madurai gone are the days when folk artists used to be an integral part of poll campaigning people would know that a candidate was approaching their area from the reverberating sound of the thappua traditional drumbeing played by these artists during a public meet the artists would keep the audience captivated with dance performces before the speaker arrived parties used to employ folk artists to drum up support for their candidates and take their message to the people so much so that till 1967 each party had its own set of folk artists to conduct cultural programmes during electionbut in this digital era folk artists are fast losing out to social media platforms like whatsapp and facebook and television and print advertisementsthings changed with the emergence of dravidian parties says professor a sivasubramanian folk art researcher and author folk artists were taken for a ride as politicians abandoned them once elections were over with the advent of the digital era parties found other ways to reach out to the people even if they are employed the pay is very poor the folk artists are now struggling he says seconding his views chennaibased puppeteer artist mu kalaivanan says that the role of folk artists has become limited as parties prefer mainstream media like newspapers and television folk artists supporting a party also live under the constant fear of being attacked if the opposition comes to power he saysleft in the lurch by political parties folk artists say that most of the parties have not mentioned anything about them in their election manifestos they say that the benefits such as compensation for injuries and death education funds for children and medical schemes given away by the state welfare board for folk artists are not adequate to make a decent living in reality we dont have money to transport our equipment for a performance says s malaisamy a karagam dancer in maduraifurther the tamil nadu art and culture department has become dormant in the last few years even district level awards to artists were announced after a gap of four years retired regional assistant director of the department n sulaiman says that there is very little happening in the department it is unfortunate that political parties have completely forgotten the folk artists he says