FOOL's'COOL

The 'Gali' effect on Jagan

2011-09-06T01:14:00.000+05:30

Desaraju Surya

Hyderabad: The arrest of former minister of Karnataka Gali Janardhana Reddy bythe CBI in the illegal mining case has started ringing alarm bells in the Kadapa MP YS Jaganmohan Reddy’s camp as the former allegedly invested money inthe latter’s businesses.

In his ownwords, late Chief Minister Y S Rajasekhara Reddy was a “father figure” andJagan “my younger brother” for Gali Janardhana Reddy who was a beneficiary ofthe former’s munificence in Andhra Pradesh.

Gali’s associateand a director in his Obulapuram Mining Company (OMC) Ramachandra Reddy is anMLA from Anantapur district who resigned from the Assembly last month insupport of Jagan.

His campers fearthat the CBI’s probe into Gali’s illegal mining activity may also extend to Jaganas the duo had close business and family links.

Jagan is alreadyunder the CBI and the Enforcement Directorate scanner over his dubious businessventures.

The then YSRgovernment virtually gifted over 10,000 acres of land in Kadapa district toGali for setting up a steel plant named Brahmani. Another 3,000 acres wasgiven to Gali for constructing an exclusive airport.

Not stopping atthat, YSR himself wrote a letter to the Government of India to grant a loan ofRs 750 crore to Gali for setting up the steel plant and personally lobbied withthe authorities concerned for securing the loan.

Besides, the YSRgovernment gave a free run to Gali for carrying out iron ore mining inAnantapur district, bordering Karnataka, ostensibly for the proposed steelplant.

In turn, Galiinvested huge money in RR Global and Red Gold business ventures owned by Jagan.

The steel plantnever came up but Gali went ahead with iron ore mining for over two yearswithout any hindrance and shipped the mineral illegally to foreign countries.

All oppositionparties in the state waged a virtual war against this “brazen loot of nation’smineral resources” but, as long as he was alive, YSR never did anything to stopthe illegal mining.

The CentralEmpowered Committee appointed by the Supreme Court that probed the illegalmining in Anantapur district had strongly indicted the Andhra Pradeshgovernment saying “their efforts have been to cover up the illegal mining beingdone by OMC in the un-allotted forest areas outside the approved mining leases.”

In a scathingcriticism of the then YSR government, the CEC observed that “the objectivity,fairness and impartiality which is expected from a state government isshockingly lacking here and does not inspire confidence.”

It was onlyafter YSR’s death that the then Rosaiah government finally cracked the whip onGali’s illegal activities by suspending all mining activity in Anantapurdistrict.

And now, the law has finally caught up with the mining mafia lord.

Kiran Kumar's brand-building exercise

2011-06-10T03:22:00.000+05:30

Desaraju Surya

Hyderabad: Switch on any Telugu television channel or flip through pages of newspapers and you will find a smiling face of Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister Nallari Kiran Kumar Reddy these days.

As you travel on any road in Hyderabad or other major towns in the state, huge hoardings with the Chief Minister’s picture greet you.

All this is part of an “image-building” exercise that Kiran launched in recent days. The State Information and Public Relations Department has initiated an aggressive audio-visual advertisement campaign to trumpet the government programmes and simultaneously prop-up the Chief Minister.

Ever since he came to occupy the Chief Minister’s chair in November last rather unwittingly, Kiran never had an easy going. Troubles plagued him from the day he constituted his Council of Ministers and thereafter he faced more brickbats than bouquets.

He was always seen as a “loner” who could not carry people along and a novice in administrative affairs. Besides, he was a “poor communicator” who could neither speak nor read his mother tongue Telugu properly.

This became a biggest handicap for Kiran and provided a tool for others to lampoon him as he failed to “connect” with the people.

Close to seven months in office now, there is no change yet in Kiran’s fortunes. Administration in the state – as opposition parties allege and some of the ministers themselves admit – is in disarray for a variety of reasons. The Chief Minister could not buy peace with his Cabinet colleagues or Congress leaders while the “high command” that promised to take care of his troubles now apparently remains indifferent.

The burden fell on Kiran himself to work out a way to overcome all the hiccups and thus the image-building effort.

“Since conversing in Telugu has been a major problem, the Chief Minister primarily focused his energies on honing his language skills in the last couple of months. Now there is a marked improvement in the way he addresses a public meeting,” a close aide of Kiran said.

Last week, Kiran surprised everyone by addressing villagers at Vaddepally in Medak district for 40 minutes. This was first time ever that the Chief Minister addressed a public meeting for that length of time. And, he spoke with clarity which hitherto was lacking in his speeches.

Though he doesn’t have a coterie as such, Kiran Kumar consults two senior journalists almost on a daily basis for inputs and feedback on public reaction to his speeches as well as the government programmes.

Kiran Kumar has also been holding regular meetings with the Congress cadres in different districts these days. The one point he is trying to drive home through such meetings is to “stay committed” to the party and get rewarded.

“I am a shining example. I have been a committed Congress worker for over 25 years now and a four-term MLA. I never hankered for posts. I wanted to be a minister at best but I was rewarded with the Chief Minister’s post,” Kiran has been telling the party rank and file.

Since he is facing opposition within the party following his elevation, Kiran is trying to project that it is the Congress high command that brought him in. By this, he is seeking to silence his detractors by invoking the high command.

But Kiran’s aides see this also as a part of the image-building process. He is clearly sending out a message to those who are questioning his leadership credentials.

ANDHRA PRADESH: Awaiting the Congress' call

2011-05-19T00:14:00.002+05:30

Desaraju Surya

HYDERABAD: Andhra Pradesh is desperately waiting for Congress’ call – on the vexatious state bifurcation issue.

For years, the Congress has dodged the issue fearing a political backlash but its indecisiveness on either creating a Telangana state or keeping Andhra Pradesh united has only been aggravating the unrest among people of the two regions.

To say that the entire state has been pushed into turmoil – on all fronts – particularly since December 2009 on account of the Congress’ dithering stand will only be an understatement.

The distress caused to ordinary people, the beating that the state’s image had taken notably on the investment front, the internal rift that the main political parties of the state were left with and the enormous loss caused to the state exchequer on account of the strife are now part of history.

But, history threatens to repeat if the Congress drags its feet.

The Congress-led UPA government at the Centre has bought time, from the aggressive statehood proponents, till completion of elections to five state assemblies even as close to five months elapsed since the five-member Justice Srikrishna Committee submitted its recommendations on the contentious subject.

Now that elections are over, the separatists are ready to up the ante once again and go all out in their quest for the state of Telangana that so far remained elusive for them.

Not only the separatists but also the integrationists are seeking an immediate solution to the crisis.

“From June 1, we will put Telangana on the boil and even take our struggle to the international level,” declared the separatist leader K Chandrasekhar Rao, whose Telangana Rashtra Samiti has been in the forefront of the statehood struggle.

“It is time for the Government of India to take a clear decision in favour of Telangana. Else, we will go to any extent to realize our aspirations,” regional leaders of the ruling Congress warned.

Having suffered a severe setback in which was once its stronghold, Telugu Desam Party too is gearing up for an open fight this time and has announced its first step of agitation programme in the form of a three-day paada yatra (foot march) beginning May 23.

The Bharatiya Janata Party, which is keen on re-establishing its base in the region by taking a lead in the statehood struggle, is also organizing a massive rally in Karimnagar on May 31 to galvanize public support for the cause.

Government employees, on the other hand, have threatened to stop work once again if the Central government continued to dilly-dally on Telangana.

There are other groups in the region, particularly the student community, that have been taking an active part in the statehood agitations along with the political parties, often resorting to violence.

Worried are the common people whose lives will be largely affected if the separatists once again unleash strife to meet their objective.

On the other side, the Andhra-Rayalaseema regions remained relatively peaceful despite the state bifurcation demand reaching a feverish pitch in Telangana. Though for a brief period in early 2010 protests erupted in Andhra-Rayalaseema regions with the demand that the state not be split, peace prevailed after the Justice Srikrishna Committee was constituted.

The state fears, as it was mentioned in the Committee’s report as well, that trouble may erupt in any particular region if the Centre’s decision went against it.

“That is inevitable. But the Centre cannot hold its decision on this pretext. It should take an immediate decision either way and settle the issue once and for all,” a group of ministers firmly told Union Minister and AICC general secretary Ghulam Nabi Azad when he interacted with them here yesterday. It was a unanimous appeal made by ministers from Telangana as well as Andhra-Rayalaseema regions.

The MPs, MLAs and MLCs from the respective regions, however, spoke for and against the bifurcation – the stands they had taken for long.

Ironically, even when things have come to such a pass, Azad sought to weigh the political fallout for the Congress if the Telangana statehood demand is conceded or not. “Can you people assure Congress’ victory in the next elections if Telangana is granted,” he reportedly questioned party leaders from the region at his meeting.

Only one so-called ‘veteran’ leader rose to say: “I will.”

Interestingly, Azad reportedly did not seek any such assurance from Andhra-Rayalaseema leaders.

Whatever be the implications for the Congress, people of Andhra Pradesh are only looking for a solution that will ensure lasting peace and progress.

Much bravado about nothing

2011-05-17T01:22:00.001+05:30

Desaraju Surya

Hyderabad: Having realised that his resounding victory in the Kadapa Lok Sabha by-election is absolutely not good enough to cause any threat to the Congress government in Andhra Pradesh anytime in the near future, a jittery YSR Congress Party president Y S Jaganmohan Reddy is forced to re-work his strategies.
Now, Jagan's focus will be to "consolidate" his base not just in his native Kadapa but in other parts of the state as well.
Sources close to him say the upcoming elections to urban local bodies and panchayat raj institutions could serve as the real testing ground for Jagan's strength and establish his mass base.
All his tall talk and bravado notwithstanding, Jagan realised that he doesn’t command the strength to cause any threat to the government either immediately or in the near future.
As things stand, Jagan has the open backing of only about 15 MLAs in the 294-member AP Assembly, a number too short to make any dent to the government.
Buoyed by his victory in the Kadapa Lok Sabha by-election by a record margin of over 5.45 lakh votes, Jagan initially announced that the Kiran Kumar Reddy government would “fall” within six months.
Subsequently, he changed his tone and said dislodging the government might not be possible as the principal opposition Telugu Desam Party became “an alliance partner” of the ruling Congress.
One who always spoke of over-throwing the government “at the opportune time”, Jagan now changed tack and rather dared the Congress to go for snap polls and seek a fresh mandate.
"Let him first come out with the exact number of MLAs supporting him and then talk of snap polls or anything else," state Transport Minister Botsa Satyanarayana remarked, rebuking Jagan.
Given its own predicaments, the TDP too is not ready to take the Jagan bait and move a no-confidence motion against the Congress government.
"We have an ideology and a strategy of our own. We will not act according to someone else's wishes," TDP supremo N Chandrababu Naidu asserted.
"If Jagan is so confident about his strength, why doesn't he make the MLAs supporting him to resign and seek a mandate. That will make things clear," TDP politburo member Yanamala Ramakrishnudu said.
Though about 15 MLAs, including two TDP rebels and one PRP rebel, are apparently behind him, some of the Congress legislators are making moves to stay back in their parent party rather than sail with Jagan fearing disqualification.
For the time being, the Congress initiated disqualification proceedings against only four MLAs of whom two have reportedly affirmed that they would indeed stay in the ruling party only.
Even among those sailing with Jagan, not all MLAs are said to be happy given his "undemocratic" style of functioning. A Congress and a PRP MLA already walked out of the Jagan camp protesting his "dictatorial" attitude.
"As MLAs loyal to him we couldn't manage an appointment with Jagan and had to wait for two or three days for an audience. That style of functioning will only be detrimental for Jagan," an MLA who walked out of the camp said.
Besides, Jagan's ploy of encouraging the "emerging leaders" even in constituencies where his loyalists are sitting MLAs is also not going down well with the latter.
These are some reasons why the so-called fence-sitters are showing no urgency to jump onto the Jagan bandwagon despite his massive win in the by-poll.
In such a scenario, Jagan cannot go ahead immediately with his plan to dislodge the Kiran Kumar Reddy government, sources close to him aver.
The MP-elect may make his further moves only if the YSR Congress Party succeeds in elections to the local bodies whenever they are held.
Till then, Kiran Kumar and Co. can breathe easy.

POWER OF MONEY

2011-04-06T00:21:00.002+05:30

This has been taken from an email sent by my dear friend SKS Nair. I found it wonderful and hence decided to post it on my blog for a wider audience.

This was actually written by Adam Khoo, Singapore's youngest millionaire at 26 years. read on.......

Some of you may already know that I travel around the region pretty frequently, having to visit and conduct seminars at my offices in Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand and Suzhou (China). I am in the airport almost every other week so I get to bump into many people who have attended my seminars or have read my books. Recently, someone came up to me on a plane to KL and looked rather shocked. He asked, 'How come a millionaire like you is travelling economy?' My reply was, 'That's why I am a millionaire.' He still looked pretty confused. This again confirms that the greatest lie ever told about wealth (which I wrote about in my latest book 'Secrets of Self-Made Millionaires'). Many people have been brainwashed to think that millionaires have to wear Gucci, Hugo Boss, Rolex, and sit on first class in air travel. This is why so many people never become rich because the moment that they earn more money, they think that it is only natural they spend more, putting them back to square one. The truth is that most self-made millionaires are frugal and only spend on what is necessary and of value. That is why they are able to accumulate and multiply their wealth so much faster. Over the last 7 years, I have saved about 80% of my income while today I save only about 60% (because I have my wife, mother-in-law, 2 maids, 2 kids, etc. to support). Still, it is way above most people who save 10% of their income (if they are lucky). I refuse to buy a first class ticket or a $300 shirt because I think that it is a complete waste of money. However, I happily pay $1,300 to send my 2-year old daughter to Julia Gabriel Speech and Drama without thinking twice. When I joined the YEO (Young Entrepreneur's Organisation) a few years back, YEO was an exclusive club open to those who were under 40 and make over $1m a year in their own business. I discovered that those who were self-made thought like me. Many of them with net worth of well over $5m, travelled economy class and some even drove Toyota's and Nissans, not Audis, Mercs, BMWs. I noticed that it was only those who never had to work hard to build their own wealth (there were also a few ministers' and tycoons' sons in the club) who spent like there was no tomorrow. Somehow, when you did not have to build everything from scratch, you do not really value money. This is precisely the reason why a family's wealth (no matter how much) rarely lasts past the third generation. Thank God, my rich dad foresaw this terrible possibility and refused to give me a cent to start my business. Then, some people ask me, 'What is the point in making so much money if you don't enjoy it?' The thing is that I don't really find happiness in buying branded clothes, jewellery or sitting first class. Even if buying something makes me happy it is only for a while, it does not last. Material happiness never lasts, it just gives you a quick fix. After a while you feel lousy again and have to buy the next thing which you think will make you happy. I always think that if you need material things to make you happy, then you live a pretty sad and unfulfilled life. Instead, what makes me happy is when I see my children laughing and playing and learning so fast. What makes me happy is when I see my companies and trainers reaching more and more people every year in so many more countries. What makes me really happy is when I read all the emails about how my books and seminars have touched and inspired someone's life. What makes me really happy is reading all your wonderful posts about how this blog is inspiring you. This happiness makes me feel really good for a long time, much much more than what a Rolex would do for me. I think the point I want to put across is that happiness must come from doing your life's work (be it teaching, building homes, designing, trading, winning tournaments etc.) and the money that comes is only a by-product. If you hate what you are doing and rely on the money you earn to make you happy by buying stuff, then I think that you are living a meaninglessness life.

Test of Jagan's political might

2011-03-31T02:12:00.003+05:30

Desaraju Surya
Hyderabad: The time has come for "rebel leader" Y S Jaganmohan Reddy to prove his political might.
The Election Commission has set May 8 as the date for his first political battle as an independent leader.
For Jagan, who got elected to Lok Sabha on his political arangetram in 2009 as Congress candidate from Kadapa constituency, the very party is now the main rival.
Son of late Chief Minister Y S Rajasekhara Reddy, the industrialist-turned-politician quit the Congress as well as his Lok Sabha seat on November 29 last alleging that the party "humiliated" his family. His mother Vijayalakshmi too followed him and resigned from her Pulivendula MLA seat, causing the by-election in the two segments.
Political observers feel that a good show by Jagan in the by-elections will spell trouble for Chief Minister N Kiran Kumar Reddy as the rebel leader will try to go for the kill with the help of MLAs loyal to him.

When he quit the Congress in November last, Jagan’s group claimed he enjoyed the support of at least 36 MLAs in the 294-member AP Assembly, a number good enough to dislodge the Kiran Kumar Reddy government. Just a few days later, he claimed during an agitation programme in New Delhi that the Kiran Kumar government was surviving only “at my mercy.”

“I am doing a favour to the Congress by not pulling down its government in Andhra Pradesh,” he had claimed and maintained that he would let it continue its full term till 2014 as it came to power only because of his late father.

Political analysts are, however, unwilling to take Jagan’s claims on face value as they aver that he would not be so “politically imprudent” to wait on the sidelines for another three years.

As things stand, Jagan seems to be enjoying clear support of just a dozen Congress MLAs besides two each of Praja Rajyam Party and Telugu Desam. There, of course, are some fence-sitters who may jump the wall any way depending on the circumstances.

Jagan was to set up his "own party" but technical glitches spoiled his plans as an outfit by the name "YSR Congress" was already registered with the Election Commission. With no other option in sight, Jagan promptly joined the YSR Congress as an ordinary member and got "elected" as its president last month. He then announced the name of "his" party at a public meeting in Jaggampet in East Godavari district and followed it up with the unveiling of its tri-coloured flag on March 12 at his father's grave at Rajiv Knowledge Valley in Kadapa district.
For all practical purposes Jagan could not "formally launch" his political party as the model code of conduct was in place for the elections to Andhra Pradesh Legislative Council. He can't do it now either as the code remains in place for the by-elections as well.

Nevertheless, he will contest the by-election from Kadapa Lok Sabha constituency as YSR Congress party candidate and his mother Vijayalakshmi will be the party nominee from Pulivendula Assembly segment.

Jagan gave a shocker to the ruling party winning three of the nine Legislative Council seats in the recent elections from the Local Authorities Constituencies while marring its chances in two other. In fact, Congress MLAs loyal to him virtually defeated the ruling party’s nominee for the Council election from the Assembly quota on March 17 by voting in favour of Majlis party candidate, though he too was supported by the Congress.

Now, Jagan’s strength will be put to real test in the by-elections in his own fiefdom. The contest will be as much on YSR’s political legacy as well as on Jagan’s leadership while the sympathy factor too will come into play.

The "secret" agenda of the Centre

2011-03-25T01:05:00.003+05:30

Desaraju Surya

Hyderabad: The Government of India seems to be implementing, rather covertly, the ‘recommendations’ of the Justice Srikrishna Committee even as Andhra Pradesh remains on the boil over the contentious Telangana issue.

A close observation of the political developments in the last few days, read with the crucial three-page “secret supplementary note” handed over to the Union Home Ministry by the Committee, clearly points to a well-planned agenda being executed by the Congress party.

The supplementary note remained a “secret” till Justice L Narasimha Reddy made it public through his judgment on a writ petition filed by former MP M Narayan Reddy.

The secret supplementary note contained the “political management” plan recommended by the Committee to the Union Home Ministry, which is now supposedly being executed.

“There is a need for ensuring unity among the leaders of the ruling party in the state. There is also a need for providing strong and firm political leadership and placement of representatives of Telangana in key positions, may be CM/ Deputy CM (Since done. This aspect was discussed with FM & HM in September, 2010),” the secret note says.

This, of course, did not happen as the Committee presumed while submitting its report to the Centre. Though the Congress promised in December last to appoint a Telangana leader as Deputy Chief Minister, it is yet to be fulfilled because of internal differences within the party.
The Judge in his verdict pointed to this, and observed, “At a time when the Committee was giving final touches to its report, a new Chief Minister was sworn in with some changes in the Cabinet. There was a serious speculation and talk that a legislator from Telangana is going to be made the Deputy Chief Minister, so much so, his name was also announced from Delhi. The Committee appears to have proceeded as though the said legislator was sworn in as Deputy Chief Minister.”
The secret supplementary note reads:

“Action also needs to be initiated for softening the TRS to the extent possible, especially in the context of the fact that TRS has threatened to launch a civil disobedience movement after December 31 and also initiate a “Maha Yuddham’ (a massive war) if the Centre does not announce a Separate Telangana.

Gaddar’s TPF (Telangana Praja Front) who had parted company with TRS have again joined hands with TRS.
Inputs indicate that this agitation can be tackled if Congress leaders do not give an impression indicating any covert/overt support to it.
Hence the Congress MPs/MLAs need to be taken into confidence and asked not to lend any form of support to the agitation. The Congress high command must sensitize its own MPs and MLAs and educate them about the wisdom for arriving at an acceptable and workable solution.
With the ruling party and main opposition party (for Telangana demand) being brought on the same page, the support mechanisms have a higher probability of becoming successful.”

While the Centre or the Congress could not fully succeed in “softening” the TRS, the party succeeded to a large extent in silencing its Telangana MPs and MLAs though one or two MPs like K Keshava Rao and Madhu Yashki Goud continue to make noises over the issue.
Justice Narasimha Reddy observed: “That the Committee travelled beyond the terms of reference in its endeavour to persuade the Union of India, not to accede to the demand for Telangana, is demonstrated in the supplementary note, appended to the note, representing Chapter-VIII. The Committee comprised two jurists, two social scientists and an ex-bureaucrat to study the situation and submit report covering legal and social dimensions of the issue. None of them were supposed to have any political leanings, or for that matter, political tendencies. Unfortunately, the portion extracted above makes one to feel whether it fits into any Terms of Reference to the Committee at all.”
“The above analysis would find even political scientists and sociologists in wilderness and persuade them to add new chapters to political sciences and public administration. None of these aspects could have been put on paper by a given ruling party, even if it is desperate. Still you do not have a basis for this exercise. It does not even reflect political expediency. At the most it manifests political despondency,” the Judge commented.
The Committee’s note also said: “Further, on receipt of the Committee’s report by the government, a general message should be conveyed amongst the people of the state that the Centre will be open for detailed discussions on the recommendations/options of the report with the leaders/stakeholders concerned either directly or through a Group of Ministers or through important interlocutors and that this process will start at the earliest.”

Close to three months have elapsed since the full report was submitted to the Central government but this process hasn’t begun yet, leaving Andhra Pradesh in a state of gross uncertainty.

KIRAN KUMAR: 100* ..... FOR NOW!

2011-03-05T00:02:00.004+05:30

Desaraju Surya

Hyderabad: Nallari Kiran Kumar Reddy today completed his first 100 days in office as Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister but his performance report card reads zero.

The Congress high command overnight replaced K Rosaiah with Kiran Kumar as Chief Minister on November 25 last year in the wake of a deepening crisis within the party.

He was supposed to be the ruling Congress’ trouble-shooter at a time when the party was faced with rebellion from former MP Y S Jaganmohan Reddy and the turmoil over the statehood issue.

The turbulence over the statehood issue continues unabated on one hand while the Jagan’s shadow also haunts the Chief Minister, leaving him on a shaky wicket.

Will the cricketer-turned-politician hit another century or be bowled out is a big question that hangs on everyone’s mind in the state now.

Governance has been largely paralysed in the past three months because of the prevailing political uncertainty. The ongoing agitations for Telangana, particularly the non-cooperation movement by government employees, have only compounded the woes of people.

Kiran's lack of administrative experience is having a telling impact on governance in the state while his "I know everything" attitude is not going down well with anyone, including his Cabinet colleagues.

“Governance has become the biggest casualty in the state. In fact, people are left to wonder if there is a government in the state at all,” TDP politburo member Yanamala Ramakrishnudu observed.

Even other opposition parties like BJP, CPI and CPM too have decried the “lack of governance” in the state and held, apart from the Chief Minister, the Central government and Congress responsible for the sorry state of affairs.

“There are many speed-breakers in my path (in the last 100 days). But everything will become smooth in the next three to six months,” Kiran remarked, when asked about his experiences as Chief Minister so far.

He was also confident that his government would not only last till 2014 but also retain power thereafter.

Will Jagan let Kiran's dream come true? Obviously not, as waiting for three more years (for the CM's chair) will be politically suicidal for Jagan.

