Chennai: An MIT graduate, a Madurai Meenakshi Amman devotee, an unconventional DMK politician who is not new to controversy — this, in a nutshell, is Dr P. Thiaga Rajan (PTR), the Tamil Nadu finance minister who has found himself in the eye of a political storm over two audio files.
Widely circulated by state BJP leaders, the audio clips, in which PTR is purportedly heard speaking critically of the DMK and its first family, have put him in a spot, even though he insists that they are “fabricated”.
While the BJP and its ally AIADMK upped the ante against ‘PTR’s remarks’, Chief Minister M.K. Stalin, during his video interaction, Ungalil Oruvan, last week, backed his minister and dismissed the issue as “cheap politics”.
PTR became a household name after his victory from the Madurai Central constituency in 2016 assembly elections, a constituency his father, former DMK minister and assembly Speaker PTR Palanivel Rajan contested from in 1996. He got re-elected in 2021 from the same constituency.
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Road map to politics
A third generation elected representative, PTR comes from a family with a rich history of strong ties with the Dravidian movement. PTR calls himself a “fourth generation politician”. His grandfather P.T. Rajan, who was the chief minister of the Madras Presidency, has served as the president of the DMK’s ideological forerunner — the Justice Party.
PTR’s father, PTR Palanivel Rajan, who was also with the Justice Party, kickstarted the family’s association with the DMK in 1968. In over 40 years of public life, Palanivel Rajan was seen as a towering leader from southern Tamil Nadu. PTR’s grand uncle, M.T. Subramania Mudaliar, was also a veteran Justice Party leader, according to his website.
After completing his school education in 1983, PTR wanted to pursue commerce and look after the ancestral estates of the family. In an interview to a YouTube channel, PTR recalled how his wealthy landlord family had not acquired any properties after 1895. Though he wanted to look after the neglected properties, his father insisted that PTR pursue engineering, he said.
That led PTR to NIT Trichy where he completed his chemical engineering in 1987, following which he moved to the US to complete his Masters in Operations Research and doctorate in Human Factors Engineering and Engineering Psychology in 1994. PTR went on to do his MBA in finance from the Sloan School of Management at MIT in 2001, according to his LinkedIn profile.
Soon after, he became an independent consultant, and in 1995, he secured the US Permanent Residence (Green Card) under the National Interest Waiver — for his contribution to US society as a consultant — which does not require employer sponsorship or labour certification, he said in a YouTube interview.
From 2001 to 2008, PTR worked as an investment banker at Lehman Brothers in the US. He was inside one of the Twin Towers that came crashing down during the 9/11 terror attacks. In 2006, after the death of his father, who was the then DMK government’s Hindu Religious and Charitable Endowments Minister, PTR is said to have been asked by DMK patriarch M. Karunanidhi to return to India and stand for by-election from his father’s seat.
But PTR, who was expecting his second child with his former classmate and wife Margaret, requested that he be given some time before returning home. “Internal politics and Karunanidhi’s son M.K. Alagiri’s towering presence in Madurai prevented PTR’s entry in 2011,” said senior political analyst G.C. Shekhar to ThePrint.
By 2016, because of the internal power struggle within the DMK first family and Alagiri being ousted from the party, PTR had Stalin’s backing to make his debut. “The party needed some experts and PTR’s profile suited the party’s requirement,” added Shekhar.
A financial expert, say observers. Opposition disagrees
A former senior managing director of Global Foreign Exchange and Money Markets of the Standard Chartered Bank, Singapore, PTR was the most obvious choice in the DMK government that returned to power in 2021 after ten years of being in the opposition. Political observers in the state said that even during his first term as an MLA between 2016 and 2021, PTR, a financial expert, was the chosen man by Stalin to find flaws in the then AIADMK’s annual budgets.
Though he has lived abroad for a long time, party members say the 57-year-old leader is very close to his roots. The family, which is an ardent follower of goddess Madurai Meenakshi Amman, played a role in the consecration of the Madurai Meenakshi Amman Temple in 1963. The family also has a Sabarimala temple connected with PTR’s grandfather donating the panchaloha idol of Lord Ayyappa to the hill shrine after a massive fire in 1950.
Like a typical politician in the state, PTR can be seen in crisp white dhoti and white shirt, and wears vermillion on his forehead in stark contrast to his party’s rationalist and atheist views. He also wears a watch in each hand. Explaining this, PTR said on Twitter, “On the left, my grandfather’s watch. A constant reminder (for 25+ yrs) of my legacy, values & duty to follow my forefathers into public service. The right was/is a health tracker. This one has phone & PDA functions also. I upgrade often. Reminds me that things are always changing.”
In contrast to his traditional politician look, when outside Tamil Nadu, PTR dons a formal blazer and a pair of trousers.
While the DMK is always accused of dynasty politics, PTR has said on multiple occasions that his entry into “politics was not to make money” but to bring about change in the society. “He is seen as an honest, credible man,” said Shekhar.
A senior DMK leader who spoke to ThePrint on the condition of anonymity said, “PTR is a self-made man. Though his family has a political legacy, he had been away from the political scene till 2016 and that makes him different.”
