Chennai: Sivaganga Congress candidate Karti Chidambaram is keeping his campaign narrative simple in his constituency Sivaganga as he runs for re-election in the upcoming Lok Sabha polls.
From explaining the Centre’s reluctance to disburse funds to Tamil Nadu and price rise to “North Indian Hindutva”, the MP is breaking issues down for the voters, simply and effectively, dotting his campaign speeches with examples that buttress his pitch.
The main weapon in Chidambaram’s armour against the BJP is price rise. At his street campaign in Arimalam in Sivaganga Sunday, he attacked the central government for increasing prices of essential commodities, putting forth comparative prices.
“Soaps sold at Rs 8 are now Rs 20. Shampoo priced at Rs 1 is Rs 5. Rs 200 slippers are Rs 350. School bags sold at Rs 300 are Rs 650. Prices of all commodities have gone up. To reduce all these prices, there should be a change in the government at the Centre,” he told the public gathered.
He kept his reasoning simple to drive home his point. He first asked everyone if they watched television in the evening and which series, if yes. Once the crowd replied, he spoke about the rise in the price of cable connection.
“When the Congress party was in power, cable TV connection was just Rs 55. Now, it is Rs 250. Why did it become Rs 250? Do you know what Modi did? You cannot buy just the one channel that you want to watch. Modi makes you buy at least 25 channels, including that one,” he said.
“An ordinary household watches only four to five channels. You are not watching the others. But, to purchase those four or five channels, you are forced to buy 25 to 30 channels. That’s why the charge is Rs 250,” he added.
To explain Tamil Nadu’s constant grouse against the Centre for not releasing funds for the state – the ruling DMK has even moved the Supreme Court for this – Chidambaram broke his reasoning down to rupees and paisas.
He told his audience that taxpayers in northern states like Uttar Pradesh get more value for their money than those in the south. To underscore his point that fund disbursal is skewed in favour of BJP-ruled states, mostly in the north and central India, the MP said the notion that only the rich pay taxes was wrong.
“Everybody is paying tax. Even if you buy a bar of soap, a comb, camphor or a mirror, you pay tax. There is no product without tax. But, if we pay Rs 1 as tax in Tamil Nadu, we get back only 29 paise. But, in north India, in a Hindi speaking state like Uttar Pradesh, they pay Rs 1 as tax and get back Rs 2.73. What does it mean?” he asked the crowd while speaking in Sivaganga Sunday.
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The crowd waited for him to answer and, after a dramatic pause, Chidambaram said, “You all work, you toil, you earn, you buy a product, pay tax on it and from that money we get only 29 paise and north India gets an average 71 paise. Should our money come to us or should it go to north India?”
He then made his political pitch, urging the electorate to vote for the Opposition and change the government at the Centre.
In Tamil Nadu, allies Congress and the ruling DMK have gone for the same seat-sharing formula as in 2019, with the national party getting nine of the state’s 39 seats and the lone seat in Puducherry.
The Congress has nearly-continuously been in power in Sivaganga since 1980, except between 2014 and 2019, when the allies had broken up, facilitating a win for the AIADMK.
Karti’s father and former Union minister P. Chidambaram has also held this constituency for several terms.
‘North’s vegetarian Hindutva’
Chidambaram, who won Sivaganga in 2019, touched upon casteism, stating that the BJP would try to impose “vegetarian Hindutva” on the south.
He recalled how former AIADMK chief minister J. Jayalalithaa — a Tamil Iyengar Brahmin who supported the BJP — had banned the sacrifice of goats and roosters in temples.
“If BJP comes to power for a third term, they will ban it too. Their Hindutva is upper class, north Indian, Sanskrit vegetarian Hindutva. They are not non-veg eaters like us. They will not accept our habits and culture,” he said.
The incumbent MP, who is facing the AIADMK’s Xavierdas and BJP’s D. Devanathan Yadav, also pitched himself as a common representative for all the people in his constituency, rebuking others for practising caste and communal politics.
“I come with political identity, they come with caste identity. I will be your common representative,” he said.
Presenting the Congress’s “hand” symbol as the panacea to all such “issues”, he reminded the crowd about ally DMK’s concern for women and children. He spoke about the Tamil Nadu government’s Rs 1,000 financial aid for women, free bus service for them, and morning breakfast scheme for school children. He added, “To continue all this, the symbol you must choose is the ‘hand’”.
Incidentally, Chidambaram is being investigated by the Enforcement Directorate in a money-laundering case linked to alleged issuance of visas to some Chinese nationals in 2011.
(Edited by Tikli Basu)
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