The immediate challenge for Kiran will be securing victory for the Congress in the ensuing by-elections to Kadapa Lok Sabha and Pulivendula Assembly constituencies vacated by Jagan and his mother Vijaya Lakshmi respectively. Election to a lone seat for the Legislative Council from the Kadapa Local Authorities Constituency is also due this month and a defeat for Congress here will sound the first warning bell for Kiran Kumar.

Of the nine Congress MLAs in Kadapa district, five are sailing with Jagan while, the three ministers apart, only one legislator in still in the party.

Jagan is sure to upset the Congress’ applecart if the party fails to win the elections in Kadapa and this could spell doom for the Kiran Kumar government, political observers aver.

The upcoming merger of Praja Rajyam Party with the Congress may not do any good to the government if the Jagan trouble and the Telangana strife persist.

Trouble began for Kiran the very day he installed his Council of Ministers with most of them protesting the allocation of “insignificant” portfolios on December 1. Though they fell in line within 24 hours upon the intervention of the high command, many of them are still nursing a grudge against the Chief Minister. In fact, ministers like Botsa Satyanarayana have off and on been leaving the Chief Minister embarrassed by raising their voice publicly on contentious issues like BC reservations, prices, etc.

Ministers from Telangana, on the other hand, have virtually kept the government on notice saying they would quit anytime if a separate state is not created. In fact, one minister Jupalli Krishna Rao shot off a letter to Sonia Gandhi saying he would resign from his post if a Bill for creation of Telangana is not tabled in Parliament in the ongoing Budget session.

Other ministers from the region like Basavaraj Saraiah and Komatireddy Venkat Reddy too had announced they would follow suit while a couple of others have been speaking in private about this possibility.

Majority of the MLAs from Telangana too are getting ready to “sacrifice” their posts for the cause of a separate state, leaving the ruling party worrisome.

A make-believe budget for Andhra Pradesh

2011-02-24T00:30:00.004+05:30

Desaraju Surya

Hyderabad: Seeking to hide the real picture of the state’s precarious finances, Andhra Pradesh Finance Minister Aanam Ramanarayana Reddy presented yet another grandiose budget of Rs 1,28,542 crore for the 2011-12 financial year, projecting a revenue surplus of Rs 3,826 crore and a fiscal deficit of Rs 17,602 crore.

Neither were any state taxes enhanced nor any new schemes announced in the budget which was about Rs 15,000 crore more than last year’s estimate of Rs 1.13 lakh crore. This is the fourth consecutive year that the state’s budget has been pegged at over Rs one lakh crore, despite the actual realizations falling way short of the projections.

For a state that is virtually in penury because of various factors, including political turmoil, a budget of this size has raised many an eyebrow with the opposition terming it as “unjustified.”

Of the total projected expenditure in the ensuing fiscal, more than Rs 20,000 crore will go towards clearing old arrears for various schemes even as the state’s public debt shot up to Rs 1.41 lakh crore from 1.23 lakh crore last year. This is 23.62 per cent of the Gross State Domestic Product.

This was Ramanarayana Reddy’s maiden budget, which he presented at 11.43 am at the auspicious muhurtam set for the occasion, but amidst a din created by opposition members. Eleven MLAs belonging to TRS (6), CPI (4) and BJP (1) were suspended from the House for the day as they tried to disrupt the Finance Minister’s budget presentation, raising the demand for a resolution on creation of Telangana state.

The Telugu Desam Party members were on their feet at their respective seats shouting slogans lampooning the budget even as the minister went ahead with his address.

The Finance Minister projected the expected tax revenue during 2011-12 to be Rs 56,438 crore as against Rs 46,999 crore last year. Non-tax revenue is expected to be Rs 12,339 crore while Central funds are projected at Rs 32,218 crore, including the state share in Central taxes of Rs 16,826 crore.

The plan outlay for 2011-12 has been put at Rs 47,558 crore and non-plan outlay at Rs 80,984 crore.

“Our state economy is likely to grow by 8.89 per cent in the year 2010-11, notwithstanding the heavy rains and floods which have adversely impacted the farming and allied sectors. The Gross State Domestic Product at current prices is estimated at Rs 5.65 lakh crore while per capita income during 2010-11 is estimated at Rs 60,224,” the Finance Minister said in his budget speech.

Industrial sector in the state was expected to achieve a growth rate of 7.79 per cent while the services sector was expected to record a growth rate of 9.61 per cent, he said.

“The good growth in GSDP is also expected to translate into buoyant revenue collections in the coming year at approximately 20 per cent higher than the current budget. Our government is committed to continue all welfare programmes while equal emphasis has been laid on development programmes by continuing substantial allocations to infrastructure sectors like irrigation, roads, water supply and power,” Ramanarayana said.

The Finance Minister announced that the government would introduce a Comprehensive Financial Management System (CFMS) for providing a seamless interface with all stakeholders and putting in place an efficient mechanism of electronic information sharing with external stakeholders in budgeting and accounting processes. A sum of Rs 100 crore has been earmarked in the 2011-12 budget to implement the CFMS.

Ramanarayana Reddy sought to keep his fellow legislators in good humour by announcing that the Constituency Development Programme taken up with Rs 385 crore this year would be continued. Besides, he also announced the launch of a special fund for development and welfare activities with an outlay of Rs 400 crore.

TELANGANA: SHEER POWER GAME

2011-01-07T23:40:00.001+05:30

Desaraju Surya

Hyderabad: Forget development, forget discrimination.

It is only the “demand for greater political space” and the “aspiration for higher offices” that has actually fuelled the craving for creation of a separate Telangana state.

This was one of the significant findings of the five-member Justice Srikrishna Committee that studied the situation in Andhra Pradesh for over 11 months.

“Telangana as a region, notwithstanding some genuine grievances, is showing rapid development along most parameters. The regional sentiment for a separate state should thus be seen as a demand for greater political space, power and a stronger say in the affairs of the region and of the state,” the Srikrishna Committee observed in the chapter on “Sociological and Cultural Issues” in its report publicized yesterday.

“As the political space has expanded at various levels of governance, the aspiration for higher offices has grown. At a pragmatic level, a new state can often provide the fastest route to high political offices,” the Committee noted.

Stating that the Telangana groups have alleged “discrimination” in access to political power in the state, the Committee referred to their argument that several agreements and promises, including the Gentlemen’s Agreement signed during the formation of Andhra Pradesh, were not adhered to.

“Coastal Andhra had the maximum Chief Ministers (10) while CMs from Rayalaseema ruled the longest (23 years 9 months). Together, the Seema-Andhra region held the position of CM for 42 years while Telangana held it for only 10.5 years. Thus the combined domination of the Seema-Andhra region is apparent,” the Committee pointed out.

Telangana region has certainly had a much shorter span of holding the position of Chief Minister – which remains the all-powerful position in Indian states and this could be redressed to remove the sense of political alienation, it said.

Referring to the post of Deputy Chief Minister, which was also part of the Gentlemen’s Agreement, the Srikrishna Committee said: “Of a total of 16.5 years for which there was a Deputy CM in AP, the position was held for roughly 8 years by both sides. This is again a violation of the agreement as with the longer period of post of CM being held by Seema-Andhra side, there should have been concomitantly a longer period as Deputy CMs for the Telangana side.”

However, the Telangana side cannot claim total lack of representation as it held the key Home, Finance, Revenue and Irrigation portfolios for fairly long periods, the Committee pointed out.

“The Telangana protagonists argue that ministers from the region have been ‘weak’ and been ‘easily co-opted’ by the more powerful representatives from the ‘other side’. Hence, a separate state would separate them from these powerful representatives (from Seema-Andhra), allowing strong and independent leadership to emerge in Telangana,” the Committee added.

Analyzing the background of elected representatives, MPs and MLAs, the Committee noted that majority of political representatives from Seema-Andhra belonged to political-cum-business class while there was no such pattern in Telangana.

“An analysis of MPs elected in the 2009 election shows that compared to 92 per cent of Seema-Andhra MPs, only 35 per cent of those from Telangana had a political or business family background. Among the MLAs elected, while 63 per cent of the Seema-Andhra winners had a political family background, only 20 per cent of those from the Telangana region had such a background,” the Committee said.

The Committee concluded saying a separate state, however, might not necessarily assure guaranteed and automatic access to water, government jobs and education, as claimed and promised by Telangana leaders.

The Committee felt that the issue of sentiment has to be considered only as “one among several factors” to be evaluated.

“The field of development studies shows us that there is no magic formula for rapidly reducing socio-economic disparities which prevail within both large and small political units or within cultural regions; the redressing of such disparities is through a process of local struggles, state policy responses and many fortuitous circumstances,” it summed up.

"Balance tilting in favour of Andhra Pradesh not Telangana"

2011-01-06T15:48:00.001+05:30

Desaraju Surya
Hyderabad: The five-member Justice Srikrishna Committee that studied the situation in Andhra Pradesh has concluded that the “balance was tilting” in favour of a united state vis-à-vis the demand for creation of separate Telangana.
“After considering all aspects, the Committee found the balance tilting in favour of keeping the (Andhra Pradesh) state united, though some valid and strong reasons that had continued to cause discontent in Telangana region since its merger indicated that the demand for separation was also not entirely unjustified,” the Committee said in its prologue to the 505-page report that was publicised today, even as it came out with six options on the statehood issue.
“The united Andhra option is being suggested for continuing the development momentum of the three regions and keeping in mind the national perspective,” the Committee pointed out, adding, “with firm political and administrative management it should be possible to convey conviction to the people that this option would be in the best interest of all and would provide satisfaction to the maximum number of people in the state. It would also take care of the uncertainty over the future of Hyderabad as a bustling educational, industrial and IT hub/destination.”
“Andhra Pradesh today stands as one of the front runners among the progressive states in the country. Indeed, it could arguably be said that this very progress has led Telangana to revive the demand for a separate state in order to gain greater political space and to bridge more rapidly the remaining, though diminishing, disparities,” the Committee observed.

2010: Annus Horribilis in AP's political history

2010-12-31T23:51:00.002+05:30

Desaraju Surya
HYDERABAD: Year 2010 has been an Annus Horribilis in the political history of Andhra Pradesh.
The political chaos that actually began towards the end of year 2009 ran through the whole of 2010 and, in fact, might continue to prevail even in 2011.
While the prime reason for this seemingly prolonging turbulence is the demand for and against the bifurcation of the state, the internal strife in the ruling Congress party has also been a large contributing factor.
The agitations for and against the division of Andhra Pradesh, which began in December 2009 and spilled into the first half of 2010, not only paralysed the state administration but also left the main
political parties in shambles.
The happenings within the Congress also left AP in a state of political uncertainty through the year as the ruling party failed in many ways than one in managing its own affairs. Governance, as a
result, became the biggest casualty, leaving common citizens disillusioned.
Disarray will only be a mild word to describe the state of Congress as it was forced to replace a “non-effective” Chief Minister (K Rosaiah) on one hand and contend with the virtual rebellion caused by former MP from Kadapa Y S Jaganmohan Reddy on the other.
The current Chief Minister Nallari Kiran Kumar Reddy is virtually counting his days at the helm of affairs as Jagan is waiting for the opportune moment to dislodge the state government, though for public consumption he has promised to let it continue till 2014.
Son of former Chief Minister Y S Rajasekhara Reddy, Jagan’s first rebellious act was embarking on the Odarpu Yatra for consoling families of persons who died of shock or committed suicide following
his father’s death.
Jagan, in fact, used the controversial yatra for a show of strength and building a base for himself across the state, particularly in the Andhra-Rayalaseema regions. The huge response to his road shows proved that Jagan not only succeeded in his plans but also compounded the woes of the beleaguered Congress.
By already attracting close to 30 MLAs, half-a-dozen MLCs and about five Lok Sabha MPs of the Congress to his side, upon his exit from the party, Jagan has already sounded the warning bell for the Kiran Kumar government.
Come 2011, Jagan will launch his own political outfit with the main objective of decimating the Congress, which he quit in December. This may actually see many “fence-sitters” in the Congress jump on to his bandwagon, endangering the survival of the Kiran government.
Jagan apart, the Congress also faces uncertainty from within as the Telangana protagonists in the party too have openly declared a war if statehood is not granted for their region.
The cracks along the regional lines in the Congress that began appearing in December 2009 only widened in 2010 as the high command remained apathetic to the developments in the party.
The principal opposition Telugu Desam Party is not in a comfortable position either. The TDP too is split on regional lines with the Telangana leaders favouring a separate state while those from
Andhra-Rayalaseema opposing it.
TDP chief N Chandrababu Naidu is unable to take a clear stand on the state division issue and is closely monitoring the happenings in the Congress so that he could devise his party’s strategy.
Though initially there was hope in the TDP circles about the party’s prospects brightening in the wake of Jagan’s exit from the Congress, the complete rout it faced in the by-elections in July in Telangana
has indeed become a cause for concern. With the TDP still vacillating over its stand on the statehood issue, there is scant hope of revival in its fortunes in the Telangana region that was always considered its citadel.
The separatist Telangana Rashtra Samiti, on the other hand, is riding high on the “sentiment” wave following its spectacular showing in the by-elections where it won all the 11 seats it contested.
In fact, 2010 saw the TRS fighting a do-or-die battle to achieve its sole objective – securing statehood for Telangana. It has taken the battle, with the help of other separatist forces, almost to a decisive
stage this year, so much so that the political future of Andhra Pradesh now hinges on the outcome of this battle.
Year 2010 could well be a forgettable one for actor-turned-politician Chiranjeevi as his two-year-old Praja Rajyam Party headed nowhere.

By vouching for a united state, Chiranjeevi antagonised people of Telangana, so much so that his party has been reduced to nothing in the region. After more than 10 months, however, he started attracting some of his fans from Telangana back to his fold for re-building the PRP. But the PRP also seems to be stuck in an existential dilemma. It has done no good for itself by hob-nobbing with the ruling Congress and in fact lost its credibility by showing a desperation to join the government. Chiranjeevi’s proposed re-entry into the tinsel world fuelled speculation that he might indeed merge his outfit with the Congress sooner of later.

The Bharatiya Janata Party’s future literally hangs in the balance in AP. As things stand, the national party’s only hope lies in the creation of Telangana state where it could at least try to regain past glory, being an aggressive supporter of the statehood demand. At the same time, the pro-Telangana stand could prove to be its nemesis in Andhra-Rayalaseema regions where it once enjoyed considerable clout.

As the year 2010 draws to a close, Telangana indeed holds the key to the fortunes of the two main political parties – Congress and TDP – in the state. But each will remain strong only in any one of the two regions in any eventuality. Of course, Jagan is waiting in the wings to play spoilsport.

“What if!” is a puzzle that all the parties are now busy trying to crack, marching into Year 2011.

What's in store for the Telugus?

2010-12-30T00:47:00.002+05:30

Desaraju Surya

Hyderabad: Every Telugu, residing not just in Andhra Pradesh but in any other part of the globe, is waiting with bated breath for the dusk of December 31. Not to bid adieu to Year 2010 or welcome 2011, but to know whether their state will remain Andhra Pradesh or get divided into Telangana and Andhra or anything else. December 31 is the “D-day” when the five-member Justice Srikrishna Committee, appointed by the Government of India on February 3 this year for consultations on the situation in Andhra Pradesh, submits its report after an extensive field work in the wake of the demand for and against the bifurcation of the state. Though the recommendations of the Committee are unlikely to be publicised the same day, every citizen of this state has come to see it as a landmark day that defines their future.

The Committee was appointed in the backdrop of the agitation for and against the bifurcation of Andhra Pradesh, when the demand for creation of a separate Telangana state reached a feverish pitch in late 2009. The Justice Srikrishna Committee was asked to examine, among other things, the situation in Andhra Pradesh with reference to the demand for a separate state of Telangana as well as the demand for maintaining the present status of a united Andhra Pradesh; to review the developments in the state since its formation and their impact on the progress and development of the different regions of the state; to identify the key issues that must be addressed by consulting all sections of the society, especially the political parties and seek from the political parties and other organisations a range of solutions that would resolve the present difficult situation and promote the welfare of all sections of the people. It was also asked to identify the “optimal solutions” for this purpose and recommend a plan of action and a road map.

The last months of year 2009 saw turbulence caused primarily by separatists seeking Telangana state while early 2010 witnessed a spontaneous movement by people of Andhra and Rayalaseema regions opposing the state’s division. This led to political disorder and public unrest in the state after the Congress’ flip-flop on “initiating the process for creation of Telangana.” Order was restored in the state to an extent only after the Srikrishna Committee was appointed to look into the statehood demand, a move seen as the Congress’ desperate gambit to undo the damage caused by its mishandling of the whole issue.

Though initially every political party reacted with scepticism to the Committee’s constitution, the common people welcomed it with the hope that it will come out with an everlasting solution to the contentious statehood issue. All political parties, barring the Bharatiya Janata Party, subsequently presented their case, for and against the division of the state, before the Committee while all other stakeholders too submitted their views on the issue. The Committee members – eminent and widely-respected in varied fields – toured almost every part of Andhra Pradesh in the last ten months, collected tonnes of data from different sources, interacted with people at the grassroots level and drafted a two-volume report. In doing so, they kept their promise of completing their task “within the set deadline.” Now, Justice Srikrishna and his four colleagues are about to submit the report to Union Home Minister P Chidambaram in New Delhi.

While holding a mirror to the past and the present of Andhra Pradesh since its formation on November 1, 1956, the Srikrishna Committee report should hold the beacon for its future as well.

Kiran Kumar Reddy left with egg on his face

2010-12-22T22:43:00.005+05:30

Desaraju Surya

Hyderabad: Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister N Kiran Kumar Reddy’s sarcastic remarks against Leader of Opposition N Chandrababu Naidu seem to be precipitating the crisis arising out of the latter’s indefinite hunger-strike that was into its sixth day today. At a time when the former Chief Minister’s health condition turned “alarming,” Kiran Kumar’s pun-laced remarks that “people have taken note of your hunger-strike” have only angered the Telugu Desam Party rank and file further and increased the determination of Chandrababu to take his struggle to its “logical conclusion.” The Chief Minister, while addressing a public meeting at Jadcherla in Mahbubnagar district, remarked: “Your attempt to be recognized as the ‘messiah of farmers’ has succeeded. People have taken note of your fast, so you can now call it off.” This left the TDP red-faced. “It is highly unbecoming of the Chief Minister to talk like that at his critical hour. It only shows how indifferent and negligent is he to the issue,” TDP politburo member and former Union minister Ummareddy Venkateswarlu said. “Our leader Chandrababu is determined to continue his indefinite hunger-strike and take it to the logical conclusion,” Ummareddy said. Two days ago, the Chief Minister remarked in New Delhi that the indefinite hunger-strike was Chandrababu’s “own headache.” Political observers here say that such remarks by Kiran Kumar emanated from his bitter personal animosity towards Chandrababu. Even some of his Cabinet colleagues admitted that Kiran’s comments showed him in poor light and compounded the current situation. “He (Kiran) should be diplomatic enough at least while making such remarks in the public. He can’t be so blunt. Otherwise, it exposes the personal grudge he holds against Chandrababu,” a senior minister pointed out. In fact, the Chief Minister spoke in a curt manner on resolving the indefinite fast issue when CPI state secretary K Narayana met and sought his intervention. “We have already discussed the issue in the Assembly and announced a relief package. We can’t do anything more on this,” Narayana quoted Kiran as telling him. Even Praja Rajyam Party president K Chiranjeevi’s phone call to the Chief Minister for making the TDP chief end his fast did not yield any response from Kiran.

Jagan's actual target is Rahul Gandhi

2010-12-10T23:58:00.002+05:30

Desaraju Surya

Hyderabad: His late father Y S Rajasekhara Reddy’s dream
was to make Rahul Gandhi the Prime Minister of India in 2014 but Y S
Jaganmohan Reddy’s aim now is to ensure that the All India Congress
Committee general secretary doesn’t stand that chance.
Dashing Rahul Gandhi’s Prime Ministerial dreams appears to be the
larger agenda behind Jagan’s move to launch a political party next
month, his close followers say.
“Becoming Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister is now secondary for Jagan.
His prime target is Rahul Gandhi. The objective is to win considerable
number of Lok Sabha seats in the state and dent the Congress’
aspirations of making Rahul the Prime Minister,” a close confidante of
Jagan said.
In this era of coalition governments, Jagan understands the numbers
game well and is accordingly planning his moves.
Jagan hopes to rally the anti-Congress parties at the national level
and emerge as a potent force so as to dictate terms to the party that
left him “humiliated.”
If claims of his key aides and strategists are to be believed, Jagan
has already “made some friends” notably in Bihar through his “generous
contributions” during the recent Assembly elections in the state. The
ex-Congress MP already has good friends in the “Reddy brothers” (Gali
Janardhan and Karunakar) of Karnataka through whom he hopes to enlarge
his circle in the Bharatiya Janata Party as well.
In Andhra Pradesh, Jagan is reportedly in consultations with some key
leaders of the Telangana Rashtra Samiti for possible support in the
region in future by assuring the separatist leaders that he would
indeed support a separate Telangana state.
This is seen as a tacit move by Jagan to wean the TRS away from the
Congress in any eventuality.
“We are still working on various strategies. We shall start putting
them in practice after the party is formally launched probably around
Sankranti festival,” a close confidante of Jagan said.

Rebellion against Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister

2010-12-02T01:45:00.001+05:30

Desaraju Surya

Hyderabad: The allocation of portfolios to the newly-sworn-in ministers triggered a major rebellion against Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister N Kiran Kumar Reddy around midnight barely hours after he constituted his Council of Ministers.

It is turning out to be a Reddy versus backward classes battle which may plunge the week-old new government into a deep crisis even as two ministers have already sent in their resignations to the Chief Minister.

The ministers who have been left seething after the allocation of portfolios are now getting ready for a showdown with the Chief Minister at the first formal meeting of the new Cabinet.

“It (Cabinet) is not your private limited company. Do you want the Congress party to survive in Andhra Pradesh or get reduced to its 1994 status (when it won only 27 seats and could not even become the main opposition party),” a senior minister reportedly asked the Chief Minister, expressing serious displeasure over the allocation of portfolios.

The main grouse was that all the plum portfolios (revenue-earning) were allocated to ministers belonging to the Reddy community while those from the backward classes were given insignificant (non-revenue generating) portfolios.

While Reddys got as many as 14 berths in the new Cabinet, the BCs were given just about 10. When it came to allocation of portfolios, prime ones like Finance, agriculture, major irrigation, health, municipal administration and panchayat raj were given to Reddys much to the chagrin of the BC ministers.

Leading the list of dissenters were Botsa Satyanarayana, Dharmana Prasada Rao, Vatti Vasantha Kumar, Ponnala Lakshmaiah and Danam Nagender who got ready to quit their posts. Of course, a Reddy minister, Komatireddi Venkat Reddy, too has joined hands with the BC ministers, sulking over the allocation of Infrastructure and Investments portfolio.

Vatti Vasantha Kumar, who has been shifted from Rural Development to Tourism Department in the new government, was the first to send in his resignation to the Chief Minister minutes after the portfolios were allocated late in the night. In fact, Vatti also resigned from his MLA post as well.

Following in Vatti’s steps, Komatireddi Venkat Reddy too has forwarded his resignation to Kiran Kumar Reddy. Komatireddi has been given the Infrastructure and Investments Department in the new government. He was minister for Information Technology and Communications Department in the previous government.

Sensing trouble, a worried Chief Minister sent his new Finance Minister Aanam Ramanarayana Reddy to placate Vatti, at whose residence more than 10 ministers had gathered for a strategic meeting around midnight. However, Vatti remained firm on his resignation.

The Chief Minister reportedly conveyed through Aanam that the portfolios issue could be discussed at the Cabinet meeting scheduled for Thursday but the sulking ministers were in no mood to relent.

The Chief Minister’s reported contention that some of the senior ministers were given “less important” portfolios only because they were facing allegations of corruption.

“In that case why were such persons taken into the Cabinet in the first place,” a disgruntled minister fumed.

The Chief Minister’s emissary did not have an answer for this and had to make a hasty retreat, informed sources said.

Was Jagan caught between his uncles?

