- 1 day ago
Tamil Nadu IT and Digital Services Minister Palanivel Thiaga Rajan spoke at India Today’s Tamil Nadu Roundtable, a day-long event bringing together leading politicians, strategists, policymakers and analysts to debate issues shaping the upcoming Assembly elections.
During his session, the minister addressed key themes including the three-language formula, alleged Hindi imposition, and the “Dravidian Model 2.0.”
Responding to a question on the three-language policy, Thiaga Rajan reiterated that the DMK government is not opposed to Hindi as a language but objects to its imposition through policy. “We are anti-Hindi imposition, not anti-Hindi,” he said.
He also mounted a strong defence of the Dravidian Model 2.0, presenting it as a tested alternative to the so-called Gujarat model and arguing that India’s future depends on the development path it chooses.
Rejecting suggestions that the DMK is merely fighting anti-incumbency ahead of the polls, Thiaga Rajan said the government’s approach represents an evolution of Tamil Nadu’s century-old social justice framework rather than a short-term electoral strategy.
During his session, the minister addressed key themes including the three-language formula, alleged Hindi imposition, and the “Dravidian Model 2.0.”
Responding to a question on the three-language policy, Thiaga Rajan reiterated that the DMK government is not opposed to Hindi as a language but objects to its imposition through policy. “We are anti-Hindi imposition, not anti-Hindi,” he said.
He also mounted a strong defence of the Dravidian Model 2.0, presenting it as a tested alternative to the so-called Gujarat model and arguing that India’s future depends on the development path it chooses.
Rejecting suggestions that the DMK is merely fighting anti-incumbency ahead of the polls, Thiaga Rajan said the government’s approach represents an evolution of Tamil Nadu’s century-old social justice framework rather than a short-term electoral strategy.
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NewsTranscript
00:00Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the, once again to the India Today roundtable, election roundtable here in Chennai, Tamil Nadu, all set to go to another frenzied election campaign in a few weeks from now.
00:15Now, one of the narratives of this election campaign, and Chief Minister M.K. Stalin referred to it in his opening remarks, is that the DMK, the ruling party, wants to build a model based on a Dravidian model 2.0.
00:32What is this Dravidian model 2.0? Will it give the DMK an election victory, or will the DMK be fighting to, in a way, offset five years of anti-incumbency?
00:50Who better to answer that question than, unarguably, one of the most articulate politicians in the country?
00:58Please welcome, Pannelli Vail, Tyagarajan, Minister IT and Digital Services here in Tamil Nadu.
01:07Welcome, sir. Thank you very much.
01:08Thanks for having me.
01:09Good to have you here in the warmth of Chennai.
01:12I want to understand, I think viewers want to understand, what is this Dravidian 2.0 model that the Chief Minister is talking about constantly?
01:24Because I recall you were one of the initial politicians who spoke about a potential Tamil Nadu model out there.
01:34What is this model, and how is it linked to an election 2026?
01:39I think we should start with giving credit where credit is due.
01:44This notion of a model for a state started with 2014 election, the alleged Gujarat model.
01:52That was the model based on which the country was sold this dream of, I don't know what the slogan is now or what was it then.
02:01Every election, the slogan changes.
02:03But development at large scale and great outcomes.
02:08That was the alleged Gujarat model.
02:11And I remember back in 2018 or 19, it was an India Today event, but at the ITC, where I was speaking with a bunch of people.
02:22And I said, now it's been shown that the Gujarat model was quite a bad model, because multidimensional poverty is quite high, access to health is quite low, a lot of illegal migration, a lot of gaps between the rich and the poor.
02:36So per capita development was great, but otherwise it was not.
02:39And compare that to Tamil Nadu, where the per capita development is as good or better, but we have much, much better social outcomes, much better health outcomes, much better any indicator you have.
02:51And so I think it was Jairam Ramesh who first kind of said, and that was the first time you did a conflave in South India, incidentally.
02:58So then you only did it in Delhi.
02:59Everything in India was Delhi-centric when you came down to Chennai.
03:04So he said, maybe there is such a thing as a Tamil Nadu model.
03:08And then over time, that got kind of expanded, because there's a huge amount of commonality in the South.
03:13And I say for multiple reasons.
03:16But I would say the essence of the difference of the Dravidian or Tamil Nadu model compared to the alleged Gujarat model is that we start first with social structure.
