Mosquitoes do not watch roadshows

There is a mosquito in Chennai that has done more to dent this government than any opposition party. Three students are dead. Harish Kumar died on Thursday after persistent fever; Mridula and Jayashree died four days before him. All three studied at Anna University, the state's premier engineering institution — a campus that is supposed to be the pride of Tamil Nadu, now a place of anxiety. More than 20,000 dengue cases have been recorded across the state this year, with nearly 200 added every single day. And what does the government say? The Health Secretary says the situation has "stabilised". The Health Minister says there has been a "marginal increase" and urges the public not to panic. Seasonal variations, he adds, have contributed to the rise. As if the weather, and not the administration, were in charge of the drains. This is the same government that, for its by-election campaign, assembled a 54-acre rally ground with QR-coded passes, LED screens and a bus-stage, and deployed some 2,000 policemen for a single roadshow from Coimbatore to Dharapuram. It can organise spectacle at scale. It cannot organise fogging. Rs 7.2 lakh in fines have been imposed on households and establishments for failing to clear waste — the state punishes its citizens for the breeding grounds while its own machinery staggers. When Naam Tamilar Katchi's Seeman blames the TVK government's negligence and demands nilavembu decoction on a war footing, the government hears an opposition voice to be managed, not a warning to be heeded. Periyar taught that governance is not spectacle; it is reason applied to the material conditions of people's lives. Anna taught that the ballot is the weapon of the powerless — the one instrument the poor possess that the powerful cannot confiscate. Tomorrow, Madurantakam and Dharapuram go to the polls. The by-elections were manufactured by two defections; the verdict will be delivered by ordinary voters. The TVK government will discover what every government eventually discovers: a mosquito does not watch roadshows, does not queue for QR passes, and does not care who the Chief Minister is. But the mother of a dead student will remember, on October 6, which government was in charge.