2010-11-30T23:58:00.000+05:30

Desaraju Surya

Hyderabad: Y S Jaganmohan Reddy, who quit the Congress party as well as his Lok Sabha seat, was in fact caught between his two uncles – one from his late father’s side and the other from his mother’s. The alleged rift within the family was threatening to spill onto the streets when Jagan realised he had to find a quick escape route to safeguard the “family prestige.” As his uncle (father’s younger brother) Y S Vivekananda Reddy left for New Delhi reportedly to seek a berth in the Kiran Kumar Reddy government, Jagan seized the opportunity to mount an attack on the Congress high command and cry foul. He saw a “conspiracy being hatched to vertically split the family.” “Is it fair to lure my uncle Y S Vivekanada Reddy to Delhi, thereby paving way for fissures in my family,” he angrily questioned AICC president Sonia Gandhi in an open letter. The fact, however, was something else. For a few months now, Jagan was reportedly not on good terms with Vivekananda. On his part Vivekananda, a Member of the Legislative Council, too was unhappy with Jagan’s ways. “Vivekananda apparently did not like the way in which Jagan was totally being influenced by his other uncle Y V Subba Reddy (Rajasekhara Reddy’s co-brother). Subba Reddy has become Jagan’s karta, karma, kriya (be all and do all) much to Viveka’s discomfiture,” a source close to Jagan’s family said. Vivekananda is known to be a “humble, mild-mannered” man and is highly revered across Kadapa. In fact, he is held in high esteem than his elder brother (late) Rajasekhara Reddy in their hometown Pulivendula from where Vivekananda was elected to the state Assembly twice. “Jagan’s fear is that he stands no chance against his uncle any day in their home turf Pulivendula or Kadapa. Such is the stature of Vivekananda,” the source noted. On the other hand, Subba Reddy was never in public life and looked after his own business as well as YSR’s. “Subba Reddy is now Jagan’s key strategist. It is he who is driving the rebel leader,” the source pointed out. The fissures within the family were thus obvious, making Vivekananda to tread a different path.

CONGRESS BEATS Y S JAGAN, HANDS DOWN

2010-11-30T00:11:00.002+05:30

Desaraju Surya

Hyderabad: The Congress has won, la affaire Y S Jaganmohan Reddy, and proved yet again that the organization is mightier than an individual.

The man who often cried that he was “running out of patience” had to ultimately give up and bow himself out in the face-off with the party.

The now former member of Lok Sabha from Kadapa provoked the Congress high command so much so that he wanted it to act against him so that he could go to the people and claim that “I have been punished without committing any sin.”

He waited and waited in vain, often letting it know that he was “running out of patience” as the Congress appeared in no mood to take any step that would “make him a hero.”

As the grand old party played its game with the distinction that it is famous for, Jagan was left “suffering in humiliation.”

More than 14 months have elapsed but the Congress never displayed any urgency to let Jagan realize his dream of becoming Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister, even as the state saw the ascendancy of two Chief Ministers in the aftermath of Y S Rajasekhara Reddy’s tragic death in September 2009.

Jagan always thought the Chief Minister’s chair rightfully belonged to him and never shied away from claiming so. Even after the Congress denied him the opportunity, he went to the people and vowed that he would one day become the Chief Minister “come what may.”

A year-long wait made the Chief Minister’s chair look like sour grapes for the industrialist-turned-politician who primarily had more business interests to protect than any other agenda.

Majority of the MLAs who initially supported Jagan’s candidature for the Chief Minister’s post gradually backed out, in sync with the party high command’s mind, but the 20-month-old politician remained adamant.

He then started adopting defiant means to reach his goal. Every move of his, like going on the Odarpu Yatra and targeting the Congress government in the state through his own media, made his detractors in the party cry hoarse about Jagan’s belligerence.

The Congress never really bothered to take note of how Jagan became a multi-billionaire in no time despite having enough evidence to nail him.

The high command continued to give him a long rope all along. But when Sonia Gandhi herself, a Goddess to all Congressmen, was vehemently targeted along with Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and AICC general secretary Rahul Gandhi, the high command probably wanted to crack the whip.

Still, it went soft on Jagan and sought to extend an olive branch in an other form – by offering a Cabinet berth to his uncle Y S Vivekananda Reddy in the Kiran Kumar Reddy government.

This was a “conspiracy against my family and myself” which Jagan could not stand. He let the Congress have the last laugh and quietly sent in his resignation to Sonia Gandhi, not directly but in the form of an “open letter.”

Jagan will now seek the blessings of his late father at his grave and try to re-invent himself as an “independent” political leader.

The "REBEL" in a fix

2010-11-28T23:41:00.000+05:30

Desaraju Surya

Hyderabad: He may have been branded a "rebel" but 36-year-old Member of Parliament from Kadapa, Y S Jaganmohan Reddy, has now actually been reduced to a man suffering in silence in more ways than one.

While cervical spondilitis is Jagan's physical tormentor, the Congress politics has become a biggest mental block for him.

Enduring the physical pain might seem trivial, compared to the mental agony of having to remain indecisive on his future political course.

His uncle and Member of Legislative Council, Y S Vivekananda Reddy, has now rubbed salt into Jagan’s injury by offering to “patch up” the strained relationship between his nephew and the Congress high command by “expressing our regret over the episodes telecast on Sakshi television channel.”

Vivekananda’s “impulsive action” has only left Jagan more embarrassed even as his camp tried to do some damage control by announcing that their leader had done nothing wrong that warranted any “explanation” to the high command. By disowning Vivekananda’s statement, his camp desperately sought to send a message that Jagan “would never surrender” to anyone.

Now, Jagan will have to spend time at least till Wednesday waiting agonizingly to make up his mind on whether or not to continue in the Congress party, what with the constitution of the state Council of Ministers likely to happen only that day.

Jagan is anxiously awaiting the formation of the state Cabinet to assess his standing in the scheme of things in the Congress and chalk out his future path, his campers say.

Most of the 20-odd MLAs, who continue to swear by Jagan, are now busy camping in New Delhi lobbying intensely for ministerial posts. One of his close followers and former minister Pilli Subhash Chandra Bose claimed he would not join Kiran Kumar Reddy’s Cabinet after it became clear that he would face the axe for having defied the party high command, along with another former minister Balineni Srinivasa Reddy, on the Odarpu Yatra issue.

The Congress high command is also keeping Jagan on tenterhooks by being indecisive on the action, if any, it intends to take against him for targeting the party and its leadership through his media.

The nearly two-month long "Odarpu Yatra" he undertook in Prakasam and Nellore districts from September 3 had in fact taken a heavy toll on this indutrialist-turned-politician's body that he has now been advised "complete bed rest" at least for two months.

“He may resume his yatra subsequently but not in the fashion he did in the last leg covering thousands of kilometres for hours on end in the two districts. Such strenuous touring can prove dangerous for him given his current condition,” a senior doctor attending on him revealed.

This has become a worrying factor for the belligerent MP who obviously can’t go back on the promise of continuing his yatra from January next to console families whose members either died of shock or allegedly committed suicide following the death of Jagan’s father Y S Rajasekhara Reddy.

Putting off or delaying the yatra inordinately in view of his bad health will adversely affect Jagan’s ambitious political plans since he has set his eyes on the Chief Minister’s chair alone.

Given these factors, Jagan is unable to go ahead with his plans or maintain status quo and clearly looks caught in a Catch-22 situation.

YSR's pet scheme spells doom for many in AP

2010-11-04T23:16:00.002+05:30

Desaraju Surya

Hyderabad: The dream of owning a house turned into a curse for K Ramesh (30), a daily wage earner of Venkatadripet village in Warangal district of Andhra Pradesh.

He borrowed Rs 10,000 from a micro-finance institution (MFI) and could only complete the foundation work of the house. But, as pressure mounted from the lender for repayment of the loan, a harassed Ramesh hung himself to death last week. “Clearing the weekly installments has become too much to bear for Ramesh because of the exorbitant interest rate of over 48 per cent,” his relatives say.

Actually, Ramesh obtained the loan in the name of purchasing a buffalo but instead used the money for taking up the construction of his dream house. Now, he left only a debt burden of over Rs 10,000 on his 25-year-old wife, excluding the interest component.

This was one of the sad sagas of the ongoing MFI atrocities in Andhra Pradesh.

Ramesh might have ended his life unable to overcome the pressures of borrowing (money) but there are many such people across the state still suffering the effects of a micro loan.

The much-hyped and ambitious Indiramma housing, YS Rajasekhara Reddy's pet scheme, under which the Congress government promised a permanent roof over every poor family’s head is indeed coming to the haunt the hapless “beneficiaries” as it has literally pushed them into a debt trap.

“The vulnerability created by government policies and schemes like Indiramma housing have helped the unscrupulous micro finance institutions to openly exploit the hapless poor, particularly in rural areas,” CPM politburo member and MP Brinda Karat pointed out.

“One of the reasons people borrowed money from MFIs was to complete the houses they were allotted under the Indiramma scheme. It has in fact become a double blow as on one hand they had to repay the loan obtained from a bank and on the other the MFIs on the same house,” project director of a District Rural Development Agency, which is now the nodal agency for the registration of MFIs.

While the unit cost of a Indiramma house has been fixed at Rs 55,000, the state government provided Rs 25,000 as subsidy and Rs 30,000 was arranged through banks as a loan. “The unit cost fixed by the government was never sufficient to complete the house because of the escalating prices of materials as well as labour. Hence, the beneficiaries were forced to borrow more money from other sources, including the MFIs,” the official noted.

Many cases of debt-ridden beneficiaries of Indiramma housing scheme are seeing the light now after the authorities started probing into the MFIs’ activities and also the sufferings of the borrowers. “We have reports from districts like Nalgonda, Visakhapatnam, Kurnool, Guntur, Chittoor, Khammam, Anantapur, Vizianagaram and Srikakulam where most of the Indiramma beneficiaries are caught in the MFI debt trap. We are assessing the cases and trying to help these people out by providing alternative credit at cheaper interest rate,” a top official of the Rural Development Department said.

the ghost of micro-finance institutions in AP

2010-10-28T23:38:00.003+05:30

Desaraju Surya
Hyderabad: History is repeating in Andhra Pradesh vis-à-vis the Micro-Finance Institutions (MFIs). The spectre of MFIs has come to haunt the hapless poor borrowers, particularly in the rural areas, as both the state government as well as the Centre did practically nothing in the last four years after the ghost first raised its ugly head in 2006. More than 70 persons committed suicide unable to bear the “torture” unleashed by unscrupulous MFIs in AP in 2006 while in just over a month now more than 40 people met with a similar tragic end. Official “toll” this year, however, is just 23. Be it pushing women into flesh trade, forcing them to stand in blazing sun (as punishment) for hours, humiliating them in front of other villagers or seizing ration cards and Aarogyasri health insurance cards for non-repayment of loans in time… the so-called “recovery agents” of MFIs resort to every inhuman method to intimidate the poor borrowers. “Those who could not stand this are committing suicide,” a district Collector pointed out. Same things happened in 2006 when the scale of operations of MFIs in the state was between Rs 1000 crore and Rs 1500 crore. Now, of the total Rs 30,000 crore MFIs’ outstanding in the country, Andhra Pradesh accounts for about 40 per cent. The defaults were estimated to be between one and 1.5 per cent, government sources said. It was the then Y S Rajasekhara Reddy’s government that vigorously encouraged the MFIs in the state as a means “to deliver rural credit at cheaper rates” and eventually “make every woman a lakhpathi (millionaire).” In October 2005, AICC general secretary Rahul Gandhi toured Islampur in Medak district and Medchal allegedly to promote Share Microfin. A couple of years later, Rahul visited Bhongir in Nalgonda district on behalf of SKS Microfinance, promoted by Vikram Akula.
“Rahul has close links with MFIs. As a fellow MP, I am ready for a debate with him on this,” Telugu Desam Parliamentary Party leader Nama Nageswara Rao challenged even as Chief Minister K Rosaiah shot back saying the Amethi MP has “no love” for the MFIs. At the height of the MFI crisis in 2006, Rajasekhara Reddy promised to bring in legislation putting a cap on the interest rate charged by MFIs but failed. The ball was then pushed into the Centre’s court without any effect. Also, the state government did not even act on the report of the one-man committee it appointed to probe into the excesses of MFIs. The then Special Chief Secretary to government V P Jauhari, who headed the committee, had recommended strong measures to rein in the MFIs essentially to arrest an “emerging mafia” and also protect poor borrowers from its clutches. He had cautioned that there was a possibility of “other criminal elements” entering the fray since “easy money” was involved. Going by the events unfolding over the past one month, Jauhari’s fears appear to have come true. Four years have elapsed and on July 20 this year, Union Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee announced in Hyderabad that the Central government would soon arrive at a decision on the Bill to regulate micro finance institutions. “The Bill is under examination of the government and we shall soon arrive at a decision,” he said, when questioned about the long-pending legislation that primarily is intended to place a cap on the interest rates being charged by MFIs. Still, nothing happened on the legislation front but MFIs were back to their nefarious ways. Now, the Centre appears to be in no mood to place a cap on the interest rate charged by MFIs nor put in place an effective mechanism to strictly regulate the errant money-lending firms. The Union Finance Minister's assertions on MFIs make this clear.
Since the start of this month, one after the other poor borrowers in rural parts of AP started ending their lives unable to repay the loans on which usurious rates of interest were charged. Left with no other option, the state government hurriedly promulgated an ordinance making it mandatory for MFIs to register their activities with the respective District Rural Development Agency. But it could not place a cap on the interest rate since the subject was under the Centre’s domain, a senior official of the Rural Development Department said. In fact, state Rural Development Minister Vatti Vasantha Kumar sounded the warning bell at a meeting of the State-Level Bankers’ Committee on September 28 saying: “The exorbitant rate of interest being charged by MFIs ranging from 36 to 48 per cent is not at all an encouraging trend.” His alarm stemmed from the fact that banks lent only about Rs 1,900 crore to women self-help groups (SHGs) as against the ambitious target of Rs 11,775 crore set for the 2010-11 financial year. “Bankers are not at all positive on social-sector lending. As long as banks are not able to achieve total financial inclusion, alternative source of credit is required and thus MFIs have become a necessary evil,” a district Collector observed. How the Centre and the state governments handle this evil is anxiously watched even as reports of suicides by harassed small loan borrowers continue to come in from different parts of the state.

Chiru trimming up for his 150th venture

2010-10-28T23:14:00.003+05:30

Desaraju Surya
Hyderabad: With his next feature film set to be launched in January 2011, actor-turned-politician Chiranjeevi is now busy losing weight, the extra kilos he has put on over the last four years since his last film Shankar Dada Zindabad (remake of Lagey Raho Munna Bhai). Chiranjeevi visited the US recently reportedly for a liposuction treatment as part of the weight reduction programme. Fatty foods are now off his menu and Chiranjeevi is mostly taking nutritional drinks these days to keep himself "fit" for his 150th silver screen venture, one of his aides said. The audience at an audio release function here the other day was pleasantly surprised to see a "trim" Chiru, as he is fondly called, clad in a sleek jeans trouser and white shirt. The Telugu Megastar quit films after a 30-year career in August 2008 and launched the Praja Rajyam Party. He, however, made it clear while launching the political outfit that he might don the grease paint again to feature in films that carried a social message. On his son and upcoming actor Ramcharan Tej's prodding, Chiru made a guest appearance in Magadheera starring Tej last year, that went on to become a blockbuster. Now, Charan himself will be producing a full-length feature film with his father. Though the film is expected to go to the sets in January, Chiranjeevi is still scouting for the right script that befits his new stature as a politician. Apart from the script, the increasing flab in his body has been a major concern for 56-year-old Chiranjeevi, who was left with the only option of cutting it. "One can't imagine a Chiranjeevi film without his trendy dances and stylish stunts. Obviously his body should be in the right shape for that and hence he is consciously doing everything in that direction," a key aide of the actor said. Following a weight-reduction regimen is not new to Chiranjeevi. Even during the late part of his career in the late 1990s when he was doing one film after the other, Chiru had to cut his flab. "It happened when Chiru did films like Mrugaraju and Daddy though he once again looked stout in movies like Stalin and Shankar Dada Zindabad. Now again he is keen on regaining the old charming looks," the aide pointed out. Praja Rajyam sources say Chiranjeevi has stopped eating even biscuits at the party meetings and has been taking only liquid diet specially brought from home. With a younger lot of stars with six-pack bodies and lanky physiques ruling the tinsel town, Chiranjeevi certainly has a task on hand in his silver-screen re-coming.

JALAYAGNAM: The scene so far

2010-09-24T00:58:00.002+05:30

Desaraju Surya
Hyderabad: By any count, the most ambitious and equally controversial “Jalayagnam” programme undertaken by the Andhra Pradesh government has been a disaster so far.
Controversies, legal battles, environmental concerns, adverse observations by the Comptroller and Auditor General over large-scale financial misappropriation, lack of statutory clearances, inter-state disputes, natural calamities and, above all, a grave financial crunch have contributed to the grandiose programme going way off the track over the last six years.
When initially conceived in 2004 by the then Y S Rajasekhara Reddy government, the Jalayagnam – dubbed by the rulers as a “massive water conservation ritual” – was meant to provide water for irrigation to an additional 82 lakh acres of agricultural land in Andhra, Rayalaseema and Telangana regions of the state through 32 major and 17 medium projects in five years (by 2009). The initial cost estimates for these projects were Rs 65,000 crore.
Six years after the programme was launched, the government had already spent Rs 53,206 crore but could irrigate only an additional 26.25 lakh acres as per the latest count. By now the number of projects under the programme has gone up to 88, including 44 major and 30 medium, to irrigate an additional one crore acres while the cost too escalated to a staggering Rs 1,79,679 crore. Of the total, 39 have been identified as “priority” projects that will be completed in the first go.
The revised deadline for completion of the Jalayagnam programme is year 2014 – when general elections are due in the state – but, by all means, even that deadline will be missed, Irrigation Department officials admit.
All the works have come to a virtual standstill as the state government owes over Rs 6,000 crore to the contractors executing the projects. Given the severe financial crisis, the government is finding it difficult to clear the dues and let the works progress, the officials say. “We have cleared dues amounting to over Rs 1,500 crore so far and will be clearing the balance in a phased manner,” a top official of the Department said.
“We have completed 12 irrigation projects in the last six years, including four major, under Jalayagnam. These projects created a capacity to impound an additional 295 tmc ft of water which in turn contributes to an additional agricultural production worth Rs 8,850 crore per annum in the state,” Major Irrigation Minister Ponnala Lakshmaiah claimed.
Chief Minister K Rosaiah or Lakshmaiah never lose an opportunity to proclaim that Jalayagnam continues to be the government’s “flagship” programme and will be completed at all costs.
There is a rider, of course: the Government of India should be magnanimous to accord “national status” to at least three major projects so that the state can get 90 per cent of funds as grant.
Take the case of the multi-purpose Polavaram irrigation project on river Godavari.
For the last six years, the state government has been desperately seeking national status for Polavaram even as the project cost has shot up from Rs 10,151 crore in 2009 to Rs 17,600 crore as per the latest estimates. But there has so far been no word from the Centre on granting national status to the project while neighbouring Orissa is strongly fighting against it claiming that the project would lead to submergence of many villages on its side.
AP and Orissa are now locked in a legal battle in the Supreme Court over Polavaram.
Another major controversial project, the Pranahita-Chevella Lift Irrigation Scheme, has not got any statutory clearance from the Centre even two years after it was launched with a lot of fanfare. The project cost too shot up from Rs 33,500 crore to over Rs 40,000 crore now, official sources say. AP is not in a position to complete this project on its own and is looking desperately towards the Centre for according “national status” and bearing 90 per cent of the cost.
This project alone needs 3466 MW of power to lift water from Pranahita, a tributary of river Godavari, to a height of 1343 meters, resulting in an annual recurring expenditure of over Rs 2,300 crore.
“It is utterly foolish to take up such a project involving huge recurring expenditure. Can the government assure that it is ready to bear the annual expenditure,” questioned Lok Satta Party president and MLA N Jayaprakash Narayan.
But, the government has simply brushed aside his contention and asserted that it would go ahead with the project “for the betterment of Telangana.”
Pranahita-Chevella was mired in another controversy when it came to light that an astounding Rs 1,100 crore was paid to a private consultant for preparation of the detailed project report of which Rs 600 crore was already paid. The Public Accounts Committee of the state Legislature saw red over this and forced the irrigation department authorities to stop further payments.
Alarm bells, however, started ringing in the state government when Union Water Resources Minister Pavan Kumar Bansal stated that only one intra-state project would be funded under the category of national project. Chief Minister Rosaiah immediately wrote a letter to Bansal recalling that the Pranahita-Chevella project was among the 25 medium and major irrigation projects included in the Prime Minister’s package and was thus eligible for financial support under the Accelerated Irrigation Benefits Programme.
Still, there has been no response from the Centre on this, official sources in the Chief Minister’s Office said.
Another major project that has overshot several deadlines is Pulichintala on river Krishna. Meant to stabilize an ayacut of 13.5 lakh acres in five districts in Krishna’s command area, this project was supposed to be ready in 2007 but not even 60 per cent of the works have been completed yet, official sources admit. “The coffer dam of the project got washed away in floods at least three times leading to inordinate delay in completion of Pulichintala,” they say.
Such examples are one too many in the Jalayagnam story. And, it has no end in sight.

KONIJETI ROSAIAH: A FRAGILE CHIEF MINISTER

2010-09-04T01:03:00.002+05:30

Desaraju Surya
Hyderabad: Konijeti Rosaiah had always been comfortable playing second-fiddle to any Congress Chief Minister in Andhra Pradesh over the years.
He, however, finds himself ill-at-ease being the Chief Minister as was evident in the last one year that he has been in the hot seat of power.
As he himself noted a few days ago, it had indeed been a “tight rope walk” for Rosaiah as Chief Minister, given the pulls and pressures from different quarters.
From a rather strong situation, the state has plunged into a vulnerable position in just one year because of various factors, beginning with the tragic death in a helicopter crash of a powerful Chief Minister.
The ruling Congress is in total mess; the strife over the demand for bifurcation of the state has only gone into a pause mode and threatens to snowball in the months to come; the state is still facing the economic recession blues and governance has become the biggest casualty leaving the people in the lurch.
Rosaiah himself is plagued by health problems, leading to doubts over his fitness to rule.
Rosaiah ascended the Chief Minister’s throne on September 3 last year following the death of Y S Rajasekhara Reddy in a helicopter crash on September 2.
It took more than three months for him to actually settle down in the new position and take control of the situation as the state moved from “one crisis to the other.”
By the time he could gain a grip on the administration, the Chief Minister was confronted with trouble from within his party in the form of a virtual rebellion from Kadapa MP Y S Jaganmohan Reddy, who set his eyes on the Chief Minister’s chair.
Though he left the Jagan issue to be handled by the Congress high command, Rosaiah could not breathe easy as he was not given the complete authority to rule, unlike his predecessor.
Everyone initially acknowledged that Rosaiah, given his vast political experience, was an “able administrator” though not an “able leader.” But now, given the sorry state of affairs, his credentials as an administrator too are at stake, political observers point out.
Bureaucrats say there has been a lack of “cohesiveness” in the administration in the last one year.
“Administration has become CM-centric when both N Chandrababu Naidu and Y S Rajasekhara Reddy were at the helm of affairs. Being powerful leaders, their writ ran large and the entire administration functioned according to their diktats. Bureaucrats used to look to the Chief Minister for everything previously as all instructions came from him directly. It’s not the case anymore,” a top-ranking IAS officer noted, explaining the “slackness” that is currently apparent in the functioning of the government.
The Chief Minister’s attempts to tone up the administration through a bureaucratic shake-up did not bear fruit for one reason or the other. “This has also left the bureaucracy in a state of despondency, leaving a telling impact on the administration,” a high-ranking IAS officer pointed out.
Rosaiah is famous for managing the state’s finances effectively given the fact that he presented not less than 16 Budgets over the years. As Chief Minister, who continues to hold the Finance portfolio, he is finding it an uphill task to continue the development and welfare agenda left behind by his predecessor.
All the major development projects have virtually come to a standstill as the government owes lot of money to the contractors.
Uncertainty prevails even over the welfare programmes as the subsidy bill has become too much to bear for the government.
Rosaiah, however, sought to “re-assure” everyone that not a single programme initiated by Rajasekhara Reddy would be abandoned. He is also unwilling to admit that governance has been paralysed in the state. “I am doing my best and touring the state. Even my ministers are doing their job,” he pointed out.
The general perception about his administration in the state is, however, entirely different from what the Chief Minister feels.

THE GREATEST LEGAL PARADOX

2010-08-23T23:56:00.002+05:30

THIS IS SAID TO BE THE GREATEST PARADOX IN RECORDED LEGAL HISTORY.

