls belonging to SC/ ST and most backward classes studying in Class III to V and Rs 1,000 to those in Class VI to VIII, or free bus passes to all students. Free sanitary napkins are distributed to girls studying in rural schools. It was encouraging to see that Tamil Nadu is actively promoting the scheme under which a girl belonging to the BPL category can get marriage assistance of Rs 20,000, and another under which she can get one or two grams of gold for her mangalsutra.  These are linked to her educational qualifications. This acts as an added incentive for the parents to educate the girls at least till 10^th grade.