Tamilnadu has a history of mixing politics and food. With Jayalalita’s Re 1-idli scheme becoming a hit with even the middle class, has she perfected the art of food bank politics?
At 8am, the sun shines bright over Sant home High Road which leads to the panoramic Marina beach in Chennai. A newly painted small stucco building on this road is making waves. A long queue is weaving out of the verandah of the two roomed building and if you walk past it and step into the kitchen, the smell of freshly cooked idlis and sambar, the staple Tamil breakfast, assails you.
A dozen women bustle around and some perched near a huge stove are peeling hot idlis off a steamer while others chop vegetables. The latest sensation on Chennai’s foodscape is not a new finedining restaurant, it is ‘Amma Unavagam' (canteen), the Chennai version of Maharashtra’s jhunka bhakar stalls. This is Tamil Nadu chief minister J Jayalalithaa's latest brainwave — 200 government canteens that sell a plate of one hot idli and sambar for just Re 1.
Seventy-year-old Pachammal, a beggar, is one of the canteen’s regular customers. On the street she puts out her gnarled hand for charity and someone drops five Re 1 coins into her hand. That should take care of her breakfast at the unavagam. Does she come here often? "No, this is the first time," she says, squinting with her good left eye, her right eye rendered useless by cataract.
S Shanthi Sree, who is bustling around supervising the team, hollers at Pachammal goodnaturedly: “Don't lie. You come here often." Pachammal ignores her and takes a plate with five idlis soaked in watery sambar. The hall is filled with people standing at counters that run along the wall. The old woman chooses to sit on the floor leaning against a pillar as she wolfs down the idlis. Are they good? "They are very tasty," she says, beaming. "Better than what my daughter makes at home."
The canteens across Chennai are triggering a food revolution of sorts. Poor and even middle class women are sending their family for breakfast and lunch to these outlets. A plate of sambar rice costs just Rs 5 and curd rice a mere Rs 3. Vishal, 26, a call centre employee, frequents the canteen near Kapaleeswarar Temple in Mylapore and says the happy meal allows him to send more money back home. Dog groomer K Saravanan sneaks in for breakfast here without telling his wife. “She thinks it is beneath our status to eat here,” he says, smiling. When Chennai corporation announced its intention to start a chain of 1,000 canteens across the city for the poor, the response was sceptical. The idea, said the corporation, was to offer food that was cheap, tasty and cooked in hygienic conditions, to migrant labourers, construction workers and other poor folks. A year later and two months ago, the canteens were opened at decent, state-owned buildings. In a move that is bound to impress voters, Jayalalithaa has handed over the administration of the canteens to women self-help groups. Dressed in bright saris covered by clean aprons and plastic caps covering their hair, the 111women are manic about sticking to rules — only purified water is used for cooking, nothing but fresh vegetables will do, and the cooking vessels have to spotlessly clean. Used plates are meticulously scoured and washed.
With Amma’s whip-cracking, sanitary officers zip across the city providing the necessary rations to the outlets and inspecting the kitchens and utensils. Sanitary officer A Vasudevan says he inspects three canteens a day. “I ensure that the plates are clean,” he says.
A monitoring committee, headed by a medical doctor, diligently conducts surprise checks every day. The economics of the Amma canteens is already a topic of debate in business schools and in state governments across the country. The AIADMK government’s aim is to provide a meal for less than Rs 10. Toss in the free rice, laptops, grinders, fans and mixers, and the AIADMK government’s gift hamper for voters appears to be bursting at its seams.
At the Santhome canteen, Pachammal chases the remaining drops of sambar with the last morsel of idli and puts it into her mouth. She throws her plate into a bucket and steps out to wash her hands at the water tap. She anxiously peeks into her bag with its begging bowl. Her collection from her morning rounds of the city is intact. Her good left eye darts up involuntarily to the framed portrait of Jayalalithaa on the wall outside the building. She smiles as she hurriedly walks out, clutching her bag tightly.
Food has always been a vital ingredient in Dravidian politics — be it the free mid-day meal scheme launched by the Justice Party in the 1920s, and later popularised by late matinee idol and AIADMK founder M G Ramachandran in the 1980s, or the universal public distribution system (PDS) through which successive governments in TN have distributed cheap and even free rice to win votes.
The 1967 assembly election in the state was fought purely on rice. DMK founder and chief ministerial aspirant C N Annadurai’s election slogan ‘Moonru padi latchiyam, oru padi nichaiyam’ (Four-and-a-half kg for Re 1 is our aim, one-and-a-half kg for Re 1 is certain) was a huge hit and his party swept to power. In the 1980s, MGR extended the free mid-day noon meal scheme to cover students of all corporation and government-aided schools. Earlier, only children of Chennai corporation schools were covered by the scheme.
Until the 2006 assembly elections, the first three kg of 20 kg rice was sold at Rs 2 per kg and the remaining 17 kg rice was sold at Rs 3.50 per kg. During the state polls in 2006, DMK chief M Karunanidhi promised Rs 2 per kg rice and in the 2011 elections he improved it to Re 1 per kg rice. But the same year, AIADMK chief J Jayalalithaa was one up on her rival promising 20 kg free rice every month and 30 kg for those below the poverty line.
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