A few centuries ago, a Law teacher came across a student who was willing to learn, but was unable to pay the fees.
The student struck a deal saying, "I will pay your fee the day I win my first case in the court."
Teacher agreed and proceeded with the law course.
When the course was finished and the teacher started pestering the student to pay up the fee, the student reminded him of the deal and pushed days. Fed up with this, the teacher decided to sue the student in the court of law and both of them decided to argue for themselves.
The teacher put forward his argument saying: "If I win this case, as per the court of law, the student has to pay me as the case is about his non-payment of dues. And if I lose the case, the student will still pay me because he would have won his first case. So, either way I will have to get the money."
Equally brilliant, the student argued back saying: "If I win the case, as per the court of law, I don't have to pay anything to the teacher as the case is about my non-payment of dues. And if I lose the case, I don't have to pay him because I haven't won my first case yet. So either way, I am not going to pay the teacher anything".
This is one of the greatest paradoxes ever recorded in the Legal history.

(Reproduced from an email sent by my dear anna.)

The Great INDIAN Enterprise!

2010-08-21T00:48:00.003+05:30

A Blackberry addict discovers grassroot enterprise in India.

A smaller ‘hole in the wall’ you cannot imagine. A small fading sign on the top saying “Cellphoon Reapars” is barely visible through the street vendors crowding the Juhu Market in Mumbai. On my way to buy a new Blackberry, my innate sense of adventure (foolishness) made me stop my car and investigate. The ‘shop’ was not more than 6 feet by 6 feet. Grimy and un-cleaned.

"Can you fix my Blackberry?” I asked the young boy.

"Of course I can, show me.”

“How old are you?”

"Sixteen."

Bullshit. He was no more than 10. I am not handing my precious Blackberry to a 10 year old in unwashed and torn T shirt and pyjamas! At least, if I buy a new Blackberry in a proper Store, they would extract my data for me. Something I have been meaning to do for over a year now.

"What’s wrong with it?”

"Well, the roller track ball does not respond. It’s kind of stuck andI cannot operate it.”

He grabs it from my hand and looks at it.

“You should wash your hands. Many customers have same problem. Roller ball gets greasy and dirty, then not working."

Look who was telling me to wash my hands! He probably has not bathed for 10 days. I leaned across to snatch my useless Blackberry back.

“You come back in one hour and I fix it."

I am not leaving all my precious data in this unwashed kid's hands for an hour. No way.

“Who will fix it?”

"Big brother."
"How big is ‘big brother'?"

"Big …. umm ..thirty."

Then suddenly big brother walks in. 30 ??? He is no more than 19.

"What problem," he says, grabbing the phone from my greasy hand into his greasier hand. Obviously he never got trained in etiquette by any up-market retail stores manager.

"Normal Blackberry problem. I replace it with original part now. You must wash your hands before you use this."

What is this about me washing my hands suddenly?? 19-year-old big brother rummages through a dubious drawer, full of junk, and fishes out a spare roller ball packed in cheap cellophane wrapper. Original part? I doubt it. But, by now, I am in the lap of the real India and there is no escape as he fishes out a couple of screwdrivers and sets about opening my Blackberry.

“How long will this take?”

“Six minutes.”

This I have to see. After spending the whole morning trying to find a Blackberry service centre and getting vague answers about sending the phone in for an assessment that might take a week, I settle down next to his grubby cramped work space. At least, I am going to be able to watch all my stored data vanish into virtual space. Unknown strangers crowd around to see what’s happening. I am not breathing easy anyway. I tell myself this is an adventure and I literally have to stop myself grabbing my precious Blackberry back and making a quick escape.

But, in exactly six minutes, this kid handed me my Blackberry back. He had changed the part and cleaned and serviced the whole phone, taken it apart and put it together. As I turned the phone on there was a horrific 2 minutes where the phone would not come on. I looked at him with such hostility that he stepped back.

"You have more than thousand phone numbers?”

"Yes."

"Backed up?"

"No."

"Must back up. I do it for you. Never open phone before backing up."

"You tell me that now?"

But then the phone came on and my data was still there. Everyone watching laughed and clapped. This was becoming a public street show. A six minute show. I asked him how much for his effort and the new roller ball part.

"500 rupees", he ventured uncertainly.

People around watched in glee expecting a negotiation. That's $ 10 as against the Rs. 30,000 ($ 600) I was about to spend on a new Blackberry or manage a couple of weeks without my phone. I looked suitably shocked at his ‘high price’ but calmly paid him, much to the disappointment of the expectant crowd.

"Do you have an iPhone? Even the new ‘4′ one?"
"No, why?”
"I can break the code for you and load any ‘app’ or film you want. I give you 10 film on your memory stick on this one, and change every week for small fee."

I went home having discovered the true entrepreneurship that lies at what we call the ‘bottom of the pyramid’. Some may call it piracy, which of course it is, but what can you say about a two uneducated and untrained brothers, aged 10 and 19, that set up a ‘hole in the wall’ shop and can fix any technology that the greatest technologists in the world can throw at them! I smiled at the future of our country. If only we could learn to harness this potential!

"Please wash your hands before use", were his last words to me.

AP "Babus" have a field day without work

2010-08-20T00:11:00.002+05:30

Desaraju Surya
HYDERABAD: Sitting in his Hyderabad office, a mid-level Indian Administrative Service officer in Andhra Pradesh was “busy” working on his computer. His Facebook account was open and he was quite seriously “posting” messages to some of his online friends. “Just killing time, as there is nothing much official work to do,” he remarks. Another IAS officer in an other office was also “busy” typing his latest “blog post” that would immediately be uploaded on the world-wide web. “These are the things we normally do once in a while in our spare time but these days we have a lot of it during working hours itself. It’s cool,” the officer quips as a matter-of-fact. Many officers, of course, are also active on “Twitter” following the tweets of Paul Krugman, Shashi Tharoor, The Economist and the like “just to keep updated with the trends.” Some IAS officers in the state are opting for mid-career training programmes that run for a week or two either in India or abroad and packing their bags to “enjoy an outing.” A few are happily flying abroad on “official assignments” despite a clear ban on foreign jaunts by bureaucrats.All this is a clear reflection of the “dormant” state of administration in Andhra Pradesh where governance, as bureaucrats admit, has remained paralyzed for the past few months. Given the acute funds crunch faced by the state government, implementation of welfare programmes and development works has become a major casualty while there is an unwritten ban on new schemes. This is one reason being cited by those in the government about the lackadaisical functioning of the entire administration. “In practical terms there is nothing to do in the districts in the given situation. Things are happening only as a matter of routine in the absence of any authoritative monitoring,” the bureaucrats say.With the Cabinet ministers busy with their own political work, administrative reviews have become few and far between in recent months. The Chief Minister has been conducting reviews of different departments periodically but nothing much is apparently happening down the line.
“Administration has become CM-centric when both N Chandrababu Naidu and Y S Rajasekhara Reddy were at the helm of affairs. Being powerful leaders, their writ ran large and the entire administration functioned according to their diktats. Bureaucrats used to look to the Chief Minister for everything previously as all instructions came from him directly. It’s not the case anymore,” a top-ranking IAS officer noted, explaining the “slackness” that is currently apparent in the functioning of the government. "What is clearly lacking in the state administration today is the direction. Hence, nobody is clear about what to do or what not to do," retired bureaucrat K Prabhakar Reddy, who also worked in the Chief Minister's Office noted. Incidentally, the incumbents in the CMO are busy doing fire-fighting what with several controversies dogging the government. Also, there are allegedly internal squabbles among bureaucrats in the CMO compounding the chaos, sources say. Hitherto, ministers used to tour the districts regularly and conduct review meetings on the functioning of their respective departments. Given the hostility between the two regions of Andhra Pradesh over the demand for division of the state, ministers from Telangana region have virtually stopped touring Andhra-Rayalaseema region. And, fearing protests by the separatists, ministers from Andhra-Rayalaseema are not venturing into Telangana. Even within the respective regions, holding of review meetings by ministers has become a rare occurrence, according to a district Collector. “In the last two months, there was just one review meeting with ministers in my district. We did not even conduct the District Review Committee meeting for many months now,” the Collector pointed out. Chief Minister K Rosaiah’s visits to different districts too have been very limited because of various factors, including his health condition, official sources say. All this is leaving a telling impact on the government’s functioning but when will things be back on track is a question that has no answer yet.

The Great AP Political Tamasha

2010-08-16T23:37:00.000+05:30

Desaraju Surya
HYDERABAD: Welcome to the “great Andhra Pradesh political tamasha.”
It is high on intensity and low on sanity. There are multiple actors in this daily play but each has his own script and screenplay. Everyone tries to outdo the other and score political brownie points but end up nowhere really.
The principal actors in this sordid drama are leaders of the ruling Congress, the main opposition Telugu Desam, the other opposition Praja Rajyam and the separatist Telangana Rashtra Samiti. The extra parts are handled by BJP, CPI and CPM while Lok Satta Party has an insignificant cameo.
The political soap opera has been running for long and, like a never-ending television serial, is mostly-televised but with lots of amusement.
Along with the own script, each actor has an exclusive (television) channel to showcase his act without others stealing the limelight. Of course, the actors are ably aided by some channels which orchestrate the agenda that suits “their” interest.
One actor (Chiranjeevi) is sulking, though, since he feels no channel is leaving him any screen space, overlooking his exploits. Hence, he too is seeking to set up his own (television) shop for better marketing.
Interestingly, the Congress’ act in itself has all the features of a unique potboiler. Though the Congress characters are supposed to be on one side, they fight each other adding more spice to drama.
Congress leaders from Telangana spit venom at their own ministers from Andhra-Rayalaseema region for opposing the bifurcation of the state. The so-called Y S Jagan camp is at loggerheads not only with Chief Minister K Rosaiah but also with the party high command. Supporters of Rosaiah are “goading” the “impatient” Kadapa MP by digging out the “misdeeds” committed during his father Y S Rajasekhara Reddy’s regime, much to the discomfiture of the young man who is unwilling to settle for anything less than the Chief Minister’s chair.
Jagan’s “loyalists” wouldn’t take kindly to such denigration of their departed leader (YSR) and would repulse any attack.
Nevertheless, the bigwigs “attached” to Rosaiah are busy pulling the skeletons out of the YSR regime’s cupboard.
This brings cheer to the opposition camp as it gets more ammunition to step up its offensive against the enemy (Congress). The Telugu Desam, in the past five years, has lost no opportunity to expose the brazen corruption in the Congress rule and is now getting pep to its drive from the very rulers themselves.
A case in point is the unearthing of a “Rs 10,000 crore scam”, dated back to the YSR regime, by two senior Congress MLAs D L Ravindra Reddy and J C Diwakar Reddy. Now, other senior Congress leaders are readying for more such “exposés”, making the job easier for the TDP.
The Praja Rajyam president K Chiranjeevi is a widely-acclaimed actor before he donned the political greasepaint. In the political arena, however, he is proving a mismatch to the other actors. His party is about to celebrate its second anniversary but Chiranjeevi is apparently in a serious state of confusion.
On one hand, he is strongly critical of the state government over its policies but, on the other, is building close ties with the ruling party. Chiranjeevi is currently on a tour of the state to reinvent himself as a political leader but unable to decide who is his rival or what is his objective.
The TRS has a one-point agenda: of achieving statehood for Telangana. Having achieved a landslide in the recent by-elections, the separatist force has become more ferocious. While fighting the government on certain administrative issues, the TRS has turned its ire more on the TDP leading to a slanging match between leaders of the two parties.
TDP supremo Chandrababu Naidu is forced to do multi-tasking these days. Keeping his own party, which has split vertically on regional lines, intact has become his main task. As Leader of Opposition, taking on the Congress is his mandate but he is also forced to contend with the PRP and the TRS that have stepped up the attack against him, all at a time.
The two Left parties, luckily, are on Chandrababu’s side, helping him combat the Congress.
Lok Satta Party chief N Jayaprakash Narayan, who quit a cushy IAS position and became an MLA, to cleanse the political rot, unfortunately, finds himself lost in the crowd.
Counting on its national stature, the BJP is trying to make its presence felt in the state but with little impact.
The curtains aren’t yet down and there are no commercial breaks even. Thus, the saga continues…..

It should be a sentimental gain for TRS in by-polls

2010-07-25T23:24:00.000+05:30

Desaraju Surya
Hyderabad: Telangana Rashtra Samiti appears all set to sweep the by-elections in the Telangana region of Andhra Pradesh as trends in 12 constituencies indicate just 48 hours ahead of the polling date.
Ten out of 12 is likely to be the separatist party’s score with the ruling Congress and the TRS having a 50-50 chance in two segments.
It’s only the “Telangana sentiment” that gives TRS the edge in the by-election battle. The development mantra, coupled with the claim that it’s the Congress alone that could ultimately deliver statehood for Telangana, seem to have not cut any ice as the ruling party finds itself in a hopeless position.
A senior Congress leader like Rajya Sabha member V Hanumantha Rao observed: “The (Telangana) sentiment is so strong that nothing else will work.”
The fight over Babhli issue has done no good to the principal opposition Telugu Desam Party’s electoral prospects as it will have to be content with either the second place or the third in many constituencies.
By-elections will be held to the 12 constituencies on July 27 and counting of votes will take place on 30th. Since more than 64 candidates are in fray, ballot papers are being used in five Assembly segments Yellareddy, Korutla, Siricilla, Huzurabad and Warangal West. Electronic Voting Machines will be used in the remaining seven segments. In all 435 candidates are in the fray in all the 12 segments.
All eyes, however, are on the Nizamabad Urban Assembly segment where Andhra Pradesh Congress Committee president Dharmapuri Srinivas is desperately seeking a win over his Bharatiya Janata Party rival Y Lakshminarayana.
Having tasted a bitter defeat in the 2009 general elections, Srinivas is using all the tricks to win the by-election. “I will get to occupy the highest position (read Chief Minister) in the state politics if elected as an MLA. Also, I will get your dream of a separate Telangana state come true if elected,” Srinivas has been repeatedly claiming during his campaign. In fact, this has been Srinivas’ theme song in the by-poll campaign.
Nizamabad Urban segment has a large chunk of Muslim voters who stayed away from polling in 2009. This resulted in Srinivas’ defeat then as the BJP candidate Lakshminarayana romped home with a comfortable majority of 11,015 votes. This time, however, Srinivas has held a series of meetings with various communities, including Muslims, pleading with them to elect him to the Legislature so that he could win back a lost chance (of becoming the Chief Minister). Srinivas pegged all his hopes on Muslim votes, numbering about 75,000, to realize his dreams.
The BJP candidate is banking on the Telangana sentiment and the “sympathy” factor over his resignation for the statehood cause in February. The TDP is nowhere in contest in this segment.
The TRS is hell bent on wrecking the PCC chief’s victory chances in Nizamabad Urban as much as the Congress is seeking to defeat TRS president K Chandrasekhar Rao’s son K T Rama Rao in Siricilla constituency. Rama Rao scraped through a bare margin of 171 votes in 2009 in a multi-cornered contest.
It was a TRS rebel candidate K K Mahender Reddy who gave Rama Rao a run for his money. Now, Mahender is the Congress candidate in Siricilla but the political scene underwent a lot of change in the last one year.
Rama Rao, a rank “outsider” in Siricilla in 2009, built his base since his election for the first time as an MLA, edging out Mahender Reddy. The Telangana sentiment is the main plank on which the TRS nominee is seeking re-election this time.
KCR’s nephew T Harish Rao is one candidate who faces no real contest in the Siddipet constituency. Everyone is betting only on the majority with which Harish will win the seat in the by-election, having won the 2009 general election with a margin of 64,677 votes.
While the TDP can hope to secure the second place, with actor Babu Mohan in the fray, the Congress is desperately fighting to win at least the security deposit that it had to forego in the last two elections.
The Congress fielded three former ministers Md Ali Shabbir, G Vinod and J Ratnakar Rao from Yellareddy, Chennur (SC) and Korutla constituencies. All of them having been seeking votes claiming they would get back into the state Cabinet, if elected, and develop the respective constituencies. All three, however, are facing rough weather in these segments like in 2009 when they were trounced comprehensively.
Former MP Indrakaran Reddy of Congress is giving a semblance of fight to his TRS rival Kaveti Sammaiah in Sirpur constituency. But the internal wrangling in the Congress may mar his prospects. Other aspirants for Sirpur seat like Koneru Konappa and Premsagar Rao are said to be working against Indrakaran. However, Indrakaran succeeded to win-over Konappa and secure his support but Premsagar Rao is said to have not fallen in line. Indrakaran also has been going round with the claim that he would become a minister if elected to the Assembly.
In Warangal West Assembly constituency as well, the Congress is locked in an intense fight with the TRS. Congress’ K Dayasagar Rao has a strong base in the segment and the sympathy that he lost the 2009 polls.
TRS’ D Vinay Bhaskar, who won with a margin of over 6,600 votes against Dayasagar last time, is banking on the Telangana sentiment. Former MLA Vem Narender Reddy of the TDP is lagging behind the two main contenders in this segment.
The fight for Huzurabad seat in Karimnagar district looks interesting as the three main candidates E Rajender (TRS), M Damodar Reddy (TDP) and V Krishnamohan Rao (Congress) are mighty. Apart from the sentiment factor, his good relations with the local people should stand Rajender in good stead. The TDP’s strong cadre base in Huzurabad should help Damodar Reddy put up a good fight. The Congress has deployed senior leaders like Karimnagar MP Ponnam Prabhakar and Chief Whip Mallu Bhatti Vikramarka to ensure Krishnamohan Rao’s success.
The Vemulawada seat in Karimnagar district was won by Chennamaneni Ramesh of TDP in 2009. Ramesh, however, switched sides to the TRS after he quit the Assembly in February this year on the statehood issue. The large chunk of voters belonging to his Velama community and the support of BJP will be the additional advantages working in Ramesh’s favour apart from the Telangana sentiment and the sympathy over his resignation. Ramesh is the nephew of former Union Minister Ch Vidyasagar Rao of BJP.
In Dharmapuri and Mancherial too the TRS may find the going smooth though the TDP is giving some fight in Mancherial.

License to ridicule

2010-07-16T22:33:00.001+05:30

Desaraju Surya
Hyderabad: The “Citizen-Friendly Services (CFS) of Transport Department” of the Andhra Pradesh government seem to have touched some ridiculous highs and lows.
The Transport Department issued driving licenses in as many as 551 cases in the recent past to persons well over the age of 100 years.
Likewise, 1,280 teenagers below the age of 16 too have benefited from the Department’s munificence as they conveniently secured driving licenses in various parts of the state, in clear violation of Section 14 of the Motor Vehicles Act.
Interestingly, in some cases, the dates on the driving licenses indicated that the holder was born well after the license issue date. In 4,019 cases, the date of driving test was noted to be prior to even the date of application.
These glaring lapses were picked up during a performance review of the Transport Department by the Comptroller and Auditor General during the year 2008-09.
The CAG report was tabled in the state Assembly.
The CAG pointed out that learners’ licenses were issued “beyond permissible limits” in 18,626 cases, despite the MV Act stipulating that a learner’s license shall be valid only for a period of six months.
In one particular case, an applicant “passed” the driving test though he scored zero marks. The minimum marks required for issuing a driving license is 16 out of 20.
It also noted that validity certificates for 41,978 vehicles were issued for a period of over 15 years though the certificates have to be renewed every five years on completion of 15 years.
The CAG slammed the Transport Department over the “gross inconsistencies\improbabilities” in the CFS stating they were due to “lack of proper validation and input controls.”
In 9,105 cases, the tax payment date was beyond the system date.
In 15 cases, validity of the date of registration of vehicles was shown prior or same as the date of issue of the registration certificate.
In six cases, validity of international driving permit expired before the issue date.
It was also found that the fitness certificate in 1.36 lakh cases involving a fee of Rs 10.74 crore was renewed for more than one year, contrary to the provisions and which have serious implications on the road safety, the CAG noted.

Statins and their affects

2010-06-26T22:27:00.002+05:30

Desaraju Surya
Hyderabad: Long-term administration of statins, the anti-cholesterol drugs, could lead to anxiety and major depression in patients while a minor portion of them could also develop suicidal tendencies, scientists at the Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology here have established. The team of scientists led by Amitabha Chattopadhyay studied the effect of statin on human serotonin receptors expressed in animal cells and established the link between use of cholesterol-lowering drugs and mood disorders. “The novel results of our study represent the first report describing the effect of long-term cholesterol depletion on this type of neurotransmitter receptor and suggest that chronic, low cholesterol levels in the brain may trigger anxiety and depression,” Chattopadhyay said. Chattopadhyay’s study has been published in the latest editon of Biochemistry, brought out by the American Chemical Society. “Our results assume broader significance in the context of previous observations that symptoms of anxiety and major depression are apparent in humans upon long-term administration of statin and cortical cholesterol content is found to be lower in mood disorders. This is relevant since some statins have been reported to cross the blood-brain barrier and their use has been associated with a reduced risk of Alzheimer’s disease,” Chattopadhyay pointed out. “Only a certain percentage of those who use statins are prone to mood disorders. Our findings are based only on cell study and we need to conduct clinical trials. This is only a tip of the iceberg and we are planning to conduct animal experiments to take our research further,” Chattopadhyay said. Mood disorder was, however, not a common side-effect of the use of statins but the percentage of those prone to it could not quantified right now, he said in reply to a question. “Our study will contribute to the development of new drug and even the existing drugs could be modified to reduce the side-effects like myopathy , kidney failure and headache, apart from mood alteration,” the senior scientist noted. Statins, the widely-used anti-cholesterol drugs, currently have a worldwide market of 25 million USD, including a Rs 1000 crore market in India per annum. Research scientists Yamuna Devi Paila, Sourav Ganguly, Sandeep Shrivastava and Thomas J Pucadyil assisted Chattopadhyay in conducting the study.

A game of one-upmanship over Telangana

2010-05-30T01:53:00.001+05:30

Desaraju Surya
HYDERABAD: It was a clear game of one-upmanship that disturbed peace in Andhra Pradesh once again.
Kadapa MP Y S Jaganmohan Reddy, Telangana Rashtra Samiti president K Chandrasekhar Rao, some Congress leaders hailing from Telangana region and also a few leaders of Telugu Desam Party were all players in this murky game.
The game began after Jagan announced his programme early this month to tour Warangal district as part of the “Odarpu Yatra” to condole the families whose members allegedly died either of heartbreak or committed suicide following the tragic death of his father Y S Rajasekhara Reddy in September last.
Jagan had already toured West Godavari and Khammam districts last month on a similar condolence trip and evoked good response from people. In fact, Khammam district is also part of Telangana region but Jagan did not face any opposition to his tour with only some murmurs of protest raised by the pro-Telangana groups.
Buoyed by this, the young MP announced his plan to tour Warangal district, which is the hotbed of separate Telangana agitation.
Fearing that the success of Jagan’s yatra could prove that the separate statehood demand is on the wane, Chandrasekhar Rao raised objection to it saying they would not allow a person who openly supported a unified Andhra Pradesh to tour Telangana.
Andhra Pradesh, particularly Telangana, remained peaceful since March this year after the violence that erupted in December over the separate statehood issue.
Separatist elements like KCR and Kodandaram – who are allegedly minting money in the name of the separate statehood “movement” – did not shun their inflammatory talk but people remained restrained.
Interestingly, leaders from Andhra and Rayalaseema said they would roll out a red-carpet for Chandrasekhar Rao if he visited their regions. “He is most welcome to not only visit any place in Andhra or Rayalaseema but also speak on his demand for a separate Telangana state. He is very much entitled to do this,” leaders from these regions said as the TRS chief planned to Vijayawada on the invitation of Jai Andhra Samiti.
However, other pro-Telangana groups vowed to block Jagan’s tour at any cost even as some Congress leaders from the region joined chorus.
Beginning with Rajya Sabha and Congress Central Working Committee member K Keshava Rao, 11 party MPs from Telangana lobbied with the ‘high command’ to get Jagan cancel his Odarpu Yatra.
The Kadapa MP, however, said his tour had nothing to do with the party and it was “purely personal.” “It is my duty to wipe the tears of the families which lost their kin following the death of my father. There is no politics involved in it,” Jagan asserted.
He pointed out that he never made any political remarks during his tour of Khammam district that was also part of Telangana.
Amidst this, Telugu Desam Party senior legislator from Warangal district E Dayakar Rao announced that they would not let Jagan land his foot in Warangal since his father YSR had done a lot of injustice to the district. “How can we allow him to tour the region when his father, as Chief Minister, did a lot of injustice to us on various issues? Moreover, why was not Jagan consoling the families whose kin died for the sake of a separate Telangana state,” Dayakar Rao questioned.
Soon, his party colleagues from Telangana region supported him even as TDP chief Chandrababu Naidu maintained that in a democracy every individual has a right to visit any place of his choice.
The controversy over Jagan’s tour notwithstanding, Chief Minister K Rosaiah repeatedly maintained that Jagan’s tour was “his personal affair” but the government would take adequate steps to maintain peace.
However, the Odarpu Yatra ended in an anti-climax on May 28 as Jagan was forced to abandon his plans after violence broke out in Mahbubabad, the yatra's starting point.

