Palanivel Thiagarajan: Former banker looks to fix Tamil Nadu’s finances

Tamil Nadu’s new finance minister is highly qualified, believes in God and Chief Minister Stalin trusts him. Can he deliver?

When DMK chief M K Stalin was sworn in as the chief minister of Tamil Nadu, his choice to helm the crucial finance ministry was not surprising.

PTR Palanivel Thiagarajan has a decorated CV and ticks all the right boxes. A scion of one of Madurai's distinguished political families, Thiagarajan studied at top institutions in India and the US; worked in the biggest global banks in 'videsh', married his American classmate, but returned to 'Swades' and took the political plunge.

Thiagarajan has been the new chief minister's go-to man for finance-related issues. Though a first-time MLA, Stalin as Opposition Leader had allowed the former banker to initiate the budget discussion in the Assembly for five years from 2016. And it is only fitting that he allotted the finance portfolio to Thiagarajan, who shone as an MLA by releasing a report card on his performance every six months. As IT wing chief, he is also credited with shoring up the DMK's presence on social media.

But Thiagarajan now faces the unenviable task of extricating Tamil Nadu from a deep financial hole as well as coordinating international efforts to help his government fight the coronavirus.

And the 55-year-old is putting all his wide contacts in the US and elsewhere to good use.

A third-generation politician, Thiagarajan belongs to one of the foremost political families of Madurai. His grandfather P T Rajan of the Justice Party, a precursor to DMK, was chief minister of the then Madras Presidency, while his father P T R Palanivelrajan served as a DMK minister and Speaker of the Assembly.

Thiagarajan often calls himself a “fourth-generation Dravidian” owing to the fact that his grand-uncle M T Subramania Mudaliar was a Justice Party veteran and a philanthropist.

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The Rajans are deeply spiritual and the family played a pivotal role in the consecration of the famous Madurai Meenakshi Amman Temple in 1963, the first after the kings seized control, and gifted the present panchaloha idol of Lord Ayyappa to the Sabarimala temple in Kerala.

Though he spent most part of his formative years abroad, Thiagarajan always stayed to his roots—he married his American classmate Margaret but ensured that the wedding was in vintage Tamil style. He sports vermilion prominently on his forehead, even though he represents the DMK, a party that actively professes atheism.

“My husband used to pray before Goddess Meenakshi every Friday and after his death in 2006, my son made a commitment to himself to return to Madurai every month to seek her blessings. In the past 15 years, he would have missed coming here only once or twice," Rukmini Palanivelrajan, Thiagarajan’s mother, tells DH.

“And I feel it is the blessings of Meenakshi Amman that he represents Madurai (Central) for the second time,” she says.

No wonder that Thiagarajan is also the DMK's potent weapon to counter the BJP whenever anti-Hindu barb is thrown at the party, as he always flaunts his family's contributions to the development of temples. That is also precisely the reason he took on Jaggi Vasudev's Free TN Temples campaign, calling him a “publicity hound”.

Thiagarajan flew to the US in 1987 after graduating from the National Institute of Technology. He did his post-graduation and PhD from the State University of New York and MBA degree from MIT Sloan School of Management. Thiagarajan shifted base to Mumbai in 2007 to be close to his mother. Two years later, the family moved to Chennai, which is now their permanent home.

Thiagarajan seems to be in the thick of seismic events. He was part of the Lehman Brothers when the institution filed for bankruptcy in 2008, triggering a global financial crisis.

An old friend recalls that Thiagarajan was at the World Trade Centre on September 11, 2001, when passenger planes commandeered by terrorists crashed into the twin towers. Now, the former banker is in the midst of a global health emergency.

Thiagarajan surrendered his green card in 2010 hoping to take the political plunge in 2011, but when things did not materialise, he moved to Singapore in 2011 to join Standard Chartered.

“Though he was a high-flyer having spent most of his life in the plane, Thiagarajan is a complete family man. He believes commitment, like charity, begins at home,” a family member said.

In 2015, Thiagarajan returned to Chennai for good after giving up his Singapore Permanent Residency (PR) to take the political plunge. He now largely shuttles between Madurai and Chennai.

His wife and children—Palani and Vel—have seamlessly blended into the Tamil environment: they dress up in traditional attire while visiting temples and public events.

Super-qualified, a family man who loves dogs, and a 'kumkum' Dravidian, Thiagarajan is widely expected to deliver for the DMK and Tamil Nadu.