No secretary, no relief: Udhayanidhi says TVK has left farmers headless on the eve of the rains

Tamil Nadu Opposition Leader Udhayanidhi Stalin on Tuesday demanded that the TVK government appoint a full-time Agriculture Secretary immediately, arguing that a department with its own budget has been left without dedicated administrative leadership for a month on the eve of the rainy season. The previous secretary, Shankar, IAS, was transferred as Commissioner of Archaeology, and no full-time successor has been named.

The vacancy would matter in any month. In this one, Udhayanidhi argued, it is indefensible. A full-time secretary is needed so that decisions affecting farmers are taken promptly and agricultural operations are monitored continuously at district level. Instead, he alleged, the department is being run by what he called an inactive minister and an absent secretary, while the Agriculture Minister and the Chief Minister remain occupied elsewhere.

His statement widened from the empty chair to the record around it. The TVK government, he alleged, has failed to honour its election promise of crop loan waivers. Poorly planned measures, he said, have aggravated the difficulties of samba cultivation already disrupted by natural calamities. Farmers have blocked a road at Muthupettai complaining that irrigation water has not reached tail-end areas, entered Veeranam Lake to demand the release of water for cultivation, and a farmers' union has announced a siege of the Secretariat in Chennai on October 14 to demand the full waiver promised in the manifesto.

None of those grievances is decided by one officer. All of them, in a secretariat-led system, wait for one. Irrigation releases, crop-loss assessments, loan relief files and district monitoring move when a secretary convenes, signs and follows up. A month without that signature is not an administrative detail. To a farmer standing in a dry tail-end channel, it is the government itself arriving late.

Udhayanidhi appealed for the appointment of an experienced senior IAS officer to lead the department and coordinate relief. The demand is modest, which is what makes the delay telling. A government that cannot fill the chair that answers for farmers, weeks before the rains on which their year depends, should expect the siege announced for October 14 to be read as a verdict on its priorities, not merely a protest date.