Crowd sourcing strategy exposes indifference of top brass to Vellore AIADMK cadre

This also led to the locals hired in place of such cadre embarrassing the party by their inappropriate actions, sources said. Referring to the incident where locals “hired” for lauding speakers at the party meeting rather were rather inappropriate in timing, a senior AIADMK functionary said, “The present issue is because ward secretaries who arrange for people and party workers from their wards for local party meetings show no interest as the party top brass at the district level totally neglected them during Deepavali and Pongal festivals.”

Adding his views, another functionary said, “During Amma’s time, it was a standard rule reiterated by her personally that top functionaries should give monetary gifts to such low-level workers during festivals to make them understand that the party cared for them. Also, such persons would be handed small government contract works to earn a little.”

“But such practices have been given the go by the present district top brass who corner all contracts for themselves or for their cronies that functionaries at the ward level get nothing and thus show their displeasure by not bringing workers for party meetings,” the functionary added.

It has been found that the present practice by all parties is to use ‘agents’ to hire workers at the rate of Rs 200 per head for 90 minutes or 2 hours for attendance at public meetings.

P Natarajan, a functionary, said that “agents are usually party workers from the slums who are paid this amount by middle level workers. The former after deducting their cut then get hands, mostly women for such meetings. But the problem is that the hired hands move out of the venue when their time is up, which usually happens when the VIP starts to speak, embarrassing those who arranged the meeting.”

Of the Rs 7 lakh spent for the Jayalalithaa birth anniversary celebrations, about Rs 3.50 lakh was spent to hire “workers” for the meeting, sources said. “Instead, if ward and area secretaries were looked after properly, this money could have been saved,” a senior functionary said.