Overall, the Thalaivi trailer is a convincing experience, says veteran Tamil Nadu politics watcher N Sathiya Moorthy.
From Sri Lanka's most popular political family to its most despised -- going by the voices on the streets calling for the Rajapaksas' ouster -- what went wrong for the clan? Veteran Sri Lanka watcher N Sathiya Moorthy offers an insight.
Unless each attack drone can be neutralised, India will be literally deploying elephants to stamp out ants -- and the ants may still survive! points out N Sathiya Moorthy.
The going is not going to be easy for the DMK and its allies in Elections 2024. Despite the seats sweepstake in the 2021 assembly polls, the vote-share difference of 5.6% (DMK's 45.38% versus AIADMK-BJP's 39.72%) is not insurmountable on a bad day, points out N Sathiya Moorthy.
What happens when two former ministers go up against each other? No sparks fly, reports A Ganesh Nadar from the Arakkonam Lok Sabha constituency in Tamil Nadu, but it is the summer heat that has the last word on the campaign.
The continuing fiscal stimulus is heavily tilted towards capex, to the extent that it chips away a part of revenue spending. Accounting for other areas of revenue expenditure, such as salaries, pensions, subsidies and defence (committed spend), the room to spend on welfare schemes, health and education will narrow in FY22.
For the current woes of the state to end, in city after city, town after town, village after village, unauthorised constructions have to be removed, no questions asked, says N Sathiya Moorthy.
The AIADMK's staying power is not in question, but it has to regain the winning streak. That will require its leaders and leadership to re-wire themselves, to be able to re-think situations in ways different from what they had been accustomed to, suggests Sathiya Moorthy.
The Tamil Nadu chief minister may have opened a Pandora's Box on the religion front with the appointment of qualified non-Brahmin temple priests, observes N Sathiya Moorthy.
The real battle for NEET abolition can take much more time and energy, observes N Sathiya Moorthy.
Finance Minister P T R Palanivel Thiagarajan has proclaimed his determination to set Tamil Nadu's fiscal house in order in five years, and Friday will show how he plans to go about it when he rises to present the Stalin government's maiden budget, says N Sathiya Moorthy.
Tamil Nadu Chief Minister M K Stalin's Cabinet, including him, would be 34-member strong and he has retained senior leaders like Duraimurugan and over a dozen shall be ministers for the first time.
'In India, a large proportion of the labour force does not have a regular job.' 'People are mostly employed as daily wage workers, agricultural labourers, small farmers and self-employed traders.' 'These move in and out of "jobs" fairly rapidly.' 'It is the high proportion of these workers in India that makes unemployment volatile,' explains Mahesh Vyas.
Tax officials are scrutinising other cross-border mergers like the Vodafone-Hutchison deal for possible tax evasion after the Bombay High Court rejected a petition against imposition of tax on the deal, a key Finance Ministry official said.
Indicators are that there has been little enthusiasm for Rajinikanth's entry into politics, owing possibly to his 'hide-and-seek' game over the subject since the early to mid-nineties. That was when Rajinikanth was already a superstar, says N Sathiya Moorthy.
'With his going, my relationship with the Kapoor family has ended.'
13-year-old Indian-origin Aadith Moorthy from Florida has won the 22nd annual National Geographic Bee.
It does not stop here, though. According to field information, state ministers, AIADMK candidates and campaigners are asking BJP cadres accompanying them not to carry party flags at common rallies and also avoid their saffron shawl on those occasions. BJP cadres are also asked to stay out of the common campaign when it enters a minority-dominated areas, especially of Muslims, and re-join later, says N Sathiya Moorthy.
The revived factionalism in the AIADMK, if not curbed now, has the potential to split the party vertically, warns N Sathiya Moorthy.
Chief Minister Stalin seems to have drawn a line between his personal beliefs and those of others in the family, beginning with wife Durga Stalin, observes N Sathiya Moorthy.
Indian claims to the Ram story and ownership could be challenged from more places than one, says N Sathiya Moorthy.
Tamil star Suriya's 7aum Arivu was about a virus from China sent to Chennai to wreak havoc while Kaappan was about a locust attack the hero prevents in time -- both films in a sense foresaw what was to come, observes N Sathiya Moorthy.
In a country where 'booth-capturing' and open intimidation of voters used to be a part of the poll processes until not very long ago -- and remains a factor even now - postal vote can challenge the very credibility of the electoral process as a whole, says N Sathiya Moorthy.
