Day in and; day out, our ministers, and the Congress bosses, go about picturising: their ‘achievements’!
The Congress and, Congress alone could deliver the goods, they claim! With glee and gusto, they speak about the Five Year Plans and their achievements!

Documentaries are shown – pamphlets are published – propaganda machinery is strengthened and at times hired – critics are assailed – and the conditions of the masses are painted in bright colours.

A passing observer might be disillusioned, by what the Government presents as the real condition of the people.

Such is the ‘talent’ shown by those at the helm of affairs in the sphere of propaganda, but those perfumes could not always hide the bleeding spots, which have become almost septic!

Crores and crores of rupees are spent on the plans, but the poor remain poor and their conditions are left unalleviated.

Here is a news which is rather surprising, even shocking!

The number of illicit immigrants to Ceylon from South India shows a four-fold increase in the first six months of 1959, as compared with the figure for the same period last year!

The number arrested off the northern coast of Ceylon till the end of June, this year is 1,224, as against 305 arrested in the same period last year, and 842 recorded for the whole of 1958!

And why such immigration? Are these people received at Ceylon with open hands?

Thousands of Tamils that are now residing in Ceylon are treated by the rulers there as “unwanted elements”!

They have to struggle for their rights, even of a fundamental nature!

Many among them are rendered “ Stateless” and it is a condition too horrible to conceive!

If, in spite of that, more than a thousand people from here attempt to settle themselves at Ceylon, what does it mean? They know for certain, that the treatment that would be meted out to them would be rather a callous one. And they know that they would be labelled as “Stateless”, a term which no self-respecting man would tolerate!

But they attempt to go over to Ceylon and settle themselves there! What does this man?

They risk their lives, dare to forego their rights – yes! Everything for eking out their lives!

They do not find here an opportunity to earn for their livelihood and therefore bid good-bye to their motherland! What else could be the correct explanation of this horrible truth?

In fact our motherland, is a land of plenty! Mother Nature has been lavish towards us.

Gold and silver – coal and iron –manganese and mica – Uraniam and Thoriam – and what not! Rivers and mountains, lengthy shore with vast fishing and peal-fishing potentialities, and what else a country needs for it prosperity!

With such potentiality, our people – the people of the South – are poor and desolate!

The mineral resources lay unexploited, the rivers are left to flow to the seas, the industrial potentiality is completely ignored.

Money is spent in crores and crores in constructing dams – erecting factories – exploiting the resources – but all the schemes are concentrated in the North.

As such, the South is meted out a step-motherly treatment and the people here, have not progressed a little, economically.

The pressure on land is constantly increasing, with the increase of population and that pressure bas reached the marginal point.

The number of the landless and unemployed is day by day increasing and among them, thousands find a way out from the miserable condition.

For them, Ceylon and Burma, Malaya and Singapore, seem to be the lands of refuge, wherein they could find out some means of livelihood!

And so, they bid good-bye to their motherland!

Many among those thousand and odd people might have even forsaken their families; their parents, their wives and children, might be weeping and wailing!

They would have thought for a moment, about all these things, but, what could they do?
They have hardened their hearts and have begun furrowing their boat – in the fond hope of finding some way for life, at least in the alien land!

And, is this condition, a ‘certificate of merit’, for those at the gadi?

Is this the achievement they show, after so much of bragging and propaganda? How far is this horrible state of affairs to continue? How long have we to keep num, seeing our brethren waving the willow to our motherland only to wail in the land wherein they settle?

These are the questions we put before the Dravidians and ask them to ponder over!

(Sub-Editorial - 19-07-1959)