The Chief Minister of Tamil Nadu is pushing for a ‘Dravidian Model’ where economic development is inclusive.

What is the Dravidian Model?

• The goal is equal economic development that will be in tune with social justice.
• It has taken root since the days of the Justice Party government [in pre-Independent India].
• TN polity has divided the task into short-term and long-term, and travels with the objective of improving the economy by implementing them within the time frame.

Note: The Government of India Act 1919 implemented the Montagu-Chelmsford reforms, instituting a Diarchy in Madras Presidency. The diarchial period extended from 1920 to 1937, encompassing five elections. Justice party was in power for 13 of 17 years.

Unique features of this developmental approach

(1) Financial planning

• TN has constituted an Economic Advisory Council comprising internationally renowned economists since there is a need to evolve an economic development to suit the current situation.
• It has emerged out higher as comparatively high levels of human development with economic dynamism.

(2) Health and education

• It sought and ensured opportunity-equalizing policies in the expanding modern sectors through affirmative action policies and investments in education and health.
• Tamil Nadu has been a pioneer in broad-basing entry into school education through a slew of incentives, the noon meal scheme being the most well-known.

(3) Social Harmony

• It also succeeded in building a bloc of lower caste groups under a Dravidian-Tamil identity that subsumed and sought to transcend individual caste identities.
• It has distinct political mobilization against caste-based inequalities in the state.
• Mobilization built an ethos that questioned the privileges of caste elites and the naturalness of merit in a caste society.

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