TAMIL NADU, (India): 50 days is enough time to stop judging Vijay and Tamilaga Vettri Kazhagam (TVK) on promises and start judging him on what he did. The first 100 days came with a lot of celebration videos and press notes. This piece is colder. It looks at what the government did, what it claimed, and where the facts do not line up.
The short version is this. The welfare push is real. The financial plan is thin. The law and order record is shaky. The government shows a good instinct to correct itself, but it has had to do that too often already.
Government without a clear majority
Start with the arithmetic. TVK won 108 seats on its own, short of the 118 needed in the 234-member Assembly. It formed the government with support from Congress, the Left, the VCK and the IUML. It won a confidence vote on 13 May with 144 votes.
Many of those votes did not come from partners. Twenty-five AIADMK legislators from a rebel camp backed the government, defying their own party leadership. Three of them later resigned their seats and joined TVK. In July, four former AIADMK ministers also crossed over.
A party that promised a clean break is now collecting old AIADMK faces. DMK leaders have alleged that the resignations were designed to dodge the anti-defection law. Whatever the legal answer, the political message is plain. TVK is not rejecting the old machine. It is absorbing parts of it.
The cabinet tells a similar story. TVK holds 31 ministerial posts, with Congress, IUML and VCK holding one or two each. Vijay himself holds the Home and Police portfolios along with several others.
The debt story
Vijay began his term by saying the DMK left behind an empty treasury. He alleged a debt of nearly Rs 10 lakh crore. Stalin replied the same day that funds were available. Both sides were doing what governments and oppositions always do.
Then came the white paper in June. It said direct debt had reached nearly Rs 10 lakh crore, almost double the Rs 4.8 lakh crore of five years ago. It also said the revenue deficit had grown from Rs 46,538 crore to Rs 78,324 crore.
Now look at what happened next. Reports on the same white paper gave a much darker picture. One account said it put total outstanding debt at Rs 13.18 lakh crore. It warned the revenue deficit could widen to around Rs 90,500 crore and the fiscal deficit to nearly Rs 1.64 lakh crore.
The budget on 5 August put outstanding debt at Rs 10.98 lakh crore and the revenue deficit at Rs 55,775 crore. The fiscal deficit came in at Rs 1,21,819 crore, which is 3 per cent of GSDP. A separate broadcaster report on the same budget said debt exceeded Rs 10.43 lakh crore.
So in about seven weeks, the debt figure floated between Rs 10 lakh crore, Rs 10.43 lakh crore, Rs 10.98 lakh crore and Rs 13.18 lakh crore. Some of that gap may come from definitions. Direct debt, total liabilities and guarantees are not the same thing. But the government never explained this clearly to ordinary people.
The bigger puzzle is the revenue deficit. A white paper that warned of about Rs 90,500 crore was followed by a budget showing Rs 55,775 crore. Either the white paper was written to look as grim as possible, or the budget is rosier than the facts allow. A government that wants trust should answer that question openly.
Welfare first, money later
The government did not wait. It moved fast on benefits.
Free electricity went from 100 units to 200 for middle-tier households. A crop loan waiver reached up to Rs 75,000 per farmer, with a total cost near Rs 6,000 crore. The waiver ceiling was raised to Rs 75,000 and covers 14.43 lakh farmers. Farmers also got an extra incentive of Rs 4,000 per tonne of sugarcane and Rs 2,750 per quintal of paddy.
Then came the gifts. There are gold rings for newborns in government hospitals, and gold coins with silk sarees for brides. Class 11 students are to get bicycles with helmets, and college students laptops. The housing scheme has Rs 3,500 crore set aside and the laptop scheme Rs 2,000 crore.
Farmers and poor families will feel some of this. That is a real gain, and it should be said plainly.
But the arithmetic is harsh. The same government says the state is deep in debt. The Finance Minister himself said it would take at least two years to bring finances back to prudence. Yet recurring promises like free power do not end after two years. They stay on the books and grow.
The rescue plan is also soft. A Revenue Augmentation Committee under Montek Singh Ahluwalia is meant to raise Rs 16,000 crore a year, with no new taxes. The idea is to plug leaks in sectors like mining and TASMAC, and to fix tender practices. That is a good target. It is also a hope. Plugging leaks has been promised by every government in Tamil Nadu. Few have managed it.
Edappadi Palaniswami responded that forming a committee does not by itself raise revenue, and said the government is borrowing more than it can afford. Coming from a former CM with his own debt record, that attack is hollow in places. The core of it, though, is fair. A committee is a plan to make a plan.
There is also the matter of the manifesto. The Finance Minister said 125 manifesto promises were covered in the budget. The opposition said the budget repackaged existing schemes and left out major promises. Both claims may be partly true. A neutral count of promises kept, partly kept and ignored is overdue.
