It is indeed gratifying to learn from our politicos, particularly our home-grown dravidian darlings, that India has become an IT super power, with TN all set to emerge as the sub-super power. Though this isnât news by itself as the revolution has been happening for more than a decade now and it is only of late that the politicians have latched on to the bandwagon, what is really news is the CMâs grand declaration that the knowledge industry in TN has grown by leaps and bounds only owing to the active participation and with the wholesome patronage of the DMK government!
He even reeled out statistics on software exports from TN in the last three years to prove his point. Well, well, so there lies the secret of the success of our software engineers who had all along been nurtured by the very modern, rational dravidian diet dished out by these leaders that worked wonders on their cyber cells making them the whizkids that they eventually turned out to be. Curse us, the irrational, undravidian, anti-Tamil nuts who were thinking that the IT revolution happened in spite of the government and that the knowledge industry itself was young Indiaâs answer to Mandal!
Though Karunanidhiâs enlightening announcement struck us like a thunderbolt, thus retrieving us from the irrational ignorance that we had all lapsed into with regard to the mighty IT vision of his government, one need not go far to find the reasons why the CM chose to let us in on the secret only yesterday.
The presence of Indiaâs CEO Vajpayee, the looming facade of the wondrous Tidel park in the background, the congregation of quite a few big names of the IT industry and above all the lure and modernity of the virtual world, all together offer the perfect setting to inspire even a co-born like Saidai Kittu to claim to have dined with annan Bill Gates.
How can the redoubtable Kalaingar, the supreme thalaivan, miss the opportunity that can, at lucky 77, catapult him to the enviable position of Cybernaiduâs fashionable CM? After all is it not the politically correct thing to do in order to remain in the limelight that the politicians of his ilk are so much addicted to? With the neighbouring Naidu, who was not invited for tactical reasons, all set to conquer the cyber world, can the other CMs afford to be reduced to cyphers?
But then having started late, the only option our visionary CM had, in hindsight, was to appropriate the credit for all that had happened albeit without his blessings, on the IT front in TN with one decisive click. Now, the eternal plaque and his well publicised utterings would stand testimony to his IT savvy disposition, while facts and history would be buried in the euphoria of the present.
As if this was not enough, more sodium chloride was added to the wound by another DMK worthy who had the temerity to bemoan the brain drain that was and is till taking place from the country. Pray, who chased all that brains away to distant lands? Were not these very dravidian paragons who had sold themselves as champions of reservation directly responsible for obliterating and wiping out the presence of merit from the surface of education?
Have they not been demanding quotas in anything and everything in a fit of competitive political opportunism and one upmanship just to undercut their opponents in their common bid for power? Were not the political edifices of these men built solely on a cultivated hatred for the upper classes, which as empirical evidence can prove, was primarily responsible for the IT boom that has now gripped all and sundry, irrespective of caste.
This is not to suggest that the so-called aryans of the dravidian lexicon are intellectually superior, but to highlight the fact that most of the pioneering torch-bearers of the IT revolution that the politicians are so eager to be photographed with, were actually rejects of a flawed reservation system that chose to ignore merit and talent and recognise only the caste certificate. Such youth who had absolute faith in their knowledge and skill did not wail and wilt but promptly set about creating their own domain in cyberia. The IT revolution of today is their gift to their motherland that actually threw them out.
Their success has been stupendous and has happened without any help from the government or political parties, something that has turned out to be a blessing. For such politicians to woo them now is indeed a pleasant irony and their tendency to usurp the credit for their success ranks as a comic tragedy!
At the same time it also raises apprehensions on what would happen if the politicians were to dabble with the industry which so far has eluded their greedy eyes and greased palms. The advent of IT into the politicianâs realms has had other effects too like for instance on the linguistic count.
The aryan Jis from the north and the dravidian annans down south have merged into a new dialect of cyber jargon that at times seemed comically incongruent to their well-known proclivity for noisy rhetoric. There was a lesson or two also for the loyal co-borns to imbibe, for till date IT had meant only Income Tax and its very mention has only caused understandable tension.
Not so any more, for under Karunanidhi, TN has now been upgraded and he has made the mention of IT more politician-friendly. The intensity of the IT infection can be gauged from the fact that the Tamil-only CM chose to address the audience in Clintonâs English to enhance his cyber image as also to remain on the right side of the digital divide and one would have wished him to have been attired in a trendy suit, with an yellow tie thrown in for instant identification.
Drunk as he was in the IT glory of his regime, the CMâs speech was laced with all the buzzwords of the cyber world as he held forth on the grandiose designs that his government had for the knowledge industry. The CM spared the audience of any reference to Annaâs gibberish or Periyarâs shibboleths, a welcome change, but strangely even refrained from mentioning Aiyyan or his Kurals.
If I remember right there was not even the traditional vanakkam in the beginning or a nandri at the end while the very aryan Vajpayee was more careful. The CMâs IT compliance seems complete.
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