03:27We want everybody to be equal.
03:30We want social justice.
03:32We want social equity.
03:33We want equality of opportunity.
03:35And we want education to be the basis for enhancement.
03:39Just as I was walking the chief minister out, he mentioned that he had been at an event at the Women's Christian School College yesterday.
03:47And after the fact that we have 42% or so of all women working in manufacturing are working in Tamil Nadu, 6% of the population, 42% all the way.
03:56He said, I still emphasize to them that more of you need to get into the economy, keep on studying, keep on working, and whatever it takes to get you there, that's what I'm here to do.
04:08This notion of inclusion being at the heart of it, particularly inclusion of women, of minorities, of formerly oppressed communities, is at the heart of this model.
04:19And if you call it collectively the focus of human capital development, then it is a profoundly different model than kind of capex-led or, you know, what can I say, central government, union government endowed growth that you see in Gujarat, where you see a few industrialists get really, really rich.
04:37And most of the people stay far behind.
04:40Can I just push you for a moment?
04:43I asked you about Dravidian model 2.0.
04:46You immediately went and contrasted it with what you called alleged Gujarat model.
04:51Why are you all obsessed with Gujarat?
04:54The idea should be Gujarat should grow.
04:56Gujarat also is growing at an extremely fast pace.
04:58Their per capita income is rising.
05:00Are you positing this Dravidian model versus the Gujarat model and saying, are you willing to go to the people of the country, not just Tamil Nadu, and say, let's choose between these two models?
05:11Do you want the Dravidian model or the Tamil Nadu model or the South model, call it what you will, versus the alleged Gujarat model?
05:18Is that how you want to shape the debate, not just in Tamil Nadu, but for the future?
05:24I think that goes to the heart of your question, right?
05:26Is the South the future?
05:28The future is the future.
05:29The future of the South is bright.
05:31The future of the rest of the country depends the extent to which they adopt and follow the Dravidian model or the South model or the Tamil Nadu model will determine the extent to which their future is bright.
05:44Our future is bright because we have a good model.
05:46But I'm not trying to talk in absolutes.
05:49So I'm saying the notion of using models as a way of projection, as a way of encapsulation was not in the politic of here till there's somebody else tried to do that as a shorthand.
06:00So we also have our own model.
06:02I have told you deep philosophy, 100% inclusion, social equity, everybody gets access to education, reservation to ensure all communities get representation and doing that properly for 100 plus years.
06:16That is our model.
06:18That model is common to a lot of South India because it used to be the Madras presidency in the British days.
06:24Before that, we had a lot of commonality.
06:26The Vijayanagara Empire, the Chola Empire covered lots of these places.
06:30So our culture has been intertwined for a long time.
06:33And so we came down.
06:34Can I challenge you on one element?
06:37And while you speak about your social indicators time and again, there are those who will say the political culture of Tamil Nadu has been marked by corruption.
06:47And this is true of other southern states as well.
06:50Massive corruption where the assets of elected leaders have grown disproportionately high.
06:55Many of them have gone to jail for their crimes.
07:00And therefore, while you speak about equality, the truth of the matter is you create a political elite which benefits and the rest of the people don't benefit necessarily to the same extent.
07:11Has this model also bred corruption, dynasticism and the ideological values have lost out?
07:19The Dravidian ideology has lost out to this political culture of corruption.
07:25Name me one state in India where there is not corruption and where there is not dynastic politics.
07:31Sir, that's a bad answer.
07:32No, no, I'm not asking the question.
07:33If there is a decay in the political system, that decay is universal.
07:37I say my outcomes are better.
07:39I say my society is better.
07:41I say my development is better.
07:42You say you also have corruption.
07:44I say I may, but who doesn't?
07:47After all that, I still have better outcomes.
07:49That's the point I'm making here.
07:50No, because when I ask those who, the Narendra Modi supporters say Narendra Modi has tried to build a Gujarat model which he has tried to make as corruption-free as possible.
08:06They claim that rent-seeking politicians are being slowly but surely marginalized in the so-called alleged Gujarat model.
08:16The Tamil Nadu model allows rent-seeking politicians to continue and flourish.
08:20Prajde, Prajde, Prajde, Prajde, you're a well-read man.
