Perunthalaivar K. Kamarajar - King Maker

Kamaraj was born 15 July 1903, to Kumarasamy Nadar and Sivakami Ammal at Virudhunagar near Madurai in Tamil Nadu. His parents were from a trading family. His real name was Kamakshi Kumaraswamy, but was affectionately shortened to Raja by his mother, Sivakami Ammal. His father, Kumarswamy Nadar, was a coconut merchant.

Kamaraj dropped out of school when he was in the sixth grade. When he entered mainstream public life he felt handicapped and realized the importance of a good education. He educated himself during his periods of imprisonment.

Kamaraj Kumarasami, better known as K. Kamaraj was an Indian politician widely known to be the kingmaker in Indian politics, and known for his honesty, integrity and simplicity.

He was involved in the Indian independence movement and was a close ally of Jawaharlal Nehru, the first Prime Minister of India. He was instrumental in bringing to power two Prime Ministers, Lal Bahadur Shastri in 1964 and Indira Gandhi in 1966. He was affectionately known as the Gandhi of the South. He is also known as Padikatha Medhai or Uneducated Intellect .

On April 13, 1954, K. Kamaraj reluctantly became the Chief Minister of Madras Province. To everyone's surprise, Kamaraj nominated C. Subramaniam and M. Bhakthavatsalam, who had contested his leadership, to the newly formed cabinet. Kamaraj removed the family vocation based Hereditary Education Policy introduced by Rajaji. He reopened the 6000 schools closed by previous government for financial reasons and also added 12000 more schools. The State made immense strides in education and trade. New schools were opened, so that poor rural students were to walk no more than 3 miles to their nearest school. Better facilities were added to existing ones. No village remained without a primary school and no panchayat without a high school. Kamaraj strove to eradicate illiteracy by introducing free and compulsory education up to the eleventh standard. He introduced the Mid-day Meal Scheme to provide at least one meal per day to the lakhs of poor school children (first time in the whole world). He introduced free school uniforms to weed out caste, creed and class distinctions among young minds.During his period IIT MADRAS was started.many industries were started like BHEL,Trichirapalli, NLC, Neyveli, Manali Refinary Ltd, and ICF, Perambur. Number of big dams were constructed like Manimuthar dam, Vaikai dam, Aliyar dam, Sathanur dam and Krishnagiri dam. Many schemes were started to generate electricity like Guntha hydro power station, Ooty and Neyveli thermal power station.During his period, Tamilnadu was developing in all fronts.

He was awarded India's highest civilian honor, the Bharat Ratna, posthumously in 1976. The main airport in Chennai is today named Kamaraj airport in his honour.