Chief Minister MK Stalin has shown that he is cut from a different cloth when it comes to embracing what is current, modern and absolutely necessary. Thus, even while retaining the spirit and content of the pan-Tamil, Dravidian socio-political and socio-economic ideology to the 't', his government has also acknowledged the need to accepting scientifically-proven facts in operational matters, says N Sathiya Moorthy.
New Union minister L Murugan's declaration of Kongu Nadu as his native place, instead of Tamil Nadu, may be part of a grand BJP strategy to create new states out of existing ones, particularly those that have anti-BJP governments, mulls N Sathiya Moorthy.
Hindraf, a Malaysian outfit spearheading a stir by ethnic-Indians, will press the Commonwealth to suspend Kuala Lumpur from the body for its discriminatory policies against the community."We will urge the 54-member Commonwealth to suspend Malaysia from its body," said Malaysia-born Waytha Moorthy, founder-chairman of the Hindu Rights Action Force. Moorthy, a lawyer by profession, is currently seeking asylum in United Kingdom after the Malaysian government revoked his passport
President Rajapaksa and Prime Minister Rajapaksa will transform Sri Lanka's political landscape after Thursday's electoral triumph, predicts N Sathiya Moorthy, veteran Colombo watcher.
By the looks of it, the Congress cannot hope to return to power even in election 2024. What it can do is to start from the bottom, hold organisational elections, which are honest, and co-opt those elected to form teams of office-bearers at all levels, right up to the working committee. By the very nature of the elections that they are going to lose, the party should use the interim to shore up youth power, or whatever remains, says N Sathiya Moorthy.
What will a split in the AIADMK mean for Tamil Nadu?
Sasikala's declaration of staying away from politics does not necessarily have to mean that she was retiring for good. She is only taking time to evaluate the post-poll chances of hers before digging in again, if possible, says N Sathiya Moorthy.
For Prime Minister Narendra Modi to dig up the perceived past of the DMK rival, now under a new leader in M K Stalin, may not gel with the voters, both old and new. If they are still going to vote for the AIADMK-BJP combine, it will be for entirely different reasons, and despite Modi's poll speeches, says N Sathiya Moorthy.
Stalin owes his victory this time, like in 2019, to the hate-campaign of the local Hindutva forces, which kept haranguing him, and even his dead father, notes N Sathiya Moorthy.
Unlike the regimes of Jayalalitha, Palaniswami and Karunanidhi, ministers are actually getting to make decisions on their own, with the unmentioned rider that they would be held responsible and accountable, observes N Sathiya Moorthy.
If purists are surprised as to why and how people are not demanding prohibition or not talking about past promises, both in the election manifestos five years back and even those made to the courts, the answer lies in how the state has been evolving and changing these past few years, says N Sathiya Moorthy.
It looks as if competing political parties in Tamil Nadu have not grasped the full impact and import of a sizable section of voters possibly staying away from voting -- voters, supposedly with a predictable polling pattern -- owing to the Covid second wave and more so, how it could affect the outcome in individual constituencies and even booths, says N Sathiya Moorthy.
Elections 2024 is not as open and shut as has been presumed. There is some life left in it, observes N Sathiya Moorthy.
MK Stalin's ruling AIDMK rival does not thankfully face such problems as he did, but its problems could be worse if saner counsel does not prevail between now and the assembly polls, warns N Sathiya Moorthy.
If solutions are not found, adequately and in good time, things could simply slip out of everyone's hands, warns N Sathiya Moorthy.
The contemporary problem with the BJP in Tamil Nadu is that it has been trying hard to package the DMK especially as anti-god and anti-Hinduism, and seeking it to link to Periyar and M Karunanidhi, and by extension to Stalin, the latter's son and successor to the party mantle. Their hope was to consolidate the perceived 'pro-god, pro-religion votes', which they saw returning to the fold post-MGR, post-Jayalalithaa. But no such substantial vote-bank existed even in Periyar's time, says N Sathiya Moorthy.
For now, the BJP's strategy for Khushbu seems to be one of denial -- denying the rival Congress in the state and also at the national-level a Muslim voice acceptable to Hindu audiences and TV news-watchers. This is much less than the induction of DMK veterans like Duraiswamy and Selvam, who still have a greater chances of winning assembly seats,, says N Sathiya Moorthy.
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