08:23I doubt it is possible that you have not read the Supreme Court judgment on the electoral bonds and who the donors were and when the timing of the donation was.
08:33Every single one of the electoral bonds was institutionalized corruption.
08:37It was either immediately after a tender, immediately before a tender, immediately after getting an ED notice, immediately after being called by the CBI.
08:45If there has been the history of institutionalized corruption in any democratic country in the world, the electoral bonds is a prime example.
08:53What are you telling me about who's eliminating corruption?
08:56Let's not go into all these, like, you know, any thoughtful person will say that corruption is a problem, but it's a problem universally.
09:04It's not as if it's only a problem in developed states.
09:06Corruption is a problem in every state, everywhere.
09:08Or it's not.
09:09You also benefited from, sir, you also benefited from electoral bonds.
09:12Electoral bonds also came to the DMK.
09:13I'm not, no, no, that's my point.
09:15My point is that DMK got 500 crores or something.
09:18They got 8,000 something crores.
09:19And they've got PM cares, which they say is not a government entity, but is also controlled by the PM.
09:25And it's not called the prime minister's name.
09:27It's called prime minister cares, but it's a private entity, not subject to RTI, not subject to audit.
09:33I mean, listen, this is the last kind of bastion you want to fight on, saying somehow there's purity somewhere and impurity here.
09:41If there is impurity, it's everywhere.
09:43If there isn't, it's nowhere.
09:45Right?
09:45There's no purity anywhere.
09:47Can I, though, say that while you focus on this Tamil Nadu or Dravidian model with its emphasis on inclusion,
09:55it also seems to, in some way, posit itself against the center.
10:02That you don't want to accept the national education policy or the three-language formula,
10:08you're anti-Hindi, you're anti-neet,
10:11and thereby Tamil Nadu cuts itself off from the national mainstream because you're so conscious of consciously promoting your distinctive identity.
10:22Is this identity Tamil Nadu versus Delhi?
10:27Well, it's three, four different points there.
10:29We are anti-Hindi imposition.
10:32We are not anti-Hindi.
10:32We are anti-neet and we are anti-anybody trying to tell us what exam we should use to filter or select our applicants who are our children going to our medical colleges funded with our money in a system that is by far the most superior health system of any state in India.
10:52And substantial diaspora of the proportion of the medical diaspora of India in Tamil.
10:59So we don't like being told that you have to dumb yourself down or you have to adopt a model that is inferior to our model because God says so or the dictator says so.
11:10So we have a model that works.
11:12Within the constitution, we are able to get good outcomes with our model.
11:17We don't like somebody else trying to tell us that you should do it my way when your track record is much, much worse than mine.
11:23If it's better, we're thoughtful people.
11:25We listen.
11:26But if it's not, why should we listen to your model?
11:28So if you keep telling us that you want homogeneity, the first question we ask is, first of all, why is that philosophically accurate?
11:36India is a union of states.
11:38It's many thousands years of culture.
11:40Second, for us to even contemplate changing our way for yours, you must have done better than us.
11:45Because what is it that you have done better than us that we should listen to you?
11:51You know, again, as I said, you're making it confrontational.
11:54I saw you, I heard you use the word dictator.
11:57You seem to believe that Delhi is no one to dictate terms to Tamil Nadu.
12:02That Tamil Nadu, therefore, will set its own agenda.
12:05It's not just Tamil Nadu.
12:06It's all states, right?
12:07India is a union of states.
12:09There is a current, there's a concurrent list.
12:11There's a union list.
12:12There's a state list.
12:13Why are the governors not signing the bills?
12:16Why is the government of India legislating into state subjects?
12:20Why are they adding extraneous conditions to the disbursement of money in a finance and appropriation bill, like the Samagra Sikshar Abiyan funds, which is not in the bill?
12:30You don't get to decide.
12:31Just because you don't do three language, I will not give you money.
12:34It was not in the bill that said that was a condition.
12:36You said the money is going to be given.
12:37Why did you not give it?
12:39If that's not dictatorial, if that's not anti-democratic, what is it?
12:44Sir, the reason I'm pressing you on this is perhaps, as you said, India's linguistic diversity is its strength.
12:53Why not embrace Hindi then?
12:54Why not embrace to make the future of Tamil Nadu even stronger in the sense that a young kid from...
