Actor's tsunami work under fire

This is a good story - seems like there's a lot of Tamil-related news in the BBC lately, though at least this is a bit less grim than the last one. I try not to do media commentary when I can help it, because it seems like some people do very little else. But it's been a really crazy time, and I haven't had the time to polish off some of the posts that I'd started earlier. Anyway - I'm very amused by J Jayalalitha. She's quite a character in her own reality drama.

Story from BBC NEWS
The chief minister of India's Tamil Nadu state has accused famous Hindi actor Vivek Oberoi of overstating his tsunami relief work to gain publicity. J Jayalalitha told the state assembly Oberoi had achieved "maximum publicity" for doing "nothing tangible".

Oberoi set up his Project Hope after the tsunami but moved his operations to neighbouring Pondicherry because of land ownership "hitches" in Tamil Nadu. Oberoi could not be reached to respond to Ms Jayalalitha's comments.

The 26 December tsunami killed about 8,000 people in Tamil Nadu and almost 600 in Pondicherry. Many more are still missing.

Opposition questions
Oberoi became actively engaged in providing relief to people affected by the tsunami in the coastal town of Cuddalore over the past three months.

He says he has built more than 100 temporary shelters for displaced fishermen. Oberoi says he was so moved by the devastation that at one point he camped in one of the villages, Devanampattinam, to supervise relief operations for several days.

But in a recent press conference, Oberoi said that although the Tamil Nadu government had been helpful and tried to acquire land for permanent houses for fishermen, there were "several hitches" as much of the land was privately owned.

He alleged there were "vested interests" in Tamil Nadu which put a spoke in the wheel of his relief efforts.

Oberoi said he was forced to abandon Tamil Nadu and move to Pondicherry, a federally-administered territory, where the government could process requests for land within 10 days.

He said the preliminary work in a 25-acre plot in Pondicherry had already started. But Ms Jayalalitha responded to the perceived criticism by saying that Oberoi had done only 10% of relief work at Devanampattinam and the government the remaining 90%.

Responding to questions from the opposition in the assembly, she added that even the 10% of the actor's work was not done with his own money but with that of donors. She denied opposition accusations that Oberoi had withdrawn because the government failed to provide land. "The Tamil Nadu government was not responsible for his decision," Ms Jayalalitha said.