The U-turn republic: a government that rules by trial balloon

There is now a recognisable TVK method of government. Step one: announce a decision. Step two: wait for the outrage. Step three: withdraw the decision and call it responsiveness. The Right to Information exemption was only the latest balloon. On September 21, the government issued Order Ms No. 57, exempting the Public (Law and Order) Department from the RTI Act, 2005 — classifying it, under Section 24(4), as an intelligence and security organisation. This is the department that handles inquiry reports on police firings, custodial deaths and police torture: the one corner of the state that most needs sunlight. Law Minister C.T.R. Nirmal Kumar defended it, citing the sensitivity of communal-clash records. Six days later, on September 27, the order was revoked — after criticism from opposition parties, transparency advocates and even members of the ruling alliance. It was not an aberration. It was a pattern. Two highways engineers were suspended for Hindi signposts that violated the two-language policy — boards quietly put up, then hurriedly replaced with Tamil ones after the DMK and PMK demanded action. A directive concerning student participation in political protests was withdrawn. An appointment to the Chief Minister's office was cancelled. A jobs government order was struck down by the courts under Articles 14 and 16 of the Constitution. As one analysis of the record put it, the repeated reversals "have therefore become a notable feature of the Tamil Nadu government's early administrative period." The charitable reading is that a young government is listening. It does not survive inspection. Listening before deciding is consultation; deciding and then un-deciding under pressure is the absence of conviction. A government that floats its policies like trial balloons is not consulting the people — it is outsourcing its principles to the news cycle. Consider what was nearly hidden. Had the RTI exemption stood, inquiry reports on custodial deaths — the deaths of the poorest Tamils in police custody — would have vanished behind a classification. Had the signboards stood, the two-language policy that the Assembly itself unanimously reaffirmed would have been quietly hollowed out at the highways. These are not administrative details. They are the Dravidian settlement itself: transparency against custodial power, Tamil against imposition. M.K. Stalin's jibe — that the "Victory Kazhagam" should rename itself the "Reels Kazhagam" — stings because it is accurate. A reel is shot, posted, and deleted if it flops. A government order cannot be. Governance is not content. When a minister defends an indefensible order on Monday and the government withdraws it on Sunday, the citizen learns a corrosive lesson: that policy in Tamil Nadu is now written in pencil. The Dravidian movement was built on the opposite instinct. Periyar's self-respect, Anna's clarity, Kalaignar's formidable administrative memory — none of them governed by checking which way the wind was blowing that morning. They were predictable, and their predictability was their power: the poor knew where the movement stood, because the movement knew where it stood. A government that announces first and thinks later will eventually announce something it cannot take back. The U-turn is not humility. It is the confession of a government that never had a map — only a mirror.