13:01Look, look, I'll make it easier for you.
13:02I'll make it easier for you.
13:04One of the other news organizations sent a reporter and he came to interview me and he said, I have some bad news for you.
13:11Yes.
13:11And I said, what's the bad news?
13:12He said, Hindi is being spoken a lot of places around Tamil Nadu.
13:16I said, why is that bad news for me?
13:18Is that like you're telling me like there's some disease spreading?
13:21Whoever wants to speak Hindi, let them speak Hindi.
13:23I will not have you dictate to me that I should increase the curriculum of my government schools to three subjects and dilute the learning experience of my people when there is no marginal upside to me.
13:36Right?
13:36As my friend, good friend Prakash Raj said, when I spoke to somebody in Hindi, he says, oh, you can speak Hindi.
13:42He says, yes, you speak Hindi because you know Hindi.
13:45I speak Hindi because you know only Hindi.
13:48Right?
13:49So why should we?
13:50Why should we adapt to them knowing only Hindi?
13:52I'm saying I, we speak our mother tongue.
13:55We speak English.
13:56It's a commercial language.
13:57It's a common language.
13:58Pera Ranganna said, why should there be two different doors?
14:01If there's a door for the big dog, the small dog also can go through it.
14:04So if everybody had a two language formula, we didn't need a three language formula.
14:08Three language formula, as I keep repeating, means one language for the Hindi belt and three languages for the rest of us.
14:15Our own mother tongue, English for our commercial and employment opportunities and Hindi to speak to those people who can only speak one language.
14:24Why is it fair in a democracy that some people have a one language formula?
14:28The rest of us have to have three language to adapt to the one language people.
14:32Interestingly put there, Mr. Minister, but broadening it to the south in general, do you fear looking ahead that these states with low fertility rate, with high economic growth, could get penalized both politically and financially?
14:51You've got a potential delimitation exercise taking place in the next couple of years.
14:57It could potentially reduce the number of seats of Lok Sabha in proportional terms, possibly that a state like Tamil Nadu sends to Delhi.
15:06The Finance Commission has given a flat 41% rate and also put certain criteria to disperse one.
15:13Do you worry that the south could feel increasingly alienated from the rest of the country if the gap between the southern high growth,
15:21southern states and the so-called BIMARU states continues to widen in the next 10 to 20 years?
15:28We are already at a very precarious position.
15:31Let's take the politics out of this.
15:32Just look, let's look at the numbers, okay?
15:35Right now the south is about 19% something of the land and roughly 19% something of the population.
15:43To be fair, we have slightly more than 20% of the representation in the Lok Sabha, right?
15:48In the parliament.
15:50Because the delimitation was set back in the day when the population gaps had not widened so much.
15:56Now you look at it economically.
15:57We are about 30% of the GDP at least, which means because taxation is progressive,
16:03we are paying between 35% and 40% of the total revenues of the government of India.
16:08And the finance commissions have increasingly kept cutting us down with the exception of this finance commission led by my friend Professor Panagaria,
16:16which has marginally increased it from 15.8% to 17%.
16:20So 40% in, 17% back.
16:23You take, you know, absolute numbers are not that meaningful.
16:26It's a federal society.
16:27The better off should pay more.
16:28But you take the 25-year timeline, or more than that, take the 50-year timeline from the 6th finance commission to the 16th.
16:35And it is a very startling trend.
16:37The rich states are getting richer, paying more tax and getting less back.
16:41And the poor states are getting poorer on a relative basis.
16:45So whatever this devolution is through money, it is not giving you what every other society gets.
16:51You go to China.
16:53The coastal provinces pay and the hinterland gets.
16:56They get closer together.
16:57You go to America, the Californians, the New York, the Washingtons pay in, and the North Dakotas, the Missouris, the Kansas get the money,
17:04and they get closer together.
17:06You go to the European Union, the, you know, France's, Germany's pay, and the Portugals, Greases get the money, and they get better.
17:16In India, we keep on increasing more and more money, and they keep on getting worse and worse.
17:21And we have this compounding problem, which you said.
17:23Everywhere else in a federal society, the population will migrate to where the economic activity is.
17:29So you'll have a natural balancing.
17:31You'll find that high economy states are also high population states, like New York or California.
17:35In India, we have the exact opposite.
17:38High economy states are low population and declining population.