Arrest of a "corrupt" IAS officer in Andhra Pradesh

2010-05-04T23:15:00.002+05:30

Desaraju Surya
Hyderabad: The arrest of Indian Administrative Service (IAS) officer M Jaganmohan by sleuths of the Anti-Corruption Bureau (ACB) in Hyderabad today in connection with a disproportionate assets case could be the beginning of more such cases to come soon.
The Andhra Pradesh government recently gave its go-ahead to the ACB to proceed against officers belonging to All India Services (IAS, Indian Police Service and Indian Forest Service) of the state cadre who have been facing charges of corruption.
The ACB made out cases of corruption, including possession of assets disproportionate to their legitimate sources of income, against 22 top-ranking officers. The list includes 15 officers belonging to IAS, IPS and IFS.
“In eight cases involving AIS officers, the government has accorded requisite permission for us to proceed ahead. We shall now focus on these cases,” a top official of ACB said. He, however, did not like to reveal the names of these officers as it could hamper the cases.
In fact, at a review meeting of the ACB last week, Chief Minister K Rosaiah reportedly directed its Director General K Aravinda Rao to trap the “big sharks” and not just the “small fish” so as to create a “fear” among the corrupt elements in the administration.
Sources in ACB said the raid on Jaganmohan, a 1999-batch IAS officer posted as Joint Collector-1 of Ranga Reddy district, was carried out after many complaints about his alleged involvement in illegal land deals were received by the Chief Minister’s Office. The ACB unearthed assets worth over Rs 20 crore in the raids carried out on his official residence, office chamber and other properties besides his relatives’ houses in Hyderabad today.
“This is probably the first such case against a serving IAS officer in recent memory. In April 2007, an IPS officer J G Murali was arrested in a disproportionate assets case when he was serving as Superintendent of Police, Visakhapatnam (Rural), with his wealth running into several crore rupees,” a senior ACB official recalled.
Though another officer Harshavardhan was also arrested in connection with a similar case in November last year, it happened a few months before he was inducted into the IAS. In his case, ACB unearthed assets worth over Rs 8 crore but he succeeded in getting into IAS through an order from the Central Administrative Tribunal.
Jaganmohan’s arrest has become a point of intense debate among IAS officers in the state today. “There are many other black sheep within our ranks. Jaganmohan’s arrest should at least become a deterrent for the corrupt officers in our ranks,” a senior IAS officer remarked.

A Brief about Jaganmohan's Case:

The Central Investigation Unit of the ACB raided the residence of M Jaganmohan, a 1999-batch IAS officer currently posted as Joint Collector-1 of Ranga Reddy district, and seized three kilograms of gold, Rs 15 lakh in cash and many property documents. Bank balances amounting to Rs 12 lakh and investments in life insurance policies, national savings and Kisan Vikas Patras amounting to Rs 15 lakh, household articles worth Rs four lakh and a car worth Rs seven lakh were also seized in the raid, according to ACB Joint Director Sampath Kumar.
In all nine special teams of ACB simultaneously raided the official residence of Jaganmohan on Road No. 13 Banjara Hills, his relatives house at Kundanbagh, his office chamber in the Ranga Reddy district Collectorate and other places, and seized documents related to his properties in Hyderabad, Visakhapatnam and Ranga Reddy district, sources in the ACB said.
The IAS officer also owned two houses in Hyderabad city, six flats in Hyderabad and Visakhapatnam and eight house sites in Ranga Reddy district.
Some incriminating documents were also seized from his office chamber in the district Collectorate, ACB sources added.
Jaganmohan, an MSc., PhD and M Ed, joined state revenue service in December 1990 and was inducted into IAS in January 2005 and allotted the 1999 batch. His wife is a revenue divisional officer-cadre officer currently posted in the Urban Land Ceiling wing of the state revenue department.
He was hand-picked for the Ranga Reddy Joint Collector's post in February 2008 by an "advisor" to government allegedly to settle some land deals.

KNOW YOUR ONIONS

2010-04-24T00:42:00.001+05:30

This very interesting and highly useful piece landed in my email box the other day. I am putting it on my blog for in public interest.

In 1919 when the flu killed 40 million people there was this doctor who visited the many farmers to see if he could help them combat the flu.
Many of the farmers and their family had contracted the flu and many died.
The doctor came upon this one farmer’s family, and to his surprise, everyone was very healthy. When the doctor asked what the farmer was doing that was different, the wife replied that she had placed an unpeeled onion in a dish in the rooms of the home (probably only two rooms back then).
The doctor couldn't believe it and asked if he could have one of the onions and place it under the microscope. She gave him one and when he did this, he did find the flu virus in the onion. It obviously absorbed the bacteria, therefore, keeping the family healthy.
Now, I heard this story from my hairdresser in NZ. She said that several years ago many of her employees were coming down with the flu and so were many of her customers. The next year she placed several bowls with onions around in her shop. To her surprise, none of her staff got sick. It must work. (And no, she is not in the onion business.)
The moral of the story is, buy some onions and place them in bowls around your home. If you work at a desk, place one or two in your office or under your desk or even on top somewhere. Try it and see what happens. We did it last year and we never got the flu.
If this helps you and your loved ones from getting sick, all the better. If you do get the flu, it just might be a mild case. Whatever - what have you to lose? Just a few bucks on Onions!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Now there is a P. S. to this, for, I sent it to a friend in Oregon who regularly contributes material to me on health issues. She replied with this most interesting experience about Onions:
“Thanks for the reminder. I don't know about the farmers story...but, I do know that I contacted pneumonia and needless to say I was very ill...I came across an article that said to cut both ends off an onion, put one end on a fork and then place the forked end into an empty jar...placing the jar next to the sick patient at night. It said the onion would be black in the morning from the germs... sure enough it happened just like that...the onion was a mess and I began to feel better.
Another thing I read in the article was that onions and garlic placed around the room saved many from the black plague years ago. They have powerful antibacterial, antiseptic properties. But here is the other important side to remember.
LEFT OVER ONIONS ARE POISONOUS
I have used an onion which has been left in the fridge, and sometimes I don't use a whole one at one time, so save the other half for later.
Now with this info, I have changed my mind.....will buy smaller onions in the future.
I had the wonderful privilege of touring Mullins Food Products, makers of mayonnaise. Mullins is huge, and is owned by 11 brothers and sisters in the Mullins family. My friend, Jeanne, is the CEO.
Questions about food poisoning came up, and I wanted to share what I learned from a chemist. The guy who gave us our tour is named Ed.
Ed is a chemistry expert and is involved in developing most of the sauce formula. He's even developed sauce formula for McDonald's.
Keep in mind that Ed is a food chemistry whiz, someone asked during the tour if we really needed to worry about mayonnaise. People are always worried that mayonnaise will spoil. Ed's answer will surprise you. Ed said that all commercially made Mayo is completely safe.
"It doesn't even have to be refrigerated. No harm in refrigerating it, but it's not really necessary." He explained that the pH in mayonnaise is set at a point that bacteria could not survive in that environment. He then talked about the quaint essential picnic, with the bowl of potato salad sitting on the table and how everyone blames the mayonnaise when someone gets sick.
Ed says that when food poisoning is reported, the first thing the officials look for is when the 'victim' last ate ONIONS and where those onions came from (in the potato salad?). Ed says it's not the mayonnaise (as long as it's not homemade Mayo) that spoils in the outdoors. It's probably the onions, and if not the onions, it's the POTATOES.
He explained, onions are a huge magnet for bacteria, especially uncooked ones. You should never plan to keep a portion of a sliced onion. He says it's not even safe if you put it in a zip-lock bag and put it in your refrigerator.
It's already contaminated enough just by being cut open and out for a bit, that it can be a danger to you (and doubly watch out for those onions you put in your hotdogs at the baseball park!)
Ed says if you take the left over onion and cook it like crazy you'll probably be okay, but if you slice that left-over onion and put on your sandwich, you're asking for trouble. Both the onions and the moist potato in a potato salad, will attract and grow bacteria faster than any commercial mayonnaise will even begin to break down.
So, how's that for news? Take it for what you will. I (the author) am going to be very careful about my onions from now on. For some reason, I see a lot of credibility coming from a chemist and a company that produces millions of pounds of mayonnaise every year.'
Also, dogs should never eat onions. Their stomachs cannot metabolize Onions..............
Please remember it is dangerous to cut onions and try to use it to cook the next day. It becomes highly poisonous for even a single night and creates toxic bacteria which may cause adverse stomach infections because of excess Bile secretions and even food poisoning.”

Andhra Pradesh heads to the INFO-AGE

2010-04-08T00:10:00.003+05:30

Desaraju Surya
Hyderabad: From a SMART (Simple, Moral, Accountable, Responsive and Transparent) administration, Andhra Pradesh will soon transform into an Info-age (Inclusive, Networked, Fast, Open, Accountable, Globally-benchmarked and Efficient) government.
While the then government headed by N Chandrababu Naidu adopted the SMART theory in the mid-1990s, the current Rosaiah government is now setting into the “Info-age”, with Information and Communications Technology (ICT) being the guiding principle for the two approaches.
The government wants to leverage ICT to achieve an Info-age government. Its goal is to transform the state into a knowledge society and make available the benefits of ICT to all citizens, especially those in rural areas and living in poverty.
Andhra Pradesh has been a pioneer in e-governance initiatives, under a tech-savvy Chandrababu Naidu between 1995 and 2004, while the state emerged as a leading IT destination in the country. The state’s IT exports that were just Rs 284 crore in 1997-98, shot up to Rs 32,509 crore in 2008-09.
On one hand the government has embarked on implementation of various e-governance initiatives to help citizens gain one-stop access to information and government services while on the other thrust was placed on attracting huge investments into the ICT sector in the state. It is now leveraging ICT tools to provide better, efficient, transparent and responsive services to the citizens.
The most popular and successful e-governance initiative has been the e-Seva, which is a one-stop shop for citizens to access a host of services through Integrated Citizen Service Centres apart from the Internet.
Now, under the National E-governance Plan, the state government is setting up 4,687 ICT-enabled Citizen Services Centres covering all the 23 districts and 1088 mandals under the Public-Private Partnership initiative. The objective of this is to provide all government and other value-added services to rural citizens in an integrated manner at one’s doorstep and at an affordable price.
Also as part of the Info-age initiative, the state government is building a State Data Centre (SDC) in a 9,000 sq ft area in the AP Financial District at Manikonda near Hyderabad. The SDC will consolidate the major services and e-governance applications of various departments of the state government.
Apart from the communication infrastructure, the SDC will also have separate infrastructure for network, management, security, storage and a disaster recovery set up.
The government's larger objective is to see that the benefit of ICT percolates to the last mile of the state and delivers services in a secure way to all citizens.

Bad governance leaves bureaucrats dispirited in Andhra Pradesh

2010-04-03T01:50:00.002+05:30

DESARAJU SURYA
HYDERABAD: Disillusioned, dispirited, disgusted, disenchanted, dismayed, disoriented, demoralized, dejected…… these adjectives sum up the current state of bureaucracy in Andhra Pradesh.
For six years now, bureaucrats in the state have been in disarray. Not all of them, of course, but the majority who are committed to work and service of people are certainly feeling the discomfiture.
Deprived of suitable postings where they could function more effectively and deliver better, most of the bureaucrats – particularly the younger lot – are left distressed.
Obviously, this state of despondency among the cream of civil servants – a result of abysmal cadre management – has left a telling impact on the administration in the state.
Administration had, literally, gone to dogs during the regime of (late) Y S Rajasekhara Reddy between 2004 and 2009. And, the rot seems to be continuing even under his successor K Rosaiah.
When S V Prasad, the 1975-batch Indian Administrative Service officer, became the Chief Secretary of Andhra Pradesh on December 31, 2009, bureaucrats saw a ray of hope in him. Most of the IAS officers, especially the “juniors”, sincerely hoped things would change under the guidance of S V Prasad as he was perceived to be an able officer who had a better understanding of the “cadre.”
Alas, all such hopes seemed to have dashed.
Reading the latest list of transfers (of IAS officers) affected on April 2, one would be left with a sore feeling.
Here’s a classic example: N Nageswara Rao, an IAS officer of the 1992 batch, has been appointed Collector and District Magistrate of Khammam district. He would now be the senior-most officer among the district Collectors in the entire state. That’s, however, not the news. Nageswara Rao practically has 363 days of service left before he superannuates on March 31 next year.
Now, what’s the sense in appointing such an officer to an important post as a district Collector?
Another officer M Purushottam Reddy of the 1996 batch, who has been appointed as Collector of Mahbubnagar district, is just two years away from retirement.
Of the 23 districts in the state, 11 districts now have promotee IAS officers as Collector and District Magistrate. Exclude the state capital Hyderabad district, it become 50:50 for regular recruits and promotees. This is something that hasn’t happened in the past.
Also, why did the government develop a sudden love for such officers and land them in prime posts? Nageswara Rao and another IAS officer P Venkateswarlu (1994), posted to Adilabad district as Collector, have already risen to the rank of ‘Secretary to Government’ and should ideally be relegated to suitable postings in the Secretariat or other departments.
There are many young and deserving IAS officers, that too regular recruits, eagerly waiting to be posted to the coveted job of a district Collector. These are the ones who actually need to be posted in the districts so that they can move around with agility, work with more vigor and produce better results. But certainly not the ones who are on the verge of retirement.
Consider another ridiculous thing: Natarajan Gulzar has been appointed Collector and District Magistrate of Hyderabad. He is an IAS officer (regular recruit) of the 1999 batch. Now, he will boss-over a promotee officer V Durga Das (Joint Collector), who technically is one year senior to him in the IAS.
This isn’t the first instance where such postings were given. During YSR’s regime, a similar thing happened in West Godavari where Lav Agarwal (1996 batch) was the Collector and B Ramanjaneyulu (1995) was the Joint Collector.
The Chief Minister might be unaware of such technicalities but what were the top bureaucrats, who were supposed to guide him in such matters, doing? Was the Chief Secretary unaware of these lapses? Was also the Chief Minister’s Principal Secretary Jannat Husain ignorant about it?
Such goof-ups will not only show them in poor light but also threaten to damage the system as such.

CAG calls AP government's bluff

2010-03-30T22:46:00.000+05:30

Desaraju Surya
Hyderabad: In a damning indictment, the Comptroller and Auditor General today called the AP government's bluff saying its financial management was “grossly deficient.”
For a state that boasted of presenting its annual budget in excess of Rs one lakh crore for the last three years, the CAG’s latest observations were seen as a rap on its knuckles.
“Financial Management with regard to budgetary practices, expenditure controls and mobilisation of resources was deficient. In fact, budget estimates were totally unrealistic in the all years from 2006-07 to 2008-09 as there was either huge overestimation or underestimation,” the CAG observed in its report (civil) for the year ended March 31, 2009, which was tabled in the state Assembly.
The report was prepared by Principal Accountant General G N Sunder Raja.
The report pointed out to the “huge variations in budget estimates and actual expenditure” with “large unnecessary supplementary grants, non-surrender of anticipated savings (by different departments) and expenditure without provision.”
The CAG also found fault with the government’s tax recovery mechanism saying it was not effective.
“The tax recovery mechanism was not effective and the state government resorted to sale of lands for revenue mobilisation. Arrears of revenue accumulated to Rs 2,413 crore as of March 2008, of which Rs 862 crore (36 per cent) was due for more than five years,” the report said.
During 2006-09, the state government targeted to garner funds aggregating Rs 24,450 crore through sale of land. Against this, it could raise only Rs 10,578 crore (44 per cent) leaving a gap of Rs 13,872 crore. Of this, revenue realised during 2008-09 was just Rs 2,131 crore (18 per cent of the estimate). The percentage of actuals to Budget Estimates under Capital Account decelerated to 65.51 from 99.48 and 98.51 during 2007-08 and 2006-07 respectively, the CAG report noted.
Simultaneously, Revenue Expenditure registered a growth from Rs 39,648.83 crore in 2006-07 to Rs 58,624.76 crore in 2007-08.
“Such a dependence on sale of land would have been appropriate in extraordinary circumstances and that too after exhausting other avenues such as collection of tax arrears and tightening leakage of revenue,” the CAG observed.
Monitoring by Finance Department with regard to utilisation of 12th Finance Commission grants was ineffective resulting in non-release of further grants by the Government of India, the CAG said, adding that Rs 179.55 crore remained un-utilised in urban and rural local bodies.
The CAG, however, patted the government for not availing of Ways and Means Advances for four years in a row due to “better management of cash balances.”
The state government also received debt relief of Rs 1,186.31 crore and Rs 703.08 crore during 2006-07 and 2007-08 respectively from Central Government under Debt Consolidation and Relief Facility due to “good fiscal performance”, the CAG report pointed out.

The "lull" before the storm?

2010-03-28T23:37:00.001+05:30

Desaraju Surya
Hyderabad: There is a certain lull on the political scene in Andhra Pradesh in the past few days as compared to the intense turmoil witnessed over the Telangana separation issue since December last.
It was the five-member Srikrishna Committee, appointed by the Centre to study the situation in Andhra Pradesh, that has brought about the turnaround in the situation, so to say.
The ongoing Budget session of the state Legislature also holds mirror to the current scenario where disturbances, if any, were centered around issues concerning the people – like the unprecedented energy crisis, acute drinking water scarcity, irregularities in implementation of the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Programme, etc. -- rather than political or the state separation demand.
The major political parties that had been engaged in on-street “struggles”, for and against the division of the state since December 9 last year, were confined to the drawing rooms over the last few days, busy drafting their respective points of view on the state bifurcation issue to be presented to the Srikrishna Committee. Their pre-occupation with this documentation process has left little scope for the political parties to engage in any other activity.
This is much pronounced in the Telangana region where even the staunch separatist outfit like the Telangana Rashtra Samiti has kept itself away from the now-extinct Political Joint Action Committee, focusing rather on its own agenda. “All our leaders are pre-occupied with the preparation of a comprehensive report for presentation to the Srikrishna Committee. As such they are not taking part in JAC activities,” TRS spokesman Jagadeeshwar Reddy said.
Of course, the JAC itself died a natural death after the Congress quietly walked out, followed by the BJP, and the Telugu Desam Party “expelled.”
“The state is indeed witnessing a semblance of order after a long gap,” local political analyst M Sivamuni pointed out.
That the political parties and students groups put the agitations on a “pause” mode contributed to an improved law and order situation and restored normalcy.
The Budget session of the state Legislature made the principal opposition Telugu Desam Party and its allies CPI and CPM focus their energies on issues confronting the people. Together they have been fighting the government on issues like price rise, power and drinking water crisis, corruption in NREGP works reservation for Muslims, etc. The BJP, which decided to “boycott” the Srikrishna Committee, has been busy with its organizational matters including election of a new state committee.
Amidst all this, there is hectic activity in the ruling Congress camp what with the long-overdue expansion and reshuffle of the state Cabinet expected to be taken up early April. Every legislator worth the name is virtually jumping over the other to display loyalty to Chief Minister K Rosaiah and remain in his good books as there is talk that he may drop half of his existing Council of Ministers and accommodate new ones.
The prevailing situation is expected to last at least for a few more months since the Srikrishna Committee is seriously into its job. The ensuing biennial elections to Rajya Sabha from the state, followed by polls to urban local bodies in September, will also keep the political parties engaged. Of course, by-elections to 12 Assembly seats in Telangana region -- vacated by 10 TRS legislators and one TDP and BJP MLA each -- should also be held before September.
The political parties will thus be fully “tied-up”, literally!

The Srikrishna Committee and its Terms of Reference

2010-02-13T00:20:00.001+05:30

Following are the Terms of Reference of the five-member Sri Justice B.N. Srikrishna Committee constituted by the Government of India to examine the situation in Andhra Pradesh:
The Committee was appointed in the backdrop of the ongoing agitation for and against the bifurcation of Andhra Pradesh.
The Committee has been asked:
** To examine the situation in the State of Andhra Pradesh with reference to the demand for a separate State of Telangana as well as the demand for maintaining the present status of a united Andhra Pradesh.
** To review the developments in the State since its formation and their impact on the progress and development of the different regions of the State.
** To examine the impact of the recent developments in the State on the different sections of the people such as women, children, students, minorities, other backward classes, scheduled castes and scheduled tribes.
** To identify the key issues that must be addressed while considering the matters mentioned in items (1), (2) and (3) above.
** To consult all sections of the people, especially the political parties, on the aforesaid matters and elicit their views; to seek from the political parties and other organisations a range of solutions that would resolve the present difficult situation and promote the welfare of all sections of the people; to identify the optimal solutions for this purpose; and to recommend a plan of action and a road map.
** To consult other organisations of civil society such as industry, trade, trade unions, farmers’ organisations, women’s organisations and students’ organisations on the aforesaid matters and elicit their views with specific reference to the all round development of the different regions of the State.
** To make any other suggestion or recommendation that the Committee may deem appropriate.
The Committee has been asked to submit its report by December 31, 2010.

The terms of reference (TOR) set for the five-member Srikrishna Committee evoked mixed reactions with the Telangana protagonists strongly denouncing them as a “betrayal” of the people of the region.
The separatist Telangana Rashtra Samiti president K Chandrasekhar Rao termed the TOR as “baseless, meaningless and mindless” while Andhra Pradesh Congress Committee president D Srinivas welcomed them.
“It is a total betrayal of the people of Telangana. The TOR are totally immoral,” Chandrasekhar Rao lashed out.
Srinivas hoped the Committee would do justice to the state and urged all political parties to co-operate with it. Reacting to the TRS’ demand for resignation of legislators, the PCC chief said resignations would not solve any problem.
Telugu Desam Party leaders hailing from Telangana region have also said the TOR were a betrayal of the people of the region and suggested that the Centre was bent on pushing the separate statehood demand into the cold storage.
TDP politburo member Nagam Janardhana Reddy asserted that Telangana state could be achieved only by creating a constitutional crisis in the state.
The Praja Rajyam Party welcomed the TOR and appealed to all political parties to observe restraint till the Committee completed the consultation process.
“It’s a right step by the Centre in accordance with its commitment given at the all-party meeting on January 5,” PRP Political Affairs Committee member K Kalavenkata Rao said.
CPI state secretary K Narayana and BJP state president Bandaru Dattatreya have also said the TOR were “deceiving.”
“The statehood process will get delayed because of the Committee. Since it’s a political problem, the Centre should find a political solution,” Narayana said in Vijayawada.
“The TOR clearly indicate that the Committee was formed only to bury the Telangana statehood demand. The UPA government should step down as it failed to stick to its December 9 statement on the statehood issue,” BJP leader and former Union Minister of State for Home Ch Vidyasagar Rao said.
The Telangana Political Joint Action Committee too strongly denounced the terms of reference set for Srikrishna Committee. JAC convenor Kodandaram said the TOR have left them “totally disappointed.”
While the two TRS MPs, including K Chandrasekhar Rao, 10 MLAs and one MLC decided to resign from their posts in protest against the TOR, the TDP legislators from Telangana said they would act in accordance with the decision of the JAC.
“All the parties are in the JAC and none has withdrawn. We are all meeting to decide on the future course of action,” Kodandaram said after an interaction with TDP MLAs. He later held talks with some Congress MLAs from the region as well.
Chandrasekhar Rao and his fellow MP Vijayasanthi are expected to meet Lok Sabha Speaker Meira Kumar in New Delhi on February 16 and press for acceptance of their resignations which they had submitted earlier.
On the other hand, political leaders hailing from Andhra-Rayalaseema regions too have not welcomed the Srikrishna Committee TOR in toto.
“The TOR clearly indicated that the Centre was bent on dividing Andhra Pradesh. Union Home Minister P Chidambaram’s conspiracy in this regard is clearly visible in the TOR,” TDP MP M V Mysura Reddy said.
TDP politburo member K Yerrannaidu has felt the Centre should have also included the demands for other smaller states in the country in the Sri Krishna Committee’s TOR. “Andhra Pradesh should not become a laboratory for experiments related to creation of smaller states,” the former Union Minister said.
State Home Minister P Sabita Indra Reddy, who was on an official tour of Tirupati, welcomed the Committee TOR and hoped they would be in favour of a separate Telangana state.
The Lok Satta Party too welcomed the TOR and appealed to political parties to take an appropriate stand in the interests of the people. Since the Committee was only recommendatory in nature, there was no need for any apprehensions, Lok Satta Party spokesman K Srinivasa Rao felt.

