The DMK delivered. That is the uncomfortable starting point of any honest analysis of 2026. Growth at 11 per cent. Kalaignar Magalir Urimai Thittam disbursing monthly entitlements directly into women’s accounts. Health insurance widened, pensions institutionalised, school meals expanded, free bus travel sustained. By any conventional metric of welfare-state performance, the Stalin government’s record was not just defensible but distinctive. The party went into the election with a manifesto that organised this delivery around a coherent ideological claim — urimai , entitlement as right rather than gift, the state’s transfers framed as the citizen’s due rather than the leader’s largesse. And it lost two-thirds of its assembly strength. The puzzle is not why the DMK was punished but why competent governance produced a punishment of this magnitude. Several things were happening at once, and disentangling them is the work of the next several months. But certain diagnostics can be offered now.…