Chandrababu Government Lacks Basic Humanity

Jagannayakulapalem, East Godavari District:My father is a constant source of inspiration to me. This fact gets reinforced on my Padayatra all the time. People everywhere tell me about the great work he had done in all aspects of governance, for their welfare. This spurs me on to move forward and attempt to accomplish his ideals and emulate him.

“Dr. YSR is someone we worship. Unable to battle illness, I had given up all hope because of the cost involved. The late Dr YS Rajasekhara Reddy came to my rescue with Arogyasri and my life was saved. If I am able to lead a normal life with my family, I owe this to him." These were the words of Kudipudi Suryavati of Injaram which pleases me no end.

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Anasuri Radhika met me along with her husband. She walked along with me on my Padayatra and told me that she and her family members would remain indebted to my father forever. Her sister, Satyavani, gave up her Tahsildar’s job to contest as an MLA on a TDP ticket. After she lost the elections, the entire family found itself in dire straits. When her plight was narrated to my father by Pilli Subhas Chandra Bose, he took pity on this lady officer from a backward community and got her reinstated on humanitarian grounds. Radhika said—"Such was his large-heartedness that unmindful of the fact that my sister had contested from an opposition party, your father took a generous view of her condition with respect to her job.”

In contrast today, leaders pointed out that discrimination and partisan politics dominated governance under TDP. If one were to look at the 40 years which went by, this is a common thread that runs through the TDP narrative. Pensions are denied to centenarians, the differently-abled with 100% disability and widows everywhere across the state, only because of discrimination. The reason is that they are not followers or supporters of TDP.

Schemes and projects remain incomplete because Chandrababu Naidu does not want the credit to be attributed to my father. Similarly, the fee reimbursement scheme has been watered down completely because it was my father who pioneered it. The same neglect under TDP is true of Arogyasri, 108 and 104 services which had once proved to be a lifeline of undivided Andhra Pradesh. These schemes initiated by my father were hailed across the country as model ones and yet have suffered at the hands of the ruling TDP. My father believed that politics should be confined to election time and that governance should take precedence for the rest of the period keeping the welfare of the masses in mind.

The people of K. Gangavaram complained to me that drinking water had become a scarce commodity for them because of the mushrooming of the prawn industry patronised by Telugu Desam party leaders. “Leave alone drinking water, all-round contamination of water resources and widespread pollution made it worse,” they said. “Illnesses plague us if we drink this water and when we complain, the TDP leaders threaten to implicate us in false cases,” they lamented. One can imagine the supremacy of the Telugu Desam leaders because even the collector appears to be helpless in this instance, they pointed out.

The local villagers further said that they were mostly daily wage labourers and poor workers who could not afford to buy drinking water. On the one hand, the existing water resources were contaminated due to the mushrooming of the prawn industry and on the other, no alternative sources of water supply were provided to these suffering poor. How does the government expect them to survive?

I have a question for the chief minister—in your party manifesto, you have made several promises with regard to drinking water. You assured places affected by saline water of providing drinking water supply. Today, we find that the prawn industry has severely affected water resources of the region, turning them saline. Have you set up a proper drinking water scheme at least for one village? You had promised drinking water to every household. What happened to that promise? Safe drinking water supply to all villages and 20 litres of mineral water at Rs.2, were among promises you made. What happened to them?