Bell-430 crash: A pure accident, say experts

2010-02-13T00:14:00.003+05:30

Desaraju Surya
Hyderabad: Stormy weather was the only reason that resulted in the crash of the Bell-430 helicopter of the Andhra Pradesh government in which the then Chief Minister Y S Rajasekhara Reddy and four others were killed in the dense Nallamala forest ranges on September 2, 2009, a two-member expert committee appointed by the state government to probe into the incident has established.
“There is evidence to show that the helicopter got into bad weather and it was coming down with great force because of the down draft (wind going down in great speed vertically). The pilots tried to lift the helicopter but in the process, unfortunately, it hit the tree,” the committee members H S Khola and M R Reddy said in a 110-page report submitted to Chief Minister K Rosaiah.
On the weather analysis, the experts said, the helicopter in the final stages was in a “severe down draft” where the rate of descent was very high. The pilot could not lift off and the chopper impacted with the ground because of this.
“Except that there is no evidence of anything,” Khola, a former Director General of Civil Aviation, and Reddy, a former director of Special Protection Group, said after submitting the report.
“From the evidence which is on record, there is no evidence except to say that the helicopter got into this weather that resulted in the crash,” they asserted when asked about the possible sabotage.
“When we look into the causes of the accident, naturally we have to look into sabotage as well. But the Central Bureau of Investigation is inquiring into it in great detail into all aspects of sabotage. Very soon I think they will also come out with a report,” Reddy, a retired IPS officer and expert in VIP security, said.
Replying to a question, Khola said an analysis of the twin engines of the Bell-430 chopper revealed that they were running at full RPM. “As such there was no failure of the engines,” he pointed out.
To another question, Reddy said transcripts obtained from the Air Traffic Controls at Chennai, Shamshabad and Begumpet, as well as the contents of the Cockpit Voice Recorder decoded in Canada, indicated that there was no talk between the Chief Minister or any other passenger with the helicopter crew. “There was no other talk, no other thing recorded. We looked into what is on record and we also know that the record is not tampered,” he observed.
Noting that the helicopter pilot Group Captain S K Bhatia was “very experienced,” Reddy said the former had followed all the correct procedures.
“He himself went to the Met office at Begumpet and took the detailed ‘Met Briefing’ prior to the flight. The weather report contained in detail the visibility, beam, temperature and wind speeds at different heights. It not only had current data but also the forecast for the next couple of hours (on that day),” Reddy pointed out.
“In fact, they had waited for an hour for the weather to clear. If the weather wasn’t clear, the ATC would not have allowed the chopper to take off. But en route if he (pilot) had encountered weather which was more severe than what the Met office said, that was the time he should have decided whether he should come back or go forward. We can’t say it’s an error of judgment on part of the pilot,” Reddy noted.
Capt Gurmeet Singh, a former instructor-pilot with the Indian Army and known for his expertise in weather, also assisted the expert committee as a “co-opted member.”

Truce will not do, says Rosaiah on Telangana

2010-01-11T23:56:00.002+05:30

Desaraju Surya
Hyderabad: Maintaining that a “temporary truce” was just not sufficient, Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister Konijeti Rosaiah has reiterated that it was the responsibility of the Government of India to find an “ever-lasting solution” to the current political turmoil in the state over the bifurcation issue.
In an exclusive chat, Rosaiah appealed to the national political parties to “think about it (the current turmoil) and do something” to help the state continue with the development process.
“An agitation had built up (over the demand for and against bifurcation of the state) and some destruction had also happened. Now, a temporary truce will not help…. the situation may resurface. Even if it requires time, they (Government of India) will have to give us an ever-lasting solution,” the Chief Minister said.
Asked what could be the logical solution to the current imbroglio, Rosaiah said: “It is not in our hands. This is an issue which has to be examined from different angles by the Government of India. Sitting here, there is no chance for us to say yes or no. If it is an issue that could be decided by me or someone else here, we can do it according to our thoughts. But this is an issue that is to be looked into by the Centre and they will have to give us an ever-lasting solution.”
The Chief Minister appealed to all political parties, including Congress, to leave the issue to the Centre. “Not just as the Chief Minister but more particularly as a citizen of Andhra Pradesh, my earnest appeal to all political parties is to please leave the issue to be sorted out at Delhi. Willingly or unwillingly, let us not become tools for hampering the development of the state,” he said.
Asked how was he reading the signals emanating from New Delhi that Telangana state could be a reality in the next 12 to 18 months, Rosaiah remarked in his usual witty style: “One, I have not understood any signals. Two, I am not opposed to anything that the Government of India finally does. I will abide faithfully and try to co-operate with the Government of India. My main concern is about the state and its development. Whatever the Centre does should contribute to it (development). Any decision they take will be acceptable to me.”
Like his predecessor Y S Rajasekhara Reddy does he too have any personal view on the bifurcation issue? “I have no personal opinion. As long as I am holding the post of Chief Minister in the state, I do not have any personal views. My personal view is not at all an issue in this matter.”
Questioned about the prevailing “hostile” atmosphere between people of Telangana and non-Telangana regions and the growing acrimony between them, the Chief Minister observed: “Whatever judgment the Centre gives on the issue any day, we all should abide by it. This is my appeal and approach also. In the meantime, difference of opinion among the people of different regions of the state is not desirable. We all should narrow down our differences and work as one. If the differences persist, it will lead to situations where public life is paralyzed and also unwittingly lead to destruction. Above all, it will hamper progress (of the state).”
On the demand for conducting a referendum on the state bifurcation issue, the Chief Minister maintained that it was not in the state government’s purview.

2009: A bad chapter in Andhra Pradesh's political history!

2009-12-31T11:33:00.002+05:30

Desaraju Surya
Hyderabad: Year 2009 will certainly be a bad chapter in Andhra Pradesh’s political history. And, Year 2010 might well be an annexure to that!
Just one man – a desperate one at that – has scripted such a bad script that the state, which has been the envy of all others in the country over the last few years, is facing probably its worst phase ever.
Happenings in the last one month have clouded over all the events in the last 11 months on the political arena in Andhra Pradesh in the year 2009.
From being envied as a role-model state across the country to the current regional turmoil, it took only a month for Andhra Pradesh to be tagged as the most unfavorable state in more ways than one.
The ongoing strife has also exposed the political vacuum that the state plunged into following the tragic death of a tall leader Y S Rajasekhara Reddy in a helicopter crash on September 2.
Year 2009 could have truly belonged to Rajasekhara Reddy, but for his untimely death. It was under his leadership that the Congress successfully retained power in the state and also sent the largest contingent of MPs to the Centre in the general elections in April\May this year.
The state was cruising well on the path of development until his demise caused an upheaval. The state hasn’t really recovered from the tragedy, as the administrative machinery virtually collapsed following one crisis after the other.
The state had weathered many a storm with Rajasekhara Reddy at the helm but under the new dispensation headed by the “experienced” K Rosaiah things seemed to be falling apart.
Rajasekhara Reddy’s death, in a way, became the trigger for one political crisis after the other in the state even as governance became the biggest casualty.
First, there was a hard-pitched campaign for Rajasekhara Reddy’s son and Kadapa MP Jaganmohan Reddy being made the state Chief Minister in place of his father. For about two months, the Congress in the state stood grossly divided on the issue with a majority of the legislators backing Jagan as the successor to his late father. After a lot of dilly-dallying, the Congress high command finally succeeded in containing the rebellion in the party by endorsing the candidature of Rosaiah for the Chief Minister’s post.
Later, the demand for creation of a separate Telangana state, by bifurcating Andhra Pradesh, has become the biggest challenge for the Rosaiah administration to handle this year. It was the war-cry of a man desperately seeking to re-establish his political credentials that has pushed a stable government to the brink.
The resultant political crisis has left the state divided on regional lines while the major political players too find themselves on the edge.
The ruling Congress party stands vertically divided, so is the principal opposition Telugu Desam on the statehood issue. The other main opposition Praja Rajyam has now become virtually non-existent in Telangana with its chief K Chiranjeevi reversing his stand to support a unified state.
The separatist Telangana Rashtra Samiti is fighting a do-or-die battle as a last ditch effort to keep its flag flying.
Year 2009 began in the right earnest as the state headed for a general election. Though the Congress managed to retain power by a bare margin of just 155 seats, the principal opposition TDP made a strong comeback winning 92 seats in the 294-member Assembly. Fighting its first elections after coming into being in August 2008, the PRP of actor-turned-politician Chiranjeevi failed to make a mark and was left content with just 18 seats. The separatist TRS too lost clout as it managed only 10 Assembly and just two Lok Sabha seats. The election results clearly established that people of the region endorsed development rather than division (of the state). In the event, the TRS was increasingly losing its relevance and, hence, to ensure its survival, the wily Chandrasekhar Rao once again tried to bring the separation issue back on centre stage by launching a fast-unto-death for Telangana.
That Rajasekhara Reddy was no more alive to counter such a selfish political agenda came in handy for Chandrasekhar Rao and also the separatist elements within the ruling party to exploit the situation and push the state into an unprecedented political crisis.
What, however, shocked everyone was the abrupt decision of the Centre to announce its intention to initiate the process for forming a separate Telangana state even as the Congress failed to spell out its stand on the vexatious issue.
That has opened a Pandora’s Box and put Andhra Pradesh on the boil.

Lagadapati Rajagopal: The How and Why of his escapade

2009-12-21T23:12:00.003+05:30

Desaraju Surya
Hyderabad: How and why did Vijayawada MP Lagadapati Rajagopal “escape” from the Government General Hospital late on Sunday night?
There was a lot of drama involved in the entire escapade, sources close to the MP as well as those in the police department say.
It all began around 5 pm on Sunday when the Krishna district Joint Collector B Ramaiah and Vijayawada Deputy Commissioner of Police Vijay Kumar went to the Government General Hospital, where Rajagopal was shifted from his indefinite hunger-strike camp, and informed him of the decision to shift him to the NRI Hospital at Mangalagiri for “better treatment.”
The MP, however, was insistent that he be taken to NIMS in Hyderabad, which the State Human Rights Commission too had ordered.
But the officials reportedly told the MP that state Home Minister P Sabita Reddy and Director General of Police R R Girish Kumar negatived the move since it could lead to a law and order problem in the state capital.
The JC and the DCP reportedly told Rajagopal about this but the latter remained adamant and refused to be moved to NRI Hospital. Alternatively, Rajagopal suggested that he be taken back to the hunger-strike camp at Swaraj Maidan where he would undergo medical treatment in the 108 ambulance.
Rajagopal also reportedly warned the officers that they would be dragged to court for “treating an MP in such a shoddy fashion.” “I will make you face music for the rest of your life,” he reportedly warned in a very angry tone.
The two officials then communicated the MP’s stand to district Collector Peeyush Kumar and Commissioner of Police K V Rajendranath Reddy.
Even as they were waiting for further instructions, Rajagopal was engaged in a secret meeting with his close aides P Gowtham Reddy and Nagalla Sivaram Prasad and reportedly planned to give a slip from the GGH.
Around 10.30 pm, Rajagopal quietly walked out of his room in the Central Diagnostics Ward in the GGH, even as the JC and the DCP remained mute spectators, got into a waiting Qualis and sped away in a jiffy in the company of Gowtham Reddy. A few meters outside the hospital premises, he changed into another SUV and sped towards Eluru on the busy National Highway-5. En route, the SUV carrying the MP and Gowtham Reddy rammed into two barricades but did not stop for a moment.
Rajagopal boarded a Hyderabad-bound train at Eluru and reached the state capital in the early hours of Monday.
He came to NIMS in an autorickshaw around 1.15 pm and before anyone could identify him ran straight into the acute medical care ward and lay down on a bed.
The MP launched his indefinite fast in Vijayawada on December 12 protesting the proposed bifurcation of Andhra Pradesh. Before he was removed to the GGH in the wee hours of Saturday, the MP reportedly asked the Krishna district minister K Parthasarathy and Collector Peeyush Kumar not to shift him to hospital and enable him to continue the fast. “Let me sit on fast for at least two days more than K Chandrasekhar Rao. I will then take treatment and subsequently call off the fast and go to New Delhi to meet Sonia Gandhi,” Rajagopal reportedly told them.
However, Inspector General of Police Umesh Sharraf, who has been posted on special duty in Vijayawada, turned down the MP’s proposal and got him shifted to hospital in a bid to break the fast, a top official in Vijayawada said on condition of anonymity.

Rosaiah's first 100 days as Chief Minister

2009-12-11T23:40:00.002+05:30

Desaraju Surya
Hyderabad: K Rosaiah completed 100 days as Chief Minister of Andhra Pradesh on December 11, after having ascended the throne on September 3 following the death of Y S Rajasekhara Reddy in a helicopter crash on September 2.
The first ten days of Rosaiah’s stint have gone in mourning for Rajasekhara Reddy and the next 40 days in political uncertainty over his continuance as Chief Minister in the wake of demand for appointing Kadapa MP Y S Jaganmohan Reddy as the successor to his late father.
Amidst this came the unprecedented floods in different parts of the state that kept everyone engaged for more than 35 days. Over the last 15 days, the Chief Minister had been busy in fire-fighting over the Telangana issue and now the integrated Andhra Pradesh movement that picked up in coastal Andhra and Rayalaseema regions.
Governance has become the biggest casualty in Andhra Pradesh as the state has been moving from “one crisis to the other” for over three months now.
“There is a crisis but it’s not so much crippling. There is certainly an amount of slackness in the governance. Lack of a strong ‘leadership’ is obvious,” a Cabinet minister observed.
Everyone acknowledges that Rosaiah, given his vast political experience, is an “able administrator” but not an “able leader.”
“There is inarguably a (political) leadership vacuum in the state, caused by the death of Rajasekhara Reddy,” the minister, considered a ‘neutral’, added.
Bureaucrats point out that there has been a lack of “cohesiveness” in the administration in the last three months.
“Everything is happening in a routine fashion but there is no guidance as such from the top on effectively carrying the government programmes forward,” a district Collector noted.
For most part of these 100 days, the Chief Minister was busy trying to make his Cabinet colleagues fall in line and get down to serious administrative business, as a majority of them were jumping over each other to display their loyalty to Jaganmohan Reddy.
The Chief Minister’s attempts to tone up the administration through a bureaucratic shake-up did not materialize for one reason or the other. “This has also left the bureaucracy in a state of despondency, leaving a telling impact on the administration,” a high-ranking IAS officer pointed out.
Added to all these is the grave financial crunch that the state has been facing. The state’s coffers have dried up and the government is dragging the cart through borrowings from different sources. All the major development projects have virtually come to a standstill as the government owes lot of money to the contractors.
Uncertainty prevails even over the welfare programmes as the subsidy bill has become too much to bear for the government.
With the political crisis stirred by the resignation of MLAs and MLCs from Andhra and Rayalaseema regions likely to continue for some more days and with no signs of the movements for separate Telangana and unified Andhra Pradesh abating, real governance will continue to be on the back burner.

Congress spent forces take up the cudgels for Telangana

2009-12-06T23:27:00.002+05:30

Desaraju Surya
Hyderabad: The spent forces in the ruling Congress party are trying to seize the occasion and mount pressure on the party high command to bifurcate AP and carve out Telangana even as Telangana Rashtra Samiti president K Chandrasekhar Rao remained adamant on his fast-unto-death over the statehood demand.
As the movement for Telangana no longer remains in the hands of TRS, the so-called “Congress seniors” want to utilize the opportunity and improve their political fortunes, observers say.
Congress Working Committee member G Venkataswamy, who could barely walk, visited Chandrasekhar Rao at the NIMS here and later shot off a letter to AICC president Sonia Gandhi to take an urgent decision on Telangana. He wanted Sonia Gandhi to permit the state government to move a resolution in the winter session of Legislature favouring creation of Telangana state. “This is the right time for creating Telangana state in deference to the aspirations of the people,” Venkataswamy said in the letter.
Rajya Sabha member K Keshava Rao, Andhra Pradesh State Road Transport Corporation chairman M Satyanarayana Rao and former MLA Uppunutala Purushottam Reddy – who no longer enjoy public support – too are championing the Telangana cause.
State Ministers, hailing from Telangana region, too are apparently under pressure.
While vowing their “unflinching support” for a separate state, these ministers too announced that they would mount pressure on their high command for conceding the Telangana demand.
Among the Telangana ministers were P Sabita Indra Reddy, D Sridhar Babu, D K Aruna, Komatireddy Venkata Reddy, Sunitha Laxma Reddy and Ponnala Lakshmaiah.
These ministers called on KCR at NIMS and persuaded him to give up the fast but to no avail. They told him that they had already written a letter to Sonia Gandhi seeking her immediate intervention in the issue.
“Writing letter is not enough. You people go to her personally and get a concrete assurance on formation of Telangana state. Only then will I end my fast,” Chandrasekhar Rao, a former Union Minister, reportedly said.
Even Pradesh Congress Committee president D Srinivas was told by KCR in similar terms and the former will begin his efforts (for Telangana) in New Delhi.
Meanwhile, Congress circles are abuzz with talk that certain sections within the party have been trying hard to project Chief Minister K Rosaiah in a poor light by pointing to the “law and order failure” in the wake of the stepped up movement for Telangana.
“At least two aspirants for the Chief Minister’s post are trying to project the happenings over Telangana as a failure on part of Rosaiah and push him into a spot. They want to show to the high command that Rosaiah is ‘infirm’ and could not handle delicate situations like these properly,” one senior leader observed.
Rajya Sabha member V Hanumantha Rao, however, was quick to come to the defence of the Chief Minister saying: “If indeed there is any law and order failure, the Home Minister should also be held equally responsible.”
Now, everyone is curiously watching how the ministers and MLAs from Telangana act in the state Legislature which will sit for its winter session from Monday.

Telangana movement and its new course

2009-12-04T22:46:00.002+05:30

Desaraju Surya
Hyderabad: The “movement” for a separate Telangana state has now slipped out of K Chandrasekhar Rao’s hands.
Like in 1969, students are now coming to the forefront to give a new direction to the movement that virtually got buried when Y S Rajasekhara Reddy was at the helm as Chief Minister.
The Bharatiya Janata Party and its affiliate students’ outfit Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad have joined the “struggle” while the Telangana protagonists within the ruling Congress party too have stepped in to apply pressure on their high command – and take the contentious issue to its logical conclusion.
Government employees belonging to the region are doing their part by observing a silent pen down protest in support of the statehood demand.
The Telangana Rashtra Samiti of K Chandrasekhar Rao – which came into being in 2001 to revive the statehood struggle – is no longer the torch-bearer as other players pushed it aside.
By his flip-flops on the much-hyped fast-unto-death for Telangana, Chandrasekhar Rao got himself sidelined and now the students and other sections have taken over the mantle.
“KCR is only one part of the story while the aspiration for Telangana state is deep-rooted. His fast has, however, become the triggering point (for a wider struggle),” political analyst Prof Haragopal observed.
What has, however, become a worrying factor is the violent turn the movement has taken in the last five days.
Not just in the state capital Hyderabad but also in other parts of the region, the pro-Telangana agitators have been vandalizing public and private properties even as the state government is caught in a fix over launching a crackdown on the unruly elements.
The state governemnt has now gathered evidence about the involvement of some former naxalites and unsocial elements in the agitation, in which the so-called students have been vandalising public as well as private properties.
“We are only awaiting orders from the political bosses to launch into action. Since it is a sensitive issue, and also going by the past experiences, the government is obviously adopting a cautious approach,” a top-ranking police official said.
Interestingly, many senior Congress leaders, who are virtually spent forces, have been trying to champion the Telangana cause. They have written a letter to their party high command seeking “immediate resolution” of the Telangana issue.
Today, 13 Congress MPs hailing from Telangana region met AICC president Sonia Gandhi in the Parliament lobbies today and apprised her of the happenings in the state in the few days and the need for taking a concrete decision on the statehood demand.
“We have informed Sonia Gandhi about the growing aspiration for Telangana state. She told us that she was aware of the issue and would take an appropriate decision. We shall meet her again on Monday or Tuesday,” Andhra Pradesh Congress MPs Forum convenor Ponnam Prabhakar said over phone from New Delhi.
Chief Minister K Rosaiah, however, pushed the ball into the Government of India’s court pleading the state government could hardly do anything on the issue.
He, however, discussed the issue and the ongoing agitation for Telangana with Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Sonia Gandhi during his Delhi visit.
Andhra Pradesh Congress Committee president D Srinivas, who is also a proponent of the statehood demand, saw nothing wrong in the party seniors taking up the issue with the high command. “It is a good thing,” he remarked.
The government’s further moves on tackling the renewed agitation for Telangana will be decided upon Chief Minister K Rosaiah’s return from his two-day trip to New Delhi.

Telugu Desam Party emerges stronger in GHMC

2009-11-27T00:02:00.002+05:30

Desaraju Surya
Hyderabad: The ruling Congress party suffered a huge set back even as the principal opposition Telugu Desam Party made a strong come back in the elections to the Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation. The Congress that hoped to win 100 out of the 150 seats in GHMC, ended up with a tally of just 52 – far away from the half-way mark – while the TDP bagged 45. The Majlis Ittehadul-e-Muslimeen retained its hold in the Muslim-dominated localities in the city, including the Old City, by winning 43 seats. The BJP, which desperately tried to regain lost glory in the city, was left badly bruised and managed only five seats. Actor Chiranjeevi’s Praja Rajyam Party was decimated and with great difficulty opened its tally with a solitary win. The Lok Satta Party that came up with the slogan of “Governance at your doorstep” was fully routed. It drew a blank. Interestingly, two Congress “rebels” won from Bholakpur and Charlapalli divisions. They were among the four independents who made it to the GHMC in its maiden elections. Counting of votes, in the election held on November 23, was taken up today.
The final tally read thus: Congress-52; TDP-45; MIM-43; BJP-5; PRP-1 and Others-4.
The low turnout in the election left its impact on the fortunes of all parties. Though it was expected that the low turnout could indeed prove beneficial to the ruling party, the final analysis revealed otherwise as the Congress could not come even close to the half-way mark. Prior to the election the Congress projected a tally of 100 seats for itself but reduced it to 80-85 at the end of the polling. The end result has certainly come as a shocker to the ruling party leaders who banked heavily on the “development” agenda as well as the sympathy caused by the death of former Chief Minister Y S Rajasekhara Reddy. With 14 MLAs and three Lok Sabha members representing the Greater Hyderabad region, the Congress should have done well but the principal opposition TDP – which had only one MLA – dealt a telling blow to the former. Interestingly, the Congress’ trump card YS Jaganmohan Reddy failed to work any wonders as the party candidates lost in most of the civic divisions where he campaigned. Even in Assembly constituencies that were considered the strongholds of the Congress, the TDP made inroads by bagging majority of seats. In Maheshwaram constituency, represented by Home Minister P Sabita Indra Reddy, the TDP clinched both the civic wards while in LB Nagar constituency the TDP won seven out of the eight wards. In Kukatpally Assembly segment, represented by Lok Satta Party president N Jayaprakash Narayan, the TDP won five divisions and the Congress one. In the ultimate analysis, the TDP has emerged as the biggest beneficiary in the GHMC polls.

"I stopped for him, not you."

