18 May 2008
Incentives to project holders in southern districts
Communalism is an extremely common phenomenon. It is generally associated with plural societies. While in the West communalism alludes to the feeling and a concern for the community, in our state the term has a negative connotation. It is used to designate the process of mobilizing a community to confront another community. More specifically, communalism is regarded as a manifestation of confrontation between the minority and majority communities. In such situation, the over-concern with one’s community is reflected in an antagonistic feeling towards other communities. When members of a community are negatively oriented towards other communities, they are supposed to inflame community feelings. In our rural parlance, the word communalism is misunderstood to the condition of suspicion, fear and hostility between members of different sections. Communalism brings mistrust between the groups. Sometimes, a personal conflict between two individuals or families belonging to different communities is ultimately given a colour of a communal conflict as each side gathers more and more supporters for its cause from one’s own community. An individual conflict transformed into a communal conflict depends on the nature of the conflict and the political environment of the locality where it occurs. Communalism may also emerge when members of a particular community articulate their genuine demand for social justice but is interpreted by the other party as unjust or uncalled for. Any problem is couched in communal terms. Everything that happens in the rural society which is disruptive and which threatens public service can not be attributed to communalism. But it is a convenient scapegoat; speaking positively, communalism simply implies a concern for the community, a feeling of belonging to one’s primordial group. However broadly speaking, the phenomenon of communalism has come to be associated with the strategy of political mobilization usually perpetuated by the elites of various political parties in their quest for political power. Communal riots are not new in southern districts of the state. They are like an annual feature. Some areas are known to be prone to communal riots. Sometimes, minor quarrel between two boys of different communities over petty issue bring clash. Hence in order to understand the dynamics of this process, it is necessary to have in-depth studies of various cases of communal clash. The main reason for all these problems is lack of employment and thus economic poverty. Most of the southern districts are arid land. The youngsters are simply wasting their time with unnecessary talks which finally ends with wordy quarrels. Now the govt. has shown a renewed focus towards developing the southern districts. It is reportedly said that the state govt. will offer a host of special incentives to investors setting up industrial projects in southern districts like Madurai, Ramanathapuram, Sivagangai, Virudhunagar, Tirunelveli, Tuticorin. This will help to create a balanced growth. The govt’s move to develop industrial parks in the southern districts will open new windows of opportunities to domestic as well as multinational companies that are looking at Tamilnadu for investment. At present, incentives are given to the project holders for investment over Rs.250 crore but in this case it is said concession will be given if more than Rs.50 crore is invested. Besides, if the value of the investment in the southern districts is in the range of Rs.250 crore to Rs.1500 crore, tax incentives will be given as outright grants. It will create a healthy socio-economic opportunity by providing huge employment opportunities and thus the communal clashes can be reduced and brought to nil.