Praja Sankalpa Yatra Diary, Day 106: TDP Rule Has No Human Element

Santaravooru, Prakasam district: During the course of my Padayatra today, I met Suresh, a sportsman who was a part of the silver medal-winning team in the Asian Beach Kabaddi championships at Vietnam. He felt proud to represent his country and showed me the medals and trophies he had won. He hoped to get some assistance from the state government, as was the case with his team-mates who were given jobs and other benefits by their respective state governments. He was disappointed that no help was forthcoming from the TDP government and he remained where he was—in abject poverty.

Suresh said that he was left with no alternative but to accompany his father as a labourer to earn his livelihood. This is indeed a very sad state of affairs. How can the government will be so indifferent to sportsmen? How can it treat them with such disdain? Chandrababu wastes no time when it comes to publicity-mongering, but perhaps feels that encouraging such sportsmen would not get him any mileage.

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Kandula Sugunamma, a nonagerian met me in Nandigunta Palem village. She spoke to me with great affection, treating me like her grandson, holding my hand. For 40 years now, she had been getting her quota of rice, but now, she was not being provided with it for the past four months, she complained. The authorities told her that her fingerprints were not being recorded and hence she was not being given her quota! Her visits to the ration shop in the neighbouring village, yielded no results, she said. Is this the meaning of the professed technological advancement Chandrababu brags about?

If a nonagenarian can be denied her quota of provisions on such flimsy technical pretext, what is one to say about such an inhuman government? Isn’t video recording an option in such cases? Can’t fingerprints be manually obtained if fingerprint impressions are not recorded by biometric machines? The fact of the matter is that the TDP government wants to scale down welfare schemes using some excuse or the other.

Nagaraju, young Dalit youth of Adipoodi village came and met me. This young man completed his MCA and B.Ed courses. He lamented, “Anna, it has been four years since I completed my education. There are no job opportunities. The government has not given us any unemployment allowance, as promised. Out of compulsion, I have been working as a construction labourer. I’m doing this because I have to support my mother and grandparents,” he said in a voice tinged with sadness. He added, “Anna, I took coaching classes for APPSC exams, spending a lot of money which I had borrowed. The exams are not being held and I am stuck with huge loans which I now have to repay. The government has released The schedule for APPSC examinations, but nothing has come of it. That was only meant to cheat the unemployed.They have not come out with a notification, nor have they held a single exam,” he said. Nagaraju said that if he tried to seek the help of SC Corporation, Janmabhoomi committees created hurdles in his path.

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It is very inhuman on the part of the government to release an examination schedule and not adhere to it, or at least come out with a notification spelling out the dates of the examinations. Students and unemployed youth who trust the government, undergo coaching and wait for the examinations to be held with a lot of anticipation. A job for a poor unemployed youth is everything. It is his life line. To deny job opportunities to millions of such youth by not holding examinations as per schedule, is to cause them great loss in their careers.

I have a question for the chief minister—the application of technology should have a human face and should be used to ensure that welfare schemes are implemented better. Isn’t it inhuman and unfair to deny the benefits of welfare schemes on technical grounds?