17:42Low absolute and declining because of lower birth rates.
17:45And so you have this really dangerous situation.
17:48Dangerous in the sense it's not sustainable for any length of time,
17:51that you keep on having more poorer people getting more and more of the total pie and getting worse and worse.
17:58Something is profoundly wrong.
18:01It is not fixable by money.
18:03It has to be fixed by rethinking the structure of society.
18:07And there, I think, the Dravidian model is a meaningful model
18:11because all over the South, we started from the days of 1920s,
18:16the notion of 100% inclusion, the right for women to vote,
18:21compulsory elementary education for boys and girls,
18:24reservation in jobs based on the percent of the population your community is,
18:28therefore, universal mentorship, universal kind of coattails,
18:34that engineered society in a way that we kept benefiting.
18:37You don't do that, money can't fix your problem.
18:40You know, but let me once again challenge you,
18:44while you keep repeating the importance of equity in this Dravidian model,
18:50there will be those who will say that,
18:52is the Dravidian model able to adapt to the global economic shifts?
18:56The other big challenge going ahead is going to be job creation.
19:00Particularly, private sector jobs will be increasingly needed
19:03if you are going to cater to this large so-called demographic dividend
19:07that exists in this country.
19:09Do you accept that the Dravidian model will also have to adapt to global economic shifts
19:14to make itself far more attractive,
19:16to make its young, more entrepreneurial, more skilled,
19:22to adapt to a changing world?
19:24Or is it still about government jobs and equity?
19:27No, it's absolutely not.
19:28But I just want to just get Dravid to validate
19:31that I did not set up this question ahead of time
19:33because he's lobbed up a softball that I'm going to slam out of the park.
19:37So, let me put it this way.
19:40In the last five years, I'll give you just two statistics.
19:43The Chief Minister has already spoken about the final outcome,
19:46which is 11.19% real GDP growth, not achieved by anybody, not close.
19:52And in the end, the outcomes decide whether you're doing your job right or not.
19:55You can't manufacture the outcome.
19:57You change the process, the outcome comes.
19:59The two statistics I want to mention,
20:01the number of registered startups,
20:03DPIT registered startups in Tamil Nadu,
20:05have gone up from 2,000 when we took office to over 12,000 today.
20:10That shows you that the entrepreneurial spirit
20:12and the spirit of innovation is thriving.
20:15We have never seen 6x growth like that.
20:18More important statistic,
20:20manufactured electronic goods output
20:22has gone up from under 2 billion to over 14 billion in three years.
20:28Three years.
20:30Right?
20:30That cannot be done domestically.
20:32That has to be done because of global opportunity.
20:35It has to be done because the wave exiting China is so large.
20:40It's a tsunami.
20:41You catch some small portion of it and you're getting this huge lift.
20:45My point is exactly the opposite of what you're saying.
20:47I'm saying, if you have a good society,
20:50if you have a good human capital base,
20:52you will benefit from every macro trend,
20:54from every globalization opportunity,
20:56from every liberalization.
20:581990 liberalization was when the South started to really separate from the rest.
21:02We all started poor.
21:04In fact, till the 70s,
21:06Tamil Nadu was one of the poorest states.
21:08Right?
21:08Only after you start liberalizing,
21:10only after you start getting degrees of freedom,
21:13the benefit of the social equity,
21:15inclusion,
21:16women's empowerment,
21:17women's participation.
21:17Look, if half your workforce or half your population is not able to join the workforce
21:23and 70% of mine is,
21:26I win every single day.
21:28This is math.
21:29Right?
21:30So, every opportunity that has come,
21:32and we are benefiting hugely from global trends.
21:34I'm the first guy to accept.
21:37A large portion of our success in the last three years
21:40has been because of the macro trend
21:42that after the disruption of COVID
21:43and the general rise in fear of China,
21:46there has been a massive outflow,
21:48or at least a cutback,
21:49of a 30-year trend going into China,
21:52and we are benefiting greatly from it.
21:53That's what we want.
21:54Are you saying, therefore,
21:56that to go where we started off,
21:59that Tamil Nadu today is a far more attractive investment destination
22:03for private entrepreneurship,
22:05for FDI than Gujarat is?
22:07Because Gujarat has pitched itself
22:08as a far more attractive destination than you are.
22:11No, no, Gujarat is...