“The CM values his remarks as he is not a “yes man” but does put forth his honest opinion,” added the leader.
Unlike other politicians, PTR, as an elected representative, had wanted transparency in his functioning so he started releasing report cards on his performance every six months.
As the finance minister, PTR, while presenting the 2023-24 budget, said the DMK government had “outperformed by growing faster than the national average.” This year’s revised estimates also projected that the state’s annual revenue deficit stands at Rs 37, 540.45 crore, down from Rs 62,000 crore that the state had in May 2021, when this government came to power.
Stating that PTR comes across as knowledgeable and one who understands the problems, Dr K. R. Shanmugam, director and professor at the Madras School of Economics, said to ThePrint that PTR seems to be more efficient than the previous finance ministers with his vast experience and actions.
“Last year’s (2022-2023) budget was not that impressive because of the Covid situation and it was an extension of what the AIADMK had presented. But this year’s budget is a good one. Last year’s budget estimate had projected a high fiscal deficit but the finance department was able to control the fiscal deficit to 3 per cent GSDP. This is a commendable effort,” said Shanmugam, adding that there was scope for improvement and need for a lot of corrective measures to reach the $ 1 trillion economy target that Stalin had set.
The Opposition in the state, meanwhile, does not agree. BJP state vice-president Narayanan Thirupathy told ThePrint that though there has been a social media perception on “PTR’s efficiency,” in reality, “he is just a man of words and not action”.
“The industrial and investment growth that DMK promised has still not reached Tamil Nadu. Except for TASMAC revenue — The Tamil Nadu State Marketing Corporation Limited; sale of liquor is allowed only through this — no revenue has increased.”
Meanwhile, AIADMK spokesperson Kovai Sathyan said that PTR works like “Lehman Brothers branch in Tamil Nadu” and not as the finance minister and added, “you cannot expect a corporate MNC in a political arena. To increase corporate revenue, one has to increase sales. This is a corporate mantra, a government doesn’t work that way”.
“If you want to cut the deficit, you have to increase the revenue. But revenue cannot be increased by hiking all taxes and curtailing all the welfare measures at a time when people are just coming out of a pandemic. This is not the best financial management.”
Not shy of controversies
His honest, credible, and a man of integrity image is also the reason why PTR got dragged into the audio file controversy, said Shekhar. “His remarks would certainly hold more credibility than any other leader in the party,” he added.
Thirupathy also took a dig at the toned down version of PTR during the recent video clarification on the audio files and said, “From an aggressive tiger, he turned into a cat.”
Sathyan also went on to ask, “What kind of a financial expert are you if you allow people to swindle money right under your nose?”
Senior political analyst in the state, A. Ayyanathan, told ThePrint that PTR’s statement after the audio files leak looked like “he is under pressure”.
Another political analyst from the city, Sumanth C. Raman said to ThePrint, “If it was a fake, why haven’t they filed a police complaint?”
Calling PTR a powerful voice against the BJP, Ayyanathan said, “He had raised voice against Nirmala Sitharaman like no other finance minister in the country. Also no one has got the central funding like how he has been able to bring to TN. The central government might want him completely out of the picture and BJP’s audio files can be reflective of its high command’s decision.”
While the audio files did grab the state’s attention, PTR does not shy away from controversies and has been critical of the central government on multiple occasions. During his speech at the Oxford Union Debate in August, 2022, on ‘The British Raj lives’, taking a dig at the central government, he said, “We are well on our way to Raj 2.0 run out of Delhi instead of being run out of London.”
He has also been critical of the GST structure in the country and has slammed it as “fundamentally flawed”.
PTR has also locked horns with BJP state president K. Annamalai on multiple instances and one of the most popular social media stand-offs between the two was again over an audio file last year.
In August last year, a slipper was hurled at PTR’s vehicle in Madurai allegedly by BJP workers when he was returning after paying homage to a soldier killed in Jammu and Kashmir. Later, PTR tweeted that he will not address Annamalai by his name but only with an emoji of a goat and said the latter was someone who “seeks publicity with martyr’s body, engineers slipper-throwing on car with national flag, lies blatantly and is a rabble-rouser”.
The issue snowballed when an audio purported to be that of the state BJP chief was released, in which it is alleged that Annamalai and a BJP functionary had planned the slipper incident.
In retaliation to the charge, Annamalai acknowledged that the audio was his conversation but alleged that the DMK had tampered with the audio by inserting words in it.
PTR has also been the poster boy for the DMK to counter the BJP’s anti-Hindu remark on the Dravidian party. This same image of the finance minister had also seen him locking horns with spiritual guru Jaggi Vasudev when the latter’s Free Temples From State Control campaign was criticised by PTR with him calling Vasudev “a publicity hound and charlatan who is trying to find another angle to make more money”.
Kalyan Arun, a political analyst, and a professor at the Asian College of Journalism, told ThePrint that PTR can be considered as one of the finest administrators in the state now, but when it comes to politics, he is still a novice: “There is an art of keeping quiet and being diplomatic when there is a necessary situation and Thiagarajan seems to lack it.”
(Edited by Smriti Sinha)