MK Stalin will be swearing-in as the next Chief Minister of Tamil Nadu on Friday and on Thursday, the secretary of Tamil Nadu's Governor has unveiled the full list of Stalin's cabinet ministers and portfolios. The DMK President will be heading the 34-member cabinet including two women. The cabinet is made up of significant ingredients of experienced hands, a doctorate, and several young minds. 

Stalin will be assuming the office of the Chief Minister of Tamil Nadu for the first time at the backdrop of overwhelming challenges of addressing the health and financial crises triggered by the second wave of the COVID-19 pandemic and exponential deficits left by the outgoing administration. Addressing these two crises would be the paramount task for Stalin along with delivering the promises of the party's manifesto. 

Stalin would have understood the ordeal lying before him after he takes the office and in order to ensure to fix the fiscal deficits and to have regular flow and financial solution for augmenting the health and medical infrastructure to treat the Corona patients, he must pick the person who would manage the financial department and treasury effectively and to deliver that, Stalin has picked Palanivel Thiagarajan as his choice to lead the financial department at this testing time. Let's see who is Palanivel Thiagarajan and what are challenges will greet him when he enters the office, 

Palanivel Thiagarajan has been named as the next Finance and Human Resource Management Minister of Tamil Nadu. He is the son of late DMK leader PTR Palanivel Rajan. His grandfather PT Rajan was the Chief Minister of Madras Presidency from 4 April 1936 to 24 August 1936. PT Rajan was also the last President of the Justice Party. Thiagarajan had done his schooling at the Lawrence School in Lovedale, The Nilgiris. He graduated with a degree in Chemical Engineering from the National Institute of Technology, Trichy and he went on to obtain a Master's degree in Operations Research and a PhD in Human Factors Engineering/ Engineering Psychology at the State University of New York, Buffalo. 

He then completed his Master of Business Administration in Financial Management at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Sloan School of Management. Thiagarajan brings in vast experience in financial management. He began his career in 1990 as an independent consultant in Operations and Systems improvement. He joined Lehman Brothers Holdings in 2001 as Trader and Co-Portfolio Manager and he quit Lehman Brothers in 2008 as the head of Offshore Capital Markets. 

He then worked for Standard Chartered Bank, Singapore in the Global Capital Markets division. He quit Standard Chartered Bank as Managing Director, Financial Markets Sales in the year 2014. He then entered active politics by joining DMK and brought in sound knowledge in financial management which had probably inspired MK Stalin to induct him into his cabinet. 

Thiagarajan had contested and won from the Madurai Central constituency in the 2016 polls and he was heading the DMK's IT Wing. Under his leadership, DMK has garnered a stable and promising reach in social media. He again contested from Madurai Central in 2021 and won in a huge margin. While it was speculated that he will be inducted into Stalin's cabinet, no one knew that MK Stalin has a plan of naming Thiagarajan as the Finance Minister in his cabinet. 

Besides relishing the new role, the responsibility as the Finance Minister will be an acid test for Thiagarajan and he needs to unleash his total experiences and possibilities in reviving the ailing state's treasury. The major role and challenge for Thiagarajan will be ensuring that the government mechanism drives without any potholes in the financial department. He will be taking the office when the state is already in a debt-trodden with the debt crossing Rs 5.7 lakh crore as per the interim budget tabled by the then Finance Minister Panneerselvam in February 2021. 

According to the latest report from India Ratings and Research, Tamil Nadu may witness the highest fiscal deficit of the millennium for the Fiscal year 2021 mainly due to a huge revenue shortfall on the account of the COVID-19 pandemic. The major task for Thiagarajan would be working with the Union government to obtain the outstanding GST dues from the Central treasury and as the experts say, the key focus of the financial department should be on how the money borrowed is being used by the government. 

As the state is under the horrendous impact of the second wave of the pandemic, it is imperative for the incoming administration that the people get the good flow and system of medical infrastructure whenever required for treating the pandemic. The mammoth task is that Thiagarajan must ensure that the state is supplied with an adequate and uninterrupted amount of Covid vaccines and oxygen at the time of concentrating towards the containment of further deficits. In conclusion, MK Stalin is getting into the real battle after securing a landslide victory and he must ensure that his fleet has a clear target and weaponry to win the battle.