Trailblazer Tamilisai completes four years in Telangana

Trailblazer Dr. Tamilisai Soundararajan completes eventful four years and enters her fifth year in service as the Governor of Telangana State on September 8.

During the last four years, the Hyderabad Raj Bhavan has been constantly in the news and enjoyed the never before spotlight. No wonder, Tamilisai Soundararajan is now a household name in the State.

The highly qualified Gynecologist-turned-politician, Dr. Tamilisai Soundararajan was appointed as the second Governor of the youngest State of Telangana State on September 8 in 2019.

It is a rare coincidence that her birthday is also on June 2, which also happens to be the Telangana State Formation Day.

Prior to her appointment as the Constitutional Head of the Telangana, she was serving as the BJP Tamil Nadu State Unit president from 2014 to 2019.

Many thought that the elevation was in due recognition of her firebrand political contribution, despite the opposition and dominance of Dravidian parties, in galvanizing the BJP in Tamil Nadu, where she had to face some physical attacks too by her political opponents.

The daughter of a staunch Gandhian and former TN Pradesh Congress Committee President Mr. Kumari Ananthan, she was not the one to relent and concede the defeat.

She never bowed down in her spiritual and political ideology, and chose her own path by joining the BJP against her legendary father’s wishes.

It is well known that her father did not speak to her for two years opposing her joining the BJP then. Now, it is a different story that she takes great care of her ailing father.

Every now and then, the nonagenarianenjoys a wheelchair ride around the imposing Raj Bhavan and might feel proud of his defiant daughter’s phenomenal rise in public life albeit in a different ideology.

During the last four years in Telangana, Tamilisai Soundararajan, who is known as an indefatigable traveler, ventured into many remote tribal habitations inside the deep forests of Nallamala, Bhadrachalam, and Dandakaranya.

These daring visits to connect with the people belonging to the Particularly Vulnerable Tribal Groups (PVTGs) and other Adivasi tribes are inconceivable and are unprecedented for her predecessors even in the erstwhile undivided Andhra Pradesh.

These visits have endeared her to the Adivasis belonging to the tribes ofthe Chenchus of the Nallamala forest and the Kondareddis of the Bhadrachalam forest.

In these two places, she donated bike-ambulances, supported construction of additional school rooms, community halls, and conducted medical and diagnostic camps involving doctors from ESI Medical College and distributed nutritional supplements from the NIN and Raja Sri variety chicks.

Espousing the cause of Adivasi tribal people living in remote tribal habitations, Tamilisai adopted six tribal villages, two each in Nagarkurnool, Bhadradri-Kothagudem, and Adilabad districts.

Her journeys deep inside the forests in difficult terrains, gives jitters to the police, administration and her entourage, but fail to deter her in reaching out to the Adivasi tribal people in their natural habitat.

Similarly, despite the reported noncooperation from the State government in providing her helicopter to travel to Medaram to pay her obeisance to the tribal warrior deities Sammakka-Saralamma during the jatara, she travelled by road to Medaram, which is at a distance of more than 260 km from Hyderabad.

On that day in February last year, against all odds, Tamilisai travelled by road from Puducherry, where she is holding the additional charge as the Lt. Governor for the past two years, to Chennai and from there she arrived in Hyderabad airport.

From the airport, she embarked on a road journey to Medaram located in the thick Dandakaranya jungle.

Undaunted, the Governor also travelled back to Hyderabad from Medaram on the same night by road after offering puja at the Medaram Sammaka-Saralamma altars.

This arduous journey is one of such many examples where she provedundeterred by the reported noncooperation of the administration in fulfilling her vows and in reaching out to the needy.

Similarly, she took the train journeys twice to travel to Bhadradri-Kothagudem remote forest areasonce to reach out to the Kondareddi adivasis at Pusukunta tribal habitation in Dammapet mandal and the flood-affected areas in the district later.

Concerned over high prevalence of vaccine-hesitancy among the tribal women during the COVID vaccination, Dr. Tamilisai travelled to KC Thanda, a tribal habitation in Maheshwaram mandal of Ranga Reddy district to get her second dose of Covid vaccine amidst and along with the tribal women.

This, she feels, is like leading from the front and setting an example for them to emulate and to overcome their hesitancy for vaccine. Following her gesture, the tribal habitation registered maximum vaccination within no time.

Being a doctor, she always prioritized her efforts and highlighted to ensure better access to medical and health facilities to the people of the State.

It was Dr. Tamilisai Soundararajan, who became the first ever VIP to venture into a COVID Ward to boost the morale of the patients at the peak of the COVID during the first phase.

Her visit to the NIMS COVID Ward where the affected doctors were getting treated in isolation as early as June 8 in 2020 was the first of its kind in the country. It created a sort of sensation and turned out to be an awe-inspiring daring visit to the CoVID Ward.

Dr. Tamilisai Soundararajan’s efforts in COVID prevention, awareness creation and her humanitarian help to the needy by establishing a 24x7 Helpline at the Raj Bhavan have all made her approachable to the commoners.

She never loses time to be in the forefront and fight for the cause of the women. Her visit to the Disha’s house and her successful initiative to organise Mahila Durbar at Raj Bhavan to listen to the grievances of the women from a cross section of the society truly stand testimony to her commitment.

Paying a rich tribute to the Telangana’s native festival of flowers Batukamma, Tamilisai took the initiative to organise the Batukamma festivities at Raj Bhavan on a grand scale. She joyously participates and celebrates the Batukamma with women from different walks of life, for the past four years at the Raj Bhavan.

Celebration of Batukamma at the lawns in front of her official residence at the Raj Bhavan and in Durbar Hall and the Governor carrying and offering traditional Telangana Bonam at the Nalla Pochamma temple in Raj Bhavan have turned out to be the pride symbols of Telangana identity in the recent past.

“Women have to struggle and strive 10 times harder to succeed in this male-dominated political sphere. But one should not leave the arena depressed and dejected. It is always better to fight back and stand courageous” she famously said.

Dr. Tamilisai Soundararajan, motivating a group of girl studentsrecently, likened the women to a trees and said…” they might cut our branches as we grow. But we must not relent in spreading our roots deep down so as to become even stronger and continue to grow and challenge the stereotypes.”

As Dr. Tamilisai, who is fondly called as the “Daughter of Tamil Nadu and Sister of Telangana,” enters into the fifth year of her service as the Governor of Telangana, it is only hoped that the recent bonhomie between the Pragati Bhavan and Raj Bhavan may continue to help the youngest State prosper further.

For this to happen, the cynical elements and more loyal than the king types and the PR spin doctors on either side need to be patient for the bonhomie to continue for the State to progress and prosper.

 (Author teaches Communication at The English and Foreign Languages University. Views are personal)