Investment claims need a closer look
The government loves one number. It says it has secured commitments of more than Rs 1 lakh crore, with Rs 1,02,514 crore expected to create 1,21,788 jobs. At the August conclave, 97 MoUs brought Rs 67,452 crore.
Be careful here. An MoU is a promise to invest. It is not money in the ground. Tamil Nadu has seen many such conclaves under earlier governments, and the gap between signed papers and running factories has always been wide. The honest measure comes a year or two later. How many of these projects broke ground? How many jobs exist? The government has not offered that tracking yet.
It is also fair to note that the DMK government held similar investor meets. A fast conclave inside 100 days is good optics. It is not proof of an industrial turnaround.
Law and order
This is where the government has been hit hardest, and with reason.
In May, a 10-year-old girl was raped and murdered in Sulur near Coimbatore. The girl, a Class 5 student, went missing on 21 May while playing near her home. Around the same time, a 17-year-old boy was murdered near the Meenakshi Temple in Madurai.
Leader of the Opposition Udhayanidhi Stalin claimed 30 major crimes were reported in the first 12 days. That count came from a political rival, so treat it with care. But the anger behind it was not invented. He asked sharply where the promised women’s special force was.
The response was weak. Industries Minister Keerthana declined to answer media questions on the Coimbatore case. The Chief Minister pointed to one fast-tracked POCSO case in defence. One case does not answer a pattern.
Later, the 100-day coverage still listed the same worries. Criticism over law and order and a rise in sexual crimes stayed on the list. And the government’s big safety promise is still young. The all-women task force has 2,545 sanctioned posts. Sanctioned posts are not patrolling officers.
Because Vijay holds the Home portfolio, there is nobody else to hold responsible. A film star’s image is built on protecting the weak. Governing is slower and less glamorous. It means police stations, forensic labs and courts working on time. Those things have not visibly changed yet.
The RTI U-turn
The most revealing episode came last month. On 21 Sept, the government issued an order declaring the Law and Order department an intelligence and security organisation under Section 24(4) of the RTI Act. That would have shielded it from public disclosure.
The backlash came fast, and not only from the DMK. The CPI(M), a supporter of this government, called it an overt attempt to build a police state. The VCK and Congress called it highly shocking. A CPI(M) MP also raised allegations of custodial deaths and police action on college campuses. Those are allegations, not proven findings. But they came from a friendly voice.
The order was revoked on 27 Sept, six days after it was issued.
Credit is due for backing down. Many governments dig in. But the damage is done. Why was this order written in the first place? Who approved it? A party that promised transparent government tried to take the police out of reach of the transparency law. It took pressure from allies to reverse that. The question of intent remains open, and nobody in government has answered it.
Clean government, or just a green one?
TVK sold itself as the corruption-free option. The early signs are mixed.
There are real steps. The government set up a WhatsApp number for corruption complaints and moved electricity board transfers to online counselling. Transfer postings are a classic source of bribes, so this is a fair move.
The more interesting claim is about why graft seems lower. The Week reported that bureaucrats say visible corruption has dipped simply because ministers have not yet learned how to demand their share. A senior IAS officer said old habits could return within a year, and that tender practices have not fully changed.
That is a harsh verdict, and it comes from inside the system. If it is right, then honesty here is an accident of inexperience, not a policy. Real reform would show up in published tender data and audit trails. A WhatsApp number is useful. It is not a system.
The same report also asked a fair question about style. Vijay’s surprise visits to hostels and hospitals produce instant attention, but analysts ask whether he has a real-time way to check every hostel and hospital, or whether the system only works when cameras are rolling. A good CM visit helps. A dashboard that catches the next failure helps more.
Power and daily life
Ordinary services are where people judge a government without reading a single report. Here the record is uneven. In June, night-time power cuts in Chennai areas led to protests and road blockades. TANGEDCO said there was no shortage and blamed theft and ageing infrastructure. Power outages and garbage disposal were also listed among the criticisms at the 100-day mark.
Doubling free units to 200 makes the power sector’s finances tighter. An official has already pointed out that there has been no electricity tariff revision, which limits the utility’s ability to invest. If the government will not raise tariffs and gives more free units, the money for repairs has to come from somewhere. This will bite later, probably in summer.
The coalition pressure ahead
The government’s biggest strength may also be its biggest risk. It survives on partners and defectors. The Left and VCK are not shy about criticising it, as the RTI episode showed. If the next scandal comes, these partners may not stay quiet.
There is also the old shadow. The Karur rally crush on 27 Sept 2025 killed 41 people. The CBI questioned Vijay for seven hours in connection with it. Now that he is the head of government, the independence of that inquiry will be watched even more closely.
A government can survive a rough 150 days if the next 150 show discipline. That needs fewer announcements and more published numbers. It needs a clear, single account of the state’s debt. It needs a law and order record that stands up without a speech. And it needs a promise of transparency that does not need allies to enforce.
Vijay won on hope. Hope is a loan, and the repayment date is coming. - The Statesman/ANN