2009-11-19T10:42:00.004+05:30

Desaraju Surya
Vijayawada: I was standing by the road.
Rahul Gandhi suddenly stopped his Tata Safari in front of me and got down.
I tried to rush towards him saying, "Mr Rahul", to pose a question.
"I didn't stop for you. I stopped for him," he replied rather angrily, pointing to a dwarf person, even as TV cameramen and photographers rushed and tried to mob Rahul.
It took some time for me to understand that Rahul was actually trying to keep the paparazzi at bay and not me. He didn’t like the media glare.
This happened in Vijayawada yesterday, where I went to cover Rahul’s visit to the city for an interaction with students of Loyola and some other colleges.
As he started his drive back to the airport after taking part in an interaction session with students at the Loyola College here, Rahul suddenly stopped his Tata Safari on the road outside the college auditorium and stepped out of the vehicle.
It was a totally unexpected halt as everyone, except the select audience, was kept completely out of bounds of Rahul’s programme. As anxious media photographers and television cameramen saw Rahul stepping out of the vehicle, they tried to seize the opportunity and rushed to mob him.
“I have not stopped for you. I have stopped for him,” Rahul told the journalists in a rather angry tone, as he pointed to a dwarf standing by the road.
Rahul tried to walk up to the dwarf person but failed because of the melee caused by the cameramen.
Even as the security personnel accompanying him tried to control the scene, Rahul silently got back into his Tata Safari. National Students Union of India president I B Eden, who too got down of the vehicle with Rahul, suffered a minor bruise on his forehead as a camera mike hit him.
Rahul noticed this and enquired about it with Eden. After Eden got into the car, the convoy started moving.
But then, not to leave the admiring dwarf disappointed, Rahul asked his security personnel to collect the paper that the former was holding. It was done accordingly.
Later, the dwarf identified himself as A Nagaraju of Rompicharla in neighbouring Guntur district.
“I had met Rahul on a previous occasion in Hyderabad and explained my plight. I sought some help from him. He promised to take care,” Nagaraju recalled.
What did he ask for? “Given my physical condition, none is coming forward to marry me. Even if someone is ready for marriage, they are seeking money from me. So, I asked Rahul for Rs one lakh,” Nagaraju said.
“Also, I am unable to do any work because of my condition and hence want financial help. But the over-active media spoiled my chance to interact with Rahul,” he cursed.

The Hyderabad JINX for Team India

2009-11-07T00:19:00.003+05:30

DESARAJU SURYA
Hyderabad: As Australian wicket-keeper Graham Manou broke the stumps to run Praveen Kumar out in a nail-biting fifth One-day International, Team India failed to break the “Hyderabad jinx” yet again.
M S Dhoni’s team came close to erasing the “jinxed” tag attached to the Hyderabad International Cricket Stadium but fell short by a mere three runs in one of the most spectacular contests.
Now, the Hyderabad International Cricket Stadium played host to three One-day Internationals in which the home teams always ended up a loser.
After Sachin Tendulkar set the stadium on fire with his stupendous batting display, I thought India would not lose the match and set a new trend for the the Uppal stadium. Alas, it didn't happen!
What’s Hyderabad jinx?
“The faulty vaasthu of the stadium itself,” says noted vaasthu exponent Danturi Pandarinath.
Like any other stadium, the Hyderabad cricket ground too has ‘pluses and minuses.’
“But the minuses, especially in relation to vaasthu, here are more. These minuses are turning into pluses for the visitors rather than the hosts,” Pandarinath pointed out.
Inaugurated in 2004, the Uppal stadium played host to the first One-day International between India and South Africa on November 15, 2005. India, batting first, made 249, aided by Yuvraj Singh’s century. But South Africa comfortably romped home making 252. The second match here was played between India and Australia on October 5, 2007. The visiting Kangaroos made 290 on a belter of a track and then bowled out the hosts for 243.
And now, India came close to chasing a mammoth 350 runs notched up by Australia but faltered despite a stupendous 175 by the Master Blaster Sachin Tendulkar.
It’s not just the Indian team that has been consistently losing at this venue. Being the “home team,” Deccan Chargers too could not escape the drubbing as it lost all the seven encounters during the IPL-1 season.
“The main flaw, as per vaasthu, lies in the stadium’s compound wall. It is squarer at some places and shapeless at others. Besides, the swimming pool attached to the stadium is at the wrong place – south-west corner – whereas it should be either on the north or the east,” Pandarinath, who is also an ardent ‘Indian fan’, pointed out.
Even the home team’s dressing room was found to be having certain flaws which were also affecting the prospects.
Hyderabad Cricket Association authorities say the Deccan Chargers management got the stadium examined for vaasthu compliance prior to the Champions League T20 matches recently.
In fact, Pandarinath himself volunteered to inspect the stadium’s vaasthu as he was perturbed over the failure of “home teams” that played cricket matches here.
“On the western end of the stadium, there is a hill which is a plus. Similarly, the north-east portion is also on a higher plane which is another plus,” Pandarinath told the HCA authorities.
He suggested that the HCA make necessary modifications so that at least in future cricket lovers will not have to see their favourites ending up on the wrong side.
HCA acting secretary Chalapati said more than the HCA, the Deccan Chargers management was keen on the vaasthu compliance aspect. “Accordingly, they made some changes ahead of the Champions League T20 matches recently,” he said.
With the “Hyderabad jinx” becoming the talking point after the India-Australia encounter, cricket lovers hope the HCA -- which pockets crores of rupees after each International match -- will shell out a few lakh rupees to carry out necessary modifications and help the home teams break the jinx.

A R Rahman and his unfulfilled dream

2009-10-12T23:50:00.001+05:30

Desaraju Surya
Hyderabad: There is a rather unknown thing about the one-and-only Alla Rakha Rahman, the great music director, who has accomplished many many things in his 17-year career thus far: his unfulfilled dream.
My idol was in Hyderabad today and during an interaction I asked him about his unfulfilled dream.
“I am great fan of ace director K Viswanath and wanted to work with him. Since he has stopped making films my dream could not come true,” Rahman revealed.
Viswanath is known for making classics like Sankarabharanam, Sagar Sangamam, Swatimutyam (Easwar in Hindi) and Swarnakamalam that glorified the Indian art forms and traditions.
Sankarabharanam, the story of a classical musician, won many national awards for the music score composed by the legendary K V Mahadevan.
Rahman – who produced music of all varieties from the local to the international level – wanted to compose music on the lines of Sankarabharanam and requested Viswanath to make yet another film on Indian classical music.
Rahman also approached the great lyric-writer Veturi Sundararama Murthy to pen the lyrics. Veturi wrote the songs for Sankarabharanam, which will remain forever in the memory of all Telugu film-goers and music aficionados.
Rahman wanted to recreate that magic using the Viswanath-Veturi combination and blending it with his immense talent.
Viswanath, however, turned down the proposal saying there were no takers for his kind of films anymore.
Veturi himself told me about this a few years ago during an informal discussion on film music, Rahman, Maniratnam, Viswanath and related things.
“That was eight years ago and the project never materialized. Since then I have moved to other things,” Rahman told reporters here today.
Would he still like to do a classical music score? “Hopefully so,” the maestro replied.
Being a composer, singer and performer, which role was he comfortable in, Rahman was asked. “It’s the uncomfortableness in you that helps do things better. The more discomforted you are, the more you push yourself,” he replied.
The Oscar-winner has just completed music production for a romantic comedy Couple’s Retreat in Hollywood and is working on Vinnaithandi Varuvaya in Tamil, Puli (Pavan Kalyan) and another untitled film (starring Naga Chaitanya) in Telugu.
Rahman will be performing live, for the second time in Hyderabad, on October 24. It was in February 2002 that he gave a live performance at the GMC Balayogi Stadium at Gachibowli and I came from Vijayawada especially for the show. It was a great evening and the most memorable one in my life.
This time, however, I will unfortunately be missing the legend’s show.

Rosaiah firmly in the saddle now.

2009-10-12T00:16:00.004+05:30

Desaraju Surya
Hyderabad: The recent floods in Andhra Pradesh have come as a blessing in disguise for Chief Minister Konijeti Rosaiah.
Thanks to the deluge that left several districts of the state devastated, politics – particularly the campaign for making Kadapa MP Y S Jaganmohan Reddy the Chief Minister – has taken a backseat and helped Rosaiah consolidate his position.
Using his rich administrative and political experience and acumen, Rosaiah handled the crisis well and won the acclaim of his party bosses in New Delhi.
Rosaiah had a distinct advantage. He enjoys a good rapport with all senior bureaucrats, unlike his predecessor, and this helped him implement the disaster management plan in an efficient manner. This helped in mitigating the damage to a significant extent, particularly in Krishna, Guntur and Nalgonda districts which faced a greater threat than the worst-hit Mahbubnagar and Kurnool districts.
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and AICC chief Sonia Gandhi, who conducted an aerial survey of the flood-hit districts in AP, patted the Chief Minister on the back over the disaster management and sent a message yet again to the party rank and file in the state that Rosaiah would continue to hold fort for a long time.
At the same time, the pro-Jagan lobby in the state Congress was caught in a helpless situation as it could not raise the demand for elevating their leader at a time when the state was facing a worst disaster in a century.
After functioning for 32 days from his old chamber – which he occupied as Finance Minister – Rosaiah moved to the Chief Minister’s official chamber in the C-block of the state Secretariat on October 5. This put him, so to say, firmly in the saddle.
Two days later, the Chief Minister shunted out controversial DGP S S P Yadav from the post and brought in an upright officer R R Girish Kumar and also effected changes in the top posts of the state police.
These steps gave firm indications that Rosaiah has settled down in his new position and left behind his insecurities.
Rosaiah, sources close to him say, is expected to meet Sonia Gandhi in New Delhi soon and possibly get her consent for a Cabinet reshuffle. Six slots are currently vacant in the state Cabinet and important portfolios like finance, power, commercial taxes, excise, infrastructure and investment are being held by the Chief Minister himself.
Though he may keep the portfolio with himself, given his expertise in the field, Rosaiah will have to appoint ministers for other departments. Old-timers like K Jana Reddy and J C Diwakar Reddy – whom Rajasekhara Reddy dropped in his second stint – are likely to get into the Cabinet again given their experience and affinity with Rosaiah, Congress sources say.
Rosaiah became the Chief Minister on September 3, a day after Y S Rajasekhara Reddy was killed in a helicopter crash. But a group of legislators, led by government Chief Whip Mallu Bhatti Vikramarka, launched a campaign on the same day demanding that Rajasekhara Reddy’s son Jagan be appointed his successor. Many ministers in the Rajasekhara Reddy Cabinet – though retained by Rosaiah – continued to pitch for Jagan and threatened to quit their posts if their demand was not conceded.
Ministers like Konda Surekha, P Ramachandra Reddy, Danam Nagender, Anam Ramanarayana Reddy, Vatti Vasantha Kumar, Sabita Reddy and Md Ahmadullah were most vociferous in their demand for making Jagan the CM. Rather than attending their officials duties, most of the ministers made it a ritual to meet Rajasekhara Reddy’s close friend K V P Ramachandra Rao on a daily basis and earned the wrath of the Congress high command. It was only after the high command took a serious view of their belligerence that the ministers fell in line.
But still the Jagan lobby continued to engage some first-time MLAs to campaign for Jagan till it apparently reached a flashpoint. Sensing the danger, Jagan himself got into the act and cautioned the legislators against “embarrassing the party high command and Sonia Gandhi.”
Around the same time, unprecedented floods ravaged many districts of the state forcing the Jagan lobbyists to totally give up their campaign.
Rosaiah focused his energies on the disaster management and the entire official machinery rallied behind him in reaching out to the affected people.

SSP Yadav -- Out, hit-wicket.

2009-10-12T00:14:00.001+05:30

Desaraju Surya
Hyderabad: S S P Yadav is finally out – hit-wicket, so to say.
His own follies and character proved to be his undoing as he was rightfully shunted out of Andhra Pradesh Director General of Police post by Chief Minister K Rosaiah.
Now, an upright and deserving officer of the 1976-batch of Indian Police Service – R R Girish Kumar – has become the state police head. Unlike Yadav, Girish Kumar is an honest officer who commands the respect of his subordinate officers and men.
What good is a leader if he doesn’t command respect from his own subordinates!
Yadav did not deserve to be the state DGP as not a single IPS officer or an ordinary police officer liked or respected him. He got into the post in October 2007 in a dubious manner as he had a so-called godfather in an extra-constitutional authority.
Yadav, in a virtual demotion, has now been made the managing director of Andhra Pradesh State Road Transport Corporation, a post normally held by IG or Additional DGP rank officers.
Yadav always remained in news – but for all the wrong reasons.
Yadav, a 1972 batch officer, was first appointed as the DGP in October 2007 but the Election Commission of India ordered his replacement in March this year because of his bias towards the Congress, more particularly the then Chief Minister Y S Rajasekhara Reddy.
Rather than being the public servant, which is he supposed to be as per the Constitution, Yadav always remained loyal only to Rajasekhara Reddy, his son Jaganmohan Reddy and the extra-constitutional authority called K V P Ramachandra Rao.
Yadav was reinstated as the DGP the very next day after Rajasekhara Reddy assumed charge as state Chief Minister for a second term on May 20.
But Yadav has come under fire over the handling of the crisis after the government chopper carrying then Chief Minister Y S Rajasekhara Reddy and others went missing on September 2.
The government was unhappy with the functioning of Yadav and what irked the Rosaiah administration most was the DGP’s observation that the Chief Minister’s security was not the police responsibility once the VIP was air-borne. “Why was such a big fuss being made when it was a helicopter crash in which five persons were killed,” Yadav questioned a newsmen during one of his visits to temple-town Tirupati. He also bad mouthed media personnel in highly objectionable language and attracted the wrath of the government.
Even the events following the helicopter incident also landed Yadav in soup, what with police failure becoming glaring in many cases. The government then gave enough indications that the DGP would soon be shunted out.
The groupism in the state police intensified during Yadav’s stint as the DGP and even the top IPS officers were ill-at-ease with him.
Police administration in Andhra Pradesh remained in tatters when Yadav was at the helm. He left the entire state police force demoralized with his sadistic acts and chaos reigned supreme. Law and Order became a major casualty as crimes followed an upward curve. Atrocities on women were at a record high but, as the state police head, Yadav failed to rise to the occasion and lead the force from the front to curb lawlessness.
There was jubilation in the entire police ranks the day Yadav was shown the door by a firm Rosaiah. “It’s a very good day indeed,” one Inspector General rank officer remarked. “Thank God, we got rid of him at last,” one DIG observed.
The affable Girish Kumar, hopefully, will bring back the lost glory to the AP police force. And, his first promise soon after assuming charge as DGP was to do that.

Rosaiah consolidating his position as Chief Minister

2009-09-27T23:31:00.002+05:30

Desaraju Surya
Hyderabad: Surely and steadily, Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister K Rosaiah is consolidating his position. By asserting that All India Congress Committee chief Sonia Gandhi was “not in the habit of changing Chief Ministers,” Rosaiah tried to send a clear message to the pro-Jagan lobby that he was here to stay for a longer innings. It has been 24 days since he became Chief Minister but Rosaiah has so far shown no signs of any insecurity despite a high-pitch campaign within the Congress for appointment of Kadapa MP Y S Jaganmohan Reddy as the successor to his late father Y S Rajasekhara Reddy. For many days after becoming the Chief Minister, Rosaiah told everyone that he would continue in the position as long as the party high command desired but the other day he minced no words in telling that he was going to play a longer innings than anticipated. “Sonia Gandhi doesn’t change Chief Ministers unless they prove to be not competent,” he observed even as Congress Central Working Committee members like G Venkata Swamy and K Keshava Rao publicly endorsed Rosaiah’s competence. Though some of the pro-Jagan lobbyists like Andhra Pradesh Congress Committee general secretary Ambati Rambabu tried to belittle Rosaiah saying he was “politically ineffective and weak,” the Chief Minister – in his inimitable witty style – shot back: “Given my age, I know my strengths and weaknesses.” Rosaiah, who served as a minister in various state Cabinets under successive Congress Chief Ministers, was also assertive in saying that he could “rise to the occasion” when the situation demanded. At the first formal meeting of the state Cabinet after he took over as Chief Minister, Rosaiah told his colleagues that he would continue to maintain the same old cordial relations with them “as long as I am in this chair.” Rosaiah’s no-nonsense approach and statesman-like demeanor have in a way made the ministers fall in line, though they initially adopted a belligerent posture on the demand for making Jagan the Chief Minister. In fact, not a single MLA of the party has so far spoken against Rosaiah as the Chief Minister though a majority of them too have been pitching for Jagan. All of them have now seemingly mellowed down to accept Rosaiah as their leader. Despite not being specific so far on the succession issue, the AICC too has sent strong signals to the Congress leaders here that Rosaiah was not a “stop-gap Chief Minister” as initially perceived. All this has helped Rosaiah firm up his position and settle down comfortably in his business. Once he formally moves into the Chief Minister’s official chamber in the C-block of the state Secretariat, Rosaiah will have been firmly in the saddle.

An uncommon man's "common" choice

2009-08-27T01:05:00.003+05:30

Desaraju Surya
Hyderabad: Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister Y S Rajasekhara Reddy is by no means a “common” man.
But then, he started eating “common rice” since Sunday only to drive home the point that the rice that comes at a cheaper price need not be cheap or sub-standard.
“Since Sunday, I have been eating rice cooked out of the common variety of rice. I found it quite OK. I have instructed my family people that from now onwards we shall use this common variety of rice. I was told it costs only Rs 15.50 a kg. However, there is another variety of the same rice which costs only Rs 14.50 per kilo. I want to try that now. I don’t think there is any much difference between the two varieties of rice,” the Chief Minister remarked at a high-level review meeting on prices of essential commodities.
“Superfine rice,” as it is called, is a most-preferred variety in Andhra Pradesh and obviously it’s commanding a price of over Rs 35 a kg, what with the spurt in demand. Though the Rajasekhara Reddy government repeatedly promised over the last one-and-a-half years to ensure that superfine rice is sold at Rs 20 a kg, it never really happened as the price rose sharply every month from Rs 24 to Rs 35 a kg, causing uproar from the public. The Sortex variety, which is more polished, is being sold at Rs 39 to Rs 42 per kilo in most super markets.
As the superfine rice is being smuggled out of Andhra Pradesh into neighbouring Orissa, Tamil Nadu and Karnataka, there is an obvious scarcity of the commodity in the local market, causing the price to spiral. The Chief Minister himself told the state Assembly that superfine rice and other essential commodities were being smuggled out of the state since “the prices here are comparatively less.”
With the efforts to check price rise failing to yield desired results, the Chief Minister probably thought of propagating the use of the so-called cheaper varieties so that demand for superfine rice could be brought down.
“The Chief Minister himself is trying to set an example by eating the common variety of rice which is widely available in the market for a very less price,” one of his aides pointed out.
Now, Rajasekhara Reddy would like his Cabinet colleagues as well to eat common rice.
Besides rice, the Chief Minister has included Raagi Sankati, a staple diet of people of Rayalaseema region, in his food menu to highlight its nutritional value.
A doctor himself, Rajasekhara Reddy also has other alternatives like Gutti Vankaaya (stuffed brinjal) and Bengal gram that cost much less than other vegetables and tur dal respectively. “People should use different pulses instead of tur dal, a staple diet of the Telugus, for a balanced diet. That’s good for health,” the Chief Minister pointed out.

Rain and the "Greater" ordeals in Hyderabad

2009-08-18T00:31:00.000+05:30

Desaraju Surya
Hyderabad: It rained heavily in Hyderabad today, the heaviest downpour (11.2 cm) so far this season, after a prolonged dry spell. The rain, however, hasn’t brought cheers to the lakhs of citizens as they are caught in yet another day of ordeal. Such ordeals have become a common feature in the state capital whenever the skies open up. And, there is no escape to the citizens from the agonies.
Luckily, I was home well before the rain started. I got a call from one of my dear friends who was stuck in his office as it began raining quite heavily. “How lucky you are to be home! I will be spending some more hours in the office as there is no way I could move out. Traffic has come to a standstill right here and it will be the same scene along my route home,” the friend told me.
I switched on the television news only to find news scrolls announcing traffic jams across the city. All the main routes, busy with rush hour traffic, have come to a grinding halt. Sometime later, another scroll informed me about the inundation of a low-lying area somewhere in the city – which is now called “Greater Hyderabad.” Another ‘breaking news’ said a man got washed away in a storm water drain (nala in local parlance).
By late night, the city had virtually been paralysed. Traffic was not moving an inch on the main roads. Even ministers and bureaucrats had a (bitter) taste of the sorry-state-of-affairs in this historic city – many of them were stranded on the roads as their cars wouldn’t move ahead.
Back home, there was a power blackout for nearly two hours. My son wanted to call the power supply office to find out why the transmission was cut. I tried to reason it could be because of a technical problem due to the heavy rain but he wasn’t willing to believe that version. “These people made it a habit to cut down power without any reason,” he argued. I couldn’t convince him further.
That’s life in Hyderabad, sorry Greater Hyderabad! I started calling it hell for sometime now, but there is no escape.
Chief Minister Y S Rajasekhara Reddy boasts of spending over Rs 2700 crore on “development” of Greater Hyderabad ever since he started ruling the state five years ago. In all development works worth Rs 5500 crore were underway, he says.
As a citizen, I am fully convinced that Rajasekhara Reddy is telling blatant lies. Rather shamelessly. For, there is no “development” whatsoever in the city. Things have been deteriorating day by day, as I see them over the past few years. But still, the Chief Minister continues to promise heaven – of making a Singapore or a Shanghai of Greater Hyderabad in the next five years by spending Rs 20,000 crore.
Tall claims, with a clear on the impending elections to the Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation.
As things stand, there is nothing to feel proud of the “greater” status that Hyderabad has acquired. Roads, including the arterial ones, are worn out; there is no real drainage system; street lighting is awful and the less said the better about the traffic.
The city police have long forgotten the essential thing called regulation and left people to suffer. Of course, civic sense is clearly lacking and traffic violators are growing by the day, thanks also to the lackadaisical policing.
When I first stayed in Hyderabad for more than 10 months in 1997, things were better. During my second stay for over a year in 2000-01, I didn’t find any deterioration but on my return to the city in 2006 I couldn’t really comprehend what’s happening on the city roads. ‘Chaos’ could be a smaller term to describe the situation in 2006 but now I need to search for superlatives to tell the tale!

Explanation, not an excuse.

2009-08-16T23:11:00.000+05:30

Desaraju Surya
It has been exactly a month since I updated my blog. One of my dear friends called me last week to ask why I did not update my blog over the last few days.
Somehow, I was unable to post anything new in the last 30 days because of a variety of reasons. My profession demands that I spend quite a good number of hours in front of the computer besides attending to other regular work. Frankly, the quite hectic schedule seems to be leaving its impact on me, what with the growth in my age.
If I have to blame one specific thing for my lack of energy – as earlier – it is the traffic in Hyderabad. It is the worst, to put it mildly. And, it’s clearly taking a toll on me since I am forced to spend quite a good number of hours on the roads as well, travelling from place as part of my job.
And, sitting in front of computer for long durations has left my eyes strained. It has become a genuine problem for me these days. Hence, I couldn’t really sit down to write down something though many thoughts have been racing in my mind.
Here, I would like to add that I have recently become a member of Facebook community on the Internet and I am quite enjoying it. In a way I am getting addicted to it since I love friends and staying in touch with them regularly. So, one of the reasons for my irregular blog posts is my new fixation with Facebook.
Nevertheless, I would try to write something regularly, if not daily, on the issues of public concern and keep my readers posted.

