Going by the schemes announced and funds allotted, the social sector received the highest priority of the new government led by AIADMK supremo J Jayalalithaa, which completed its first 100 days in office on August 23.
Apart from this, some of the key initiatives included checking land grab worth Rs 232 crore, reducing the price of LPG, creating a Vision 2025 document for the state, finding a solution for the Tirupur industry, and others.
The chief minister, who has majority of 150 seats in the 234-member House, created a new portfolio of minister for special initiatives to implement her party's election-time promises. She had signed seven files, all related to the election promises, on taking office and allocated Rs 8,900 crore in the interim budget.
The schemes concern free rice, wedding assistance for women with a diploma, a four-gram gold coin along with assistance of Rs 25,000 to educated poor women, monthly assistance for senior citizens to Rs 1,000 and increasing the monthly dole of fishermen during fishing ban to Rs 2,000.
In the education sector, the meal scheme in government schools received Rs 11,246 crore while a new scheme for free distribution of laptops to students was also announced with a funding of Rs 9.12 crore. The latter would cover 912,000 students of classes XI, XII and college, this year.
On the agriculture front, the government aims to triple farmers' income in the next five years, with a foodgrain production target of 11.5 million tonnes this year as against 8.53 million tonnes last year.
The government announced VAT exemption to chemical fertilizers and insecticides, and set a crop loan target of Rs 3,000 crore to be disbursed through cooperatives in 2011-12.
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New power projects with a total capacity of 3,800 MW, involving an investment of Rs 22,800 crore, were also announced. So was the Rs 16,650-crore monorail project for Chennai.
One of the major decisions from the chief minister’s office was a Rs 200-crore interest-free loan to set up common effluent treatment plants in Tirupur as a step towards a permanent solution to the pollution issue plaguing the Rs 12,000-crore Tirupur knitwear industry.
Tamil Nadu industries minister S P Velumani also announced the acquisition of a land bank of 7,900 acres, to attract industries to the south of the state. State Industries Promotion Corporation of Tamil Nadu Ltd (Sipcot) would set up the landbank.
New industrial policies to catalyse the automobiles and autocomponents industry, as well as information and communications technology, biotechnology and pharma industries were also announced.