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Vol. XXVIII No. 17, December 16-31, 2018

Archives: Vol. XXVIII No. 17, December 16-31, 2018

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Do Global Meets keep their promises?

by The Editor

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Welcome to the Tamil Nadu Global Investors’ Meet 2015 – but have promises made at it been kept?

The State Government has announced that it will be hosting a Global Investors’ Meet to attract business into Tamil Nadu. The event is scheduled for January 23 and 24, 2019. Rs. 75 crore have been sanctioned for the conduct of the event. It is seen as an effort by the present administration to change the perception that it is not friendly towards industry. The Government hopes that around 8,000 industrialists will participate in the programme.

All this is to the good. But analyses of the performance of various States in India have consistently shown Tamil Nadu to be dropping on the investment front. These reports are not necessarily always accurate, given that a State like ours, which already has a large industrial base, cannot boast of huge growth rates unlike a State that is just beginning to modernise. But then perceptions do matter, and what with it being considered lacklustre on many fronts, owing to reasons largely beyond its control, the current regime is really making an earnest effort with this Investors’ Meet.

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A mess: Property Tax and reciprocal services

by A Special Correspondent

The Property Tax and the services we get in return are in a mess. The tax revision after twenty years has brought many issues to the fore, above all, the issue of responsible governance. The T’Nagar Residents’ Welfare Association’s open letter to the Chief and Deputy Chief Ministers regarding the rise in Property Tax rates is symptomatic of citizens’ resentment across the State.

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Dedicated student of ancient scripts

T.S. Subramaniam pays tribute to a great scholar IRAVATHAM MAHADEVAN

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The formidable contribution of Iravatham Mahadevan, who passed away in November was in two fascinating fields: the Tamil-Brahmi inscriptions and the Harappan script. He devoted 50 years of his life to visiting, documenting and deciphering the Tamil-Brahmi inscriptions engraved on the brow of natural caverns found on hills in Tamil Nadu and on pottery, coins and rings. This led to an outstanding work from him: Early Tamil Epigraphy: From the Earliest Times to the Sixth Century A.D., published in 2003. His earlier work, Corpus of Tamil-Brahmi Inscriptions, created a wave of exploration to locate them in different parts of Tamil Nadu.

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Lost Landmarks of Chennai

– SRIRAM V

Manali House

A lost memorial to Carnatic Music

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Manali House.

I took the accompanying photograph with a digital camera sometime in 1997. I was not so aware of heritage or the necessity for preservation then and much regret that ignorance today. Had I been better informed, I would have braved the risk of the building falling on me and taken some more photographs. As can be seen, the structure was already in a state of collapse then. A few years later, it was completely demolished and made way for a car park. With that, it swept into history, a landmark not only for the city’s past but also Carnatic music.

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IIT-M campus – Then & Now

Krishnamoorthy Venkatesh reporting on a lecture by Prof. P. Sriram of IIT-M.

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The campus today (above) and below: the extent of old lake.

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