YSR red-faced as his pet projects go off-track

2009-07-16T00:37:00.000+05:30

Desaraju Surya
Hyderabad: Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister Y S Rajasekhara Reddy made a rather ludicrous claim while inaugurating the Gangavaram Port near Visakhapatnam the other day: “Every major project that our government has conceived is going on on a war-footing and getting completed within the stipulated time.”
Rajasekhara Reddy’s proclamation was amazing given the fact that his office (read the so-called Press Secretary) has been issuing statements these days saying how the Chief Minister was venting ire at the officials for not being able to complete the projects in time, particularly the irrigation projects that are the “flagship” of his government.
The Chief Minister, if his Press Secretary’s statements are to be believed, is increasingly growing restive as the major projects taken up by his government over the last five years have gone off the track.
Not a single project worth the name, including the massive irrigation projects taken up under the ambitious Jalayagnam programme, have taken shape yet leaving the Chief Minister red-faced.
Be it projects like the Hyderabad Metro Rail, Hyderabad Growth Corridor (outer ring road), P V Narasimha Rao Elevated Expressway or the various power projects… nothing has been completed despite changing the deadlines many times. Worse is the case of the irrigation projects, the “pride and prestige” of the Rajasekhara Reddy government.
For instance, the Chief Minister himself announced that the Pulichintala Irrigation Project on river Krishna would be completed by the year 2007 when he laid the foundation-stone in October 2004. The deadline was subsequently extended to 2008 and again to 2009 but so far not even 60 per cent of the project is complete. Now, the Chief Minister is so upset that he wants the contractor changed so that the project will move ahead.
Same is the case with many irrigation projects in the Telangana region. Projects like the Kalwakurthy Lift Irrigation scheme and Yellampally are mired in controversies and moving at a snail’s pace much to the chagrin of the Chief Minister.
So much so that he had directed the officials concerned to slap penalties on the contractors executing the projects for the inordinate delay.
“We have started the massive irrigation projects to help the farmers and make every acre of cultivable land irrigated. We are spending a lot of money on these projects. I don’t believe in excuses. I believe in work done,” Rajasekhara Reddy has been curtly telling the irrigation officials at every review meeting these days.
In fact, over the past few days the Chief Minister has been busy reviewing all the major projects undertaken by his government. And, at each of those reviews, the Chief Minister has been taking the officials concerned to task, statements issued by his office reveal.
Time and again the Chief Minister has been claiming that “funds are not a constraint” when in fact the state finances are in shambles, thanks to his over-zealous populist schemes.
“There is no denying the fact that the economic downturn has cast its spell on our state finances as well. So, adjusting funds for the major projects is proving a Herculean task,” a top bureaucrat in the finance department noted.
The state made money by disposing of huge chunks of government land between 2006 and mid-2008, thanks to the real-estate boom. With the realty market going bust, the state’s revenue resources dried up, impacting the projects.
Besides, the contractors who secured crores of rupees from the state government in the form of ‘mobilisation advance’ did not step up the works in the latter part, again because of the crisis in the realty sector.
This apart, the state government could not complete the land acquisition process for major projects because of pending court cases and resistance from affected people.
On the power front, Rajasekhara Reddy admitted that the capacity addition in the state during the X Plan period was just 2940 MW as against the target of 4257 MW. Of the targeted capacity addition of 13,661 MW during the XI Plan period, only 1190 MW could be added so far while another 3250 MW proposed under the Central sector might spill over to the XII Plan period.

BRTS in VIJAYAWADA: An update

2009-06-14T22:40:00.002+05:30

Desaraju Surya
Looks like the Bus Rapid Transit System (BRTS) will become operational in Vijayawada only early 2010.
Necessary infrastructure for the BRTS like roads and bridges is still being built and many structures will be ready only towards the end of this year, if everything moves in accordance with the plans of the Vijayawada Municipal Corporation.
Initially, the VMC wanted to operationalise the first phase of BRTS in February 2009 but necessary infrastructure was not ready by then, forcing the authorities to put off their plans.
Now, a new bridge is under construction at Seetannapeta across the Eluru canal while one more bridge is coming up at Madhuranagar on the Ryves canal. The Madhuranagar bridge will be ready only next year and from there a 90 feet road will be laid connecting the Eluru Road.
A subway has been planned at Krishna Lanka beneath the National Highway-9 connecting Raghavaiah Park on the Mahatma Gandhi road. A foot-over-bridge will be built at Veterinary Hospital junction and another at the Ramavarappadu Ring Road for the convenience of passengers.
The VMC is planning to buy 10 specially-designed air-conditioned buses and 30 normal buses for BRTS operations. A model bus stop is being built at Satyanarayanapuram which will have an automatic ticket vending machine installed in it.
For now, the VMC authorities are tightlipped about the exact date from which the BRTS buses will start running.
Plans are also afoot to float a Special Purpose Vehicle for the BRTS operations. The SPV will be headed by the district Collector with Vijayawada police commissioner, municipal commissioner, Urban Development Authority vice-chairman and other officials as members.
The first phase of the BRTS project covers a distance of 15.5 km. The road – which is meant to be an exclusive BRTS corridor – connecting the GS Raju Road and Madhuranagar is almost ready now. The old Satyanarayanapuram railway track has been converted into the BRTS road now.The first phase Green Corridor will have 31 bus stops – each at a distance of 500 mts and 17 traffic junctions. The signalling system which is the key to ensuring a smooth ride for BRTS buses is still not in place. Of the 15.5 km Green Corridor, only a 11-km stretch has a clear way for BRTS buses while the balance portion will have mixed traffic. The Rs 152.64 crore BRTS project, taken up under the Jawaharlal Nehru National Urban Renewal Mission (JNNURM), will make Vijayawada the fourth city in the country after Indore, Pune and Ahmedabad and the first in south India to have such a better urban public transport system. BRTS, an environment-friendly and cost-effective urban public transport system, is an alternative between ‘unreliable’ conventional bus transport and the high-cost metro rail. Usually, it is also referred to as the ‘surface metro’ system that has a dedicated right-of-way on prime roads enabling high operating speeds. In Vijayawada, BRTS is being introduced on a pilot basis along the 15.5-km ‘Green Corridor’: from the police control room to the railway station, Satyanarayanapuram, Eluru Road, Ring Road, Benz Circle, Mahatma Gandhi Road and back to PCR. The Vijayawada Municipal Corporation plans to introduce exclusive BRTS buses, each costing Rs 40 lakh, in the later stages. Though the state government approved the proposal to form the Vijayawada Metropolitan Transport Authority for operating the BRTS, it hasn’t been put in place.

A Poor Workman Blames His Tools

2009-05-24T01:39:00.000+05:30

Desaraju Surya
Hyderabad: “A poor workman blames his tools,” it is said. Chiranjeevi has turned out to be the poor workman now.
In his 30-year-long filmy career, Chiranjeevi rose from the ranks to become the Megastar in the Telugu film industry and, in the process, won the hearts of crores of Telugu people.
But when he launched his Praja Rajyam Party and wanted to become the Chief Minister of Andhra Pradesh, people have rejected him outrightly. Elections-2009 made this amply clear.
It was a bitter pill for him to swallow, though he has been desperately trying to put on a brave face saying: “Playing the game is important, not whether we won or lost.”
Now, he has gone a step further and gave a rather ludicrous reason for the PRP’s electoral drubbing.
The “rail engine” symbol – allotted by the Election Commission -- proved to be the PRP’s nemesis in the recent Assembly and Lok Sabha elections, Chiranjeevi sought to reason.
“The rail engine symbol looked too tiny on the electronic voting machines that the voters could not recognize it. Symbols like loaf of bread, road-roller, bulldozer, tent and tractor looked large enough for the voters to easily identify. So they did not vote for PRP,” Chiranjeevi said.
Chiranjeevi’s claim is absolutely absurd. Indian voters, even if many of them are illiterate, are wise enough. Every political party and political leader will acknowledge that and never question the voters’ wisdom.
Now, if one is keen on voting for the PRP, he will certainly search for the party’s symbol carefully on either the electronic voting machine or the ballot paper and mark his choice. It is not at all a difficult task for the voter.
To say that the voters could not identify the rail engine on the EVM and hence voted on other symbols is utterly nonsensical and rubbish.
Chiranjeevi has made a fool of himself by making such claim. It grossly exposed how naïve he is.
Soon after he made the claim about the election symbol, I asked Chiranjeevi what were the lessons he learnt in the nine months of his political career, particularly after the PRP’s rout in the elections. “Everything has been a lesson for me. Every day teaches me a lesson. Even the loss in elections is a lesson in itself and I take it as my guru,” he replied. His assertion smacked of only arrogance and didn’t sound truthful.
Hopefully, the coming days would teach him better lessons and help him grow wiser, at least apparently.
Chiranjeevi also spoke of changing his party’s election symbol now that it becomes a “recognized” political party as per law. But can he change voters’ minds and hearts is the big question.

CHIRANJEEVI'S FIX!

2009-05-22T00:52:00.002+05:30

Desaraju Surya
Hyderabad: Saalako gruham naasaya, sarvam naasaya matukaha. This Sanskrit saying means a brother-in-law can ruin your house while a maternal uncle could ruin everything one has.
This aptly applies to Chiranjeevi, the Megastar of Telugu films. His life, as everyone knows, is in the hands of his brother-in-law Allu Aravind. So much so that Chiranjeevi can simply do nothing without Aravind’s influence.
Well, in the film industry nothing might have gone wrong as far as the duo was concerned. But politics is a different ball game altogether and none and nothing will be spared in public life if things are not worked out well.
Chiranjeevi may have understood by now the damage that has been done to his infant Praja Rajyam Party because of the evil influence of Aravind. As things stand in the PRP, Aravind seemed to have become Chiranjeevi’s nemesis. Both PRP insiders and outsiders will vouch for it.
What happened in the PRP’s Political Affairs Committee meeting, held days after the election results were out, gave clear indications that senior politicians who joined the PRP with lot of hope and ambition would not remain kind to Aravind or his excessive authority in the party. If insiders in PRP were to be believed, there was a near revolt against Aravind and every leader worth the name wanted his scalp.
Left badly battered in the recent Assembly and Lok Sabha elections, the PRP is now seemingly getting embroiled in an internal strife which could only snowball.
Though Chiranjeevi is the hero, his Man Friday is turning out to be a villain. Aravind himself lost the Lok Sabha election from Anakapalle constituency despite his loud talk of winning even by “one vote.”
Every voter discussed only one thing about PRP after the election process in the state started: how the party tickets were “sold away” to candidates. And, everyone was sincerely convinced that the PRP was launched with the sole motive of making money. This talk had a telling impact on the PRP, which of course was never in the reckoning to win the elections. The talk over sale of tickets left the Megastar’s party decimated in the electoral battle.
Chiranjeevi, however, would not let a fly land on his brother-in-law. He took pains to dispel, what he called, a “deliberate, vicious, Goebbel’s campaign” against Aravind. “We made enough money in our profession (films). We need not earn money through dubious means like sale of party tickets,” he pointed out.
The PRP was established with the sole objective of “serving the people,” he tried to emphasise.
On listening to Chiranjeevi’s latest assertions, one couldn’t help but recall a Telugu saying … chetulu kaalaka aakulu pattukuni prayojanam ledu. (There is no use rubbing your palms with leaves after they are burnt). The PRP will have to wait for five more years for another verdict to be delivered on them.

Why the TDP fared badly in AP polls

2009-05-20T22:01:00.000+05:30

Desaraju Surya
Hyderabad: “Karnudi chaavuku kaaranalu anekam.” Thus goes a saying in Telugu which means the reasons for Karna’s death are one too many.
Likewise, there are many reasons for the Telugu Desam Party’s debacle in Elections-2009 in Andhra Pradesh.
First and foremost, TDP chief N Chandrababu Naidu obviously failed to regain confidence of the people. He promised heaven to the people but could not convince them that he would indeed deliver it, given his previous record wherein he withdrew “populist” schemes like rice at Rs 2-a-kg and liquor prohibition. His schemes like monthly cash transfer and free colour televisions have attracted people but have not converted into votes.
The TDP’s flip-flop stance on Telangana has also cost it dearly, what with people of coastal Andhra and Rayalaseema regions not taking kindly to the pro-separatist leaning.
It managed only 36 seats out of 123 in the coastal Andhra region and just 16 out of 52 in Rayalaseema. The pro-Telangana stance did not pay dividends in that region either with the TDP bagging just 38 out of 119 seats, despite allying with the separatist Telangana Rashtra Samiti. The ruling Congress came up trumps in all the three regions, thereby comprehensively trouncing the principal opposition party.
The TDP also harped heavily on corruption issue with Chief Minister Y S Rajasekhara Reddy as the focal point. This factor was effectively negated by the individual benefit schemes that the Congress government has been implementing and did not pay dividends to the TDP in the end.
The nine-month-old Praja Rajyam Party has for sure dent the prospects of the TDP, mostly in the coastal Andhra region but a political minnow like the Lok Satta Party of former bureaucrat N Jayaprakash Narayan too has done the 27-year-old party in. The Lok Satta Party effect was largely felt in the urban areas where the TDP could have easily managed at least 20-25 seats more. Take for example the newly-created Vijayawada East Assembly segment. Here the PRP candidate won the seat by a meager margin of 190 votes but the Lok Satta Party candidate, a former TDP leader, managed to secure about 8,000 votes. This spoiled the chances of TDP nominee here.
Same was the case in many constituencies in Greater Hyderabad. The Secunderabad seat too would have fallen in the TDP’s kitty but for the Lok Satta Party which eat away over 9200 votes.
Union minister S Jaipal Reddy almost faced defeat in the newly-created Chevella Lok Sabha constituency at the hands of TDP’s Jitender Reddy. Here again the Lok Satta Party played spoilsport by splitting votes in Assembly segments like Serlingampally. Even in Parigi Assembly segment, an independent candidate polled over 30,000 for Lok Sabha, hitting the prospects of TDP.
The alliance with Left parties did not in any way benefit the TDP either, unlike the Congress which reaped a rich harvest in 2004.
TDP spokesperson and member of Legislative Council Nannapaneni Rajakumari admitted that Lok Satta had eaten into their votes at many places. “Besides, our alliance with TRS proved counter-productive. It is time for us to do a re-think on Telangana,” she observed.
All these issues will come up for elaborate discussion during the two-day annual conference of TDP beginning here on May 27. What lessons the TDP learns and what course it takes based on them will be eagerly watched.

The tale of political turncoats in AP

2009-05-18T23:40:00.003+05:30

Desaraju Surya
Hyderabad: Political turncoats had a mixed luck in the Andhra Pradesh elections. While many of them lost the election, some proved successful.
Interestingly, almost all the losers were in the PRP now, having jumped over from other parties. Notable among the losers were former home minister T Devender Goud, former ministers K Kala Venkat Rao, Tammineni Seetaram, Kotagiri Vidyadhar Rao and Kottapalli Subbarayudu. All these were top-ranked leaders when they were in the Telugu Desam Party. In fact, Devender Goud was considered next only to TDP chief N Chandrababu Naidu. He first quit the TDP to form his own Nava Telangana Party and subsequently merged it with the PRP. He lost both the Lok Sabha (Malkajgiri) and Assembly (Ibrahimpatnam) elections this time, his first defeat in his 25-year-old political career.
Former MP C Ramachandraiah, who too joined PRP by quitting TDP, lost the Lok Sabha election from Machilipatnam. Former Congress MLAs Vangaveeti Radhakrishnan and Buragadda Vedavyas, who joined the PRP just ahead of the elections, too failed to make it.
Former minister Mudragada Padmanabham, who switched over to the Congress from the TDP, proved unlucky as he was trounced by another political turncoat Vanga Geeta in Pithapuram. Geeta, a former member of Rajya Sabha, joined PRP from TDP and won the Assembly seat. Her colleague Bhuma Sobha Nagi Reddy emerged victorious in Allagadda Assembly constituency. A former chairperson of the State Road Transport Corporation, Sobha joined PRP from TDP along with her husband Bhuma Nagi Reddy. Nagi Reddy, however, lost the Lok Sabha election from Nandyal, a seat once represented by former Prime Minister P V Narasimha Rao. Another former TDP MLA Ganta Srinivasa Rao too emerged successful in Anakapalle in Visakhapatnam district.
Gutta Sukhender Reddy and Manda Jagannadham, who switched sides from the TDP to the Congress, emerged victorious from Nalgonda and Nagarkurnool (SC) Lok Sabha constituencies respectively. Former minister Ch Mutyam Reddy, who jumped over to the Congress from the TDP just on the eve of the elections, romped home in his native Dubbaka Assembly constituency.

AP Assembly: A mixed bag

2009-05-18T23:37:00.002+05:30

Desaraju Surya
Hyderabad: The 13th Andhra Pradesh Legislative Assembly will be a mixed bag, more than half loaded with experience and the rest with freshness. There will be a dash of glamour with stars from the tinsel town Chiranjeevi and Jayasudha making it to the legislature for the first time. As many as 132 MLAs will be making their debut in the 294-member legislature and sharing the space with political heavyweights like Y S Rajasekhara Reddy and N Chandrababu Naidu. For N Jayaprakash Narayan the portals of the Legislative Assembly are not new. For, as an Indian Administrative Service officer for more than two decades Narayan walked in those portals many a time but now he will be stepping in in a new avatar – as an elected representative. JP, as is he is famously called, has been elected to the Assembly for the first time from the newly-created Kukatpally constituency in Greater Hyderabad. Chiranjeevi, who floated the Praja Rajyam Party after ending his 30-year-long film career, failed to realize his dream of capturing power but he won the Tirupati Assembly seat and lost in Palakollu. He will be making entry into the Assembly for the first time. Yesteryear heroine Jayasudha, who continues to don character roles in Telugu films, too emerged successful in her maiden electoral battle from Secunderabad. Prominent among the first-time MLAs are K T Rama Rao, son of TRS chief K Chandrasekhar Rao, Kurasala Kannababu (PRP), a former journalist and Sheik Mastanvali (Congress), a former NSUI leader from Guntur. While the ruling Congress suffered a setback by losing many of its strongmen, the principal opposition TDP’s strength has improved with many of its heavyweights returning to the Assembly. Former Union minister S Venugopalachari, former state ministers Mandava Venkateswara Rao, Tummala Nageswara Rao, P Srinivas Reddy, B Gopalakrishna Reddy, P Ramulu, former MPs Ravula Chandrasekhar Reddy and Ambati Brahmanaiah have made it to the Assembly once again this time.

Chiranjeevi's flop show in politics

2009-05-17T21:39:00.001+05:30

Desaraju Surya

Hyderabad: Chiranjeevi was a self-made star – one who rose to become the Megastar of Telugu films in a career that spanned 30 years. He was a dancing and fighting sensation, a trend-setter in Telugu tinsel town.

He faced many defeats in his three-decade old career in the film industry but he always bounced back to firm up his position on the top.

Politics was a totally different script for him and he was a “reluctant politician” who was allegedly “forced” into the hotbed of politics in politically-conscious Andhra Pradesh.

He – at least those around him – thought he could probably do an NTR once again on AP’s political scene, much like he did on the silver screen.

Alas, NTR was a legend who has acquired a demi-God’s image among the masses in the state but Chiranjeevi essentially remained just a star – a dancing sensation.

Thus, they appeared to have not taken him so seriously when he wanted to become the “king” to usher in a “change.”

It was the worst electoral drubbing that Chiranjeevi would have ever imagined, having won the hearts of crores of people in many years.

It took over 15 years for 53-year-old Chiranjeevi to take a political plunge, for, there had been anticipation of his political foray since 1993 when he was at the pinnacle of glory in the film industry delivering one mighty hit after the other. He, however, preferred the celluloid greasepaint to the political sleaze and went on to don a variety of roles in a total of 148 films in Telugu, Kannada, Tamil and Hindi. Incidentally, he donned the role of a politician in only one film – Mutha Mestri (labour leader) – way back in 1993, when the first call for his political debut was heard. Year 2006 saw Chiranjeevi bask in additional glory as the Government of India conferred the Padma Bhushan on him and the Andhra University an honorary doctorate. The next year, however, remained rather turbulent for him due to some disturbances in personal life. But at the same time, calls for his political entry from a cross section of people across the state had also increased. Having endeared himself to the audience as an actor-par-excellence and a great dancer, Chiranjeevi permanently sealed his place in the Telugu people’s hearts through his social service activities – notably eye and blood donation – through the Chiranjeevi Charitable Trust for over a decade. With his only son Ramcharan Tej stepping into his shoes as an actor, Chiranjeevi was in a way left with no other option except to accept the wishes of crores of his admirers – don the politician’s role in real life after having enacted the role only once in reel life.

In the end, however, his political act ended up as a flop show.

The Congress' USP in AP

2009-05-17T21:37:00.002+05:30

Desaraju Surya

Hyderabad: If one main factor has to be singled out for the Congress’ comfortable victory in Andhra Pradesh, it is undoubtedly the individual benefit schemes implemented by the government in the last few years.

They have spelt success for the Congress and helped it retain power.

“The four crore beneficiaries of our individual benefit schemes are our ‘star’ campaigners,” Chief Minister Y S Rajasekhara Reddy used to say constantly while referring to the film stars who campaigned for other parties.

Indeed, the beneficiaries have not belied either Rajasekhara Reddy’s or Congress’ hopes and gave their thumbs up.

Though the Telangana factor threatened to wreck the Congress boat, the individual benefit schemes seemed to have turned the tide.

Many Congress heavyweights like PCC president D Srinivas, Assembly Speaker K R Suresh Reddy and several ministers may lost the election but Chief Minister Y S Rajasekhara Reddy had the last laugh with the Congress comfortably crossing the magic mark of 148 seats. The Congress may ultimately end up with 155 seats out of 294.

The Rajasekhara Reddy government focused primarily on the ambitious Jalayagnam programme (irrigation projects) in the first two years from 2004 but slowly it turned its attention to schemes that benefited individuals – the target group of customary voters.

Thus, every household derived not just one but many benefits as per the head count. Be it a white ration card that ensured supply of rice at Rs 2-a-kg, Arogya Sri health insurance that gave a Rs 2 lakh cover for treatment of major ailments, permanent housing, loans to women self-help group members at 25-paise interest, reimbursement of fee for higher and professional education… the schemes covered and benefited one and all.

Besides, pensions for various sections like old-aged, physically-challenged and artisans too have left those sections content.

Though the Telugu Desam Party promised to introduce a Cash-Transfer-Scheme, under which each eligible family was promised sums ranging from Rs 1000 to Rs 2000 a month, people apparently did not take it seriously.

“When we are already getting many benefits, why should we bother about something that we are not sure about,” was the common refrain of people all through.

In the ultimate analysis, people voted for continuity rather than ambiguity and this became Congress’ USP.

'HUNG' looks inevitable in Andhra Pradesh

2009-04-25T23:19:00.003+05:30

Desaraju Surya
Hyderabad: A “hung” Assembly looks inevitable for the first time in Andhra Pradesh.
Voters of the state have given their verdict, now safely “reserved” in the electronic voting machines, which will be delivered on May 16. Going by the trends available after the two rounds of polling in the state on April 16 and 23, it is going to be a split verdict and no party or combine is expected to touch the magic figure of 148 on its own.
For the ruling Congress, it is going to be a major setback as it has clearly lost the mandate. According to the Congress’ own assessment, it will end up with a seat count of 120-128 at best. For the record, however, the party claims to be winning over 204 seats in the 294-member House.
Chiranjeevi’s Praja Rajyam Party will pocket just about 30-35 seats -- a sizeable number to decide who will rule the state next.
The TDP-TRS-CPI-CPM Grand Alliance is expected to emerge as the largest combine with 135-140 seats but will still fall short of the required simple majority.
Parties like the MIM, BJP and Lok Satta will share the balance seats, as per the trends available.
However, no party is ready to go by the trends. “The Grand Alliance will bag 200 seats,” TDP chief N Chandrababu Naidu declared. If his claim comes true, the TDP alone should be bagging around 150 seats on its own, a simple majority with which it can ride back to power without any outside support. This, analysts feel, is a remote possibility.
While the Majlist Ittehadul-e-Muslimeen will retain its 2004 tally of five seats, the Bharatiya Janata Party may gain a few seats as compared to the previous election. Lok Satta Party of N Jayaprakash Narayan will also open its account for the first time.
“We are clearly heading for a hung Assembly. Eventually, it can either be a coalition government or a minority government with outside support. Who will manage to climb the throne will be interesting to watch, given the possible arithmetic,” one political analyst observed.
The ruling party lost heavily in Telangana region in the first phase of the elections. It also suffered a blow in Rayalaseema districts where the Telugu Desam Party has regained lost ground. In coastal Andhra region, the PRP put paid to the hopes of the Congress by eating into its votes in many districts. This worked to the TDP’s advantage where it is now set to improve its tally. It is in the coastal districts that the PRP also will make its mark.
The trends in the Assembly elections will have a bearing on the outcome of the Lok Sabha results as well where the TDP will significantly improve its tally from the previous five. The BJP, which drew a blank in 2004, is expected to bag at least two seats straightaway and may well end up with another couple. For the PRP, that wants to be a part of the “fourth front” at the Centre and play a “decisive role” in national politics as well, the current Lok Sabha polls will be a bitter pill. It is so hopelessly placed as far as Lok Sabha elections are concerned.

Political Baptism of heirs-apparent

2009-04-15T23:43:00.004+05:30

Desaraju Surya

Kadapa: It is “Political Baptism” by fire for the progeny of the top bosses of political parties in Andhra Pradesh. While two ‘sons’ have jumped directly