Kalanithi Maran in Forbes list

Financial Magazine Forbes which ranks world richest people came out with a list of top 20 richest Indians. There were 2 people from Tamil Nadu in the list. Shiv Nadar of HCL is at 14th place, while Kalanithi Maran is at 20th place. According to Forbes,

Politician’s son dabbled in family’s modest publishing business before launching Sun TV when India’s satellite television market opened up in the 1990s. Sun now owns 14 channels, 4 radio stations, newspapers and magazines. Group’s April listing made Maran, who owns 90%, a billionaire. Brother Dayanidhi minister for communications and IT.

Surely with this kind of wealth politics in Tamil Nadu can’t be equal. Money plays a very important role in politics and it now looks like one side has a monumental advantage. While, Kalanithi Maran would have preferred not having this distinction, the fact that SunTV is a public company since its IPO earlier this year, he has no option but to live with this distinction.

Most Popular Tamilians

CNN-IBN conducted a poll as part of its Golden South special series and found out that Abdul Kalam was the most popular Tamilian. 32% of the respondents favored President Kalam. Others in the list included Rajnikanth at 2nd with 24%, and Dravidian movement founder EVK Periyar finished 3rd with 21%. Others in the list included music director Ilayaraja with 12%, MS Subalakshmi with 9.5% and chess player Anand with 1.9%.

From the results, it looks like CNN-IBN picked an elitist crowd for the survey. Except perhaps Periyar no politician is in the list. Popular figures like Kamaraj, MGR, and M Karunanidhi don’t figure in the list. The video and article for this survey are available on CNN-IBN’s website. What your opinion regarding the list? Do you concur with my views?