Quick Gun political economy

A film like Quick Gun Murugan, the protagonist being a Tamil cowboy and the plot being a take-off on hundreds of Tamil superhero movies, would have created a stir in Tamil Nadu 20 years ago. The super-sensitive south Indian would have deeply resented the north Indian (anything from Mumbai and beyond was and still is north) laughing at him. Today, people either think the film is a good laugh or dismiss it as repetitious and tedious. The south has become self-confident and no longer cares about what the rest of the country thinks about it. For example, the DMK chief could demand and get almost all the Cabinet posts he wanted from his alliance partner. His politics was all wrong. But his action was indicative of something good: self-confidence comes when you are economically and politically strong. When the Indian economy opened up, the south quietly used it to its advantage. The concept of regional parties and the power they can wield had its origins in the south. One can almost sense the moment when things started turning around for the south. Karnataka was a sleepy state with predominantly public sector units (HMT, BEL, HAL and so on) and a few plantation companies. Some time in the 1980s, many Kolkata-based multinationals shifted to Bangalore because of the deteriorating industrial climate in West Bengal. The next breakthrough came when the first major US IT company set up shop in Bangalore. Among those early birds were Motorola and Texas Instruments. Almost every big name is in Bangalore, which emerged as the Silicon Valley of India with home-grown MNCs like Infosys and Wipro.

Tamil Nadu, which was seen as arch-conservative and losing out to aggressive predators from the north, changed gears when Ford chose to set up shop in Chennai. Then followed Hyundai and other auto companies. The state’s private engineering colleges and computer training centres were providing trained personnel to manufacturing units that were coming up. Chennai also emerged as a major back-office centre when the World Bank chose to shift its back-office operations to the city. Today, there is a BPO in almost all streets of Chennai. Andhra Pradesh became Cyberabad after its chief minister reinvented himself as the CEO of the state. Thanks to Chandrababu Naidu, the state leads in many systemic changes in administration. Its next chief minister, YSR Reddy, paid attention to agriculture and welfare schemes, but didn’t overturn Naidu’s policies, and his terribly untimely demise has generated great concern about the choice of a new leader. Everybody understands that a chief minister has to be committed to growth. Kerala is the sad exception. The ruling CPM there is split between ideologues and apparently pro-industry groups. With growth, there have been many problems as well in the south. Neglected infrastructure is becoming a constraint. The freebie culture is draining government coffers. But the south today seems better poised to get its act together than many other states north of the Vindhyas.