22:12No, no, no, no, no, no, no.
22:14Take a separation between government investment
22:16and government-directed investment
22:18and government-incentivized investment
22:20and true private investment.
22:22In an efficient market,
22:24the money goes...
22:25Forget all the investment.
22:26Let's take the bank, okay?
22:27In Tamil Nadu,
22:29the credit-to-deposit ratio
22:30is greater than 100%
22:32has been consistently...
22:33I used to run the state-level banking community.
22:35What does that mean?
22:36That means if all the Tamil citizens together
22:38are investing 100 rupees into deposits in banks,
22:41the banks are actually making
22:43110 rupees worth of loans into Tamil Nadu.
22:47You know what that ratio is for places like UP?
22:49It's like 60%.
22:50That means even the UP people's money
22:53deposited in the UP banks
22:55are not being lentry.
22:56The credit will go where the opportunity is.
22:58You can't force a banker to lend
23:00when there is not a good credit opportunity.
23:02No, you brought in UP.
23:03I contrasted you to Gujarat.
23:04No, take Gujarat.
23:05I guarantee you...
23:06I mean, advocates of Gujarat, for example,
23:08tell me the welfare spending
23:10in Tamil Nadu is such that
23:11the so-called...
23:12You know, you call it welfare,
23:13they will call it freebies.
23:14No problem.
23:15Makes your state far more fiscally unsustainable
23:18than a Gujarat is.
23:19I agree that my fiscal metrics
23:20are not as good as Gujarat's.
23:22The consequence, one way or the other,
23:24is my multidimensional poverty
23:27is below 2%.
23:28This is above 12%.
23:29I have four doctors for every 1,000 people.
23:32They have, I don't know,
23:32one for every 1,500 people.
23:34Most important statistic.
23:36More than 85,
23:37close to 90% of all young children,
23:40boys and girls,
23:41graduate high school.
23:42That number is less than 50% in Gujarat.
23:45Boys and girls.
23:46I don't mind.
23:47If I have to do debt financing,
23:48maybe if you're better,
23:49you do it with less debt.
23:51But if that is the outcome of debt financing,
23:53it is a much better and sustainable outcome.
23:56So let me conclude by then asking you,
23:59when you pitch your state,
24:01and states are becoming more and more competitive
24:04with each other,
24:04each one of them,
24:06you know, seems to go to Davos.
24:08I didn't see Tamil Nadu this time in Davos.
24:10And I wondered,
24:11with all these states coming to Davos,
24:13Maharashtra was there,
24:14Gujarat was there,
24:15even Assam was there,
24:15Jharkhand was there.
24:17Why wasn't PTR there,
24:18or why wasn't MK Stalin there,
24:20pitching Tamil Nadu
24:21as the most attractive investment destination?
24:24Are you all so complacent
24:26that the world is coming to Chennai,
24:27we don't need to worry about going to Davos?
24:30It's not my department.
24:31I'm not the minister for industries investment promotion.
24:34So I won't answer that question.
24:35I'll say it a different way.
24:36Davos is Davos.
24:38Total FDI,
24:40the impact on output,
24:42whether it's manufactured goods,
24:44cars,
24:44electronic goods,
24:45I mean,
24:45manufactured electronic goods,
24:46cars,
24:47textiles,
24:48footwear,
24:49anything,
24:50we have seen huge,
24:52multi-hundred percent increases
24:54in the last few years.
24:55I'm saying,
24:56last three to five,
24:56I'm not talking about 20 years.
24:57Yes.
24:58We have benefited from global trends.
25:00I think the profound difference is
25:02that our mindset has always been global.
25:05Right?
25:05We are a seafaring people.
25:07We have been doing this
25:08in the Kiladi dig in Madurai,
25:10which I'm sure you've seen,
25:11or if you don't,
25:12if you haven't come,
25:13we have found Roman coins going back to,
25:16you know,
25:16BCE,
25:17before the current era.
25:19So we are integrated into the global economy.
25:22We want to be.
25:23Sadly,
25:24the prime minister and his government
25:26don't actually coordinate
25:27and get the stage together
25:29because I say it again and again.
25:31The scale of global opportunity
25:33is so high
25:34that Tamil Nadu,
25:37Karnataka,
25:38Andhra,
25:39Telangana,
25:40Kerala,
25:41Pondicherry,
25:42Maharashtra,
25:43Gujarat
25:44can all grow at double digit
25:46and we will still not be
25:47out of opportunity.
25:48There's still headroom.
25:50Just think about the scale of our economy
25:52to the scale of what is coming out of China
25:53and what had been the 20-year trend in China.
25:55So of course we compete
25:57for a particular project
25:58but if you ask me
25:58in the global set,
26:01KTR
26:02and,
26:02you know,
26:04his new replacement,
26:07Sridhar Babu
26:07are good friends of mine.
26:09We help each other out.
26:10Priyankar Gay
26:11and I are good friends.
26:12We have never said
26:13I'll beat you on this project.
26:15The chief minister
26:16holds the IT portfolio in Kerala.
26:17He invites me to every conference
26:19and we invite him here
26:20so that we can work closer together.
26:22Nara Lokesh,
26:23a personal friend of mine,
26:24he may get into,
26:25you know,
26:25slight tiff somewhere
26:26now and then
26:27but if I ask for help,
26:29he gives me help.
26:29I'm saying
26:30the opportunity set is so large
26:32that we can all,
26:34of course we should compete
26:35for a particular project
26:36but gross output,
26:38the opportunity set is so large
26:40we can all benefit
26:41and then still be room left
26:42to go and get the next deal.
26:44So, 30 seconds,
26:45the best thing
26:46about this
26:47Dravidian 2.0 model
26:50that you are building
26:50and the one weakness
26:52in a quick 30 seconds
26:54what would you tell me?
26:54Look, I think you got
26:55the 2.0 wrong.
26:56What the chief minister
26:57is saying is that
26:58when we come back
26:58it will be the 2.0 version
27:00but the point of all of this
27:02is however good your model is
27:04you have to do three things
27:05all the time.
27:06The first is
27:06you have to keep testing
27:07whether the model
27:08is actually in execution
27:09doing what you think it is.
27:12Number two,
27:13you have to keep adapting
27:14to the times
27:14the world keeps changing.
27:16You can't have one model stable
27:17you keep trying
27:18to come up with new ways.
27:19I give you many examples
27:20how we try to bring
27:21more girls
27:21into the education system.
27:23Averages are good
27:24but state educated girls
27:25were dropping out
27:26at high school.
27:26It's a long story.
27:27You have to keep checking
27:28and say in the adapting times
27:30what is it that
27:31I need to adapt my model to?
27:33And then if you have
27:34things like crises
27:35like the COVID
27:36or like the GFC
27:37crises always create
27:39unique opportunities also.
27:41No, it's an ill wind
27:42that blows nobody any good.
27:44A global crisis
27:45will create opportunities
27:46like we have had
27:46in the last three, four years
27:47and so you've got to be able
27:49to adapt to that situation
27:51that day.
27:52It is dynamic.
27:52That's why you need
27:532.0, 3.0, 4.0.
27:55Nothing stays the same.
27:56You have to keep adapting
27:57and fixing things
27:59that you are not doing
28:00that well
28:00and keep testing
28:01whether you're doing
28:02it well enough.
28:03Okay.
28:03I'm going to leave it there
28:04PTR
28:06because it's interesting
28:07that you spoke about
28:08all these various ministers
28:10of the South
28:10being friends
28:11not necessarily
28:13while competing
28:14in a way
28:15for potential projects
28:17you remain friends
28:18and potentially
28:20creating a coalition
28:21if I may call it
28:23of the Southern states
28:24but you've given us
28:25a very broad overview
28:27which I think
28:27is refreshing
28:28and I hope
28:29this debate
28:29between the Dravidian model
28:30and the Gujarat model
28:32one day takes place
28:33with you on this side
28:34and maybe
28:34a Gujarat minister
28:36on the other
28:36and we will look forward
28:38to that
28:38in the weeks ahead.
28:40We wish you well
28:41in the election.
28:42I know you have
28:43taken time off
28:44from your campaign
28:45in Madurai
28:46to join us here
28:47this morning
28:48in Chennai.
28:49Thank you very much.
28:51Please give a warm
28:52round of welcome
28:53to Palani Bail
28:55Tyag Rajan
28:56the minister
28:56for IT services
28:58here in Tamil Nadu.
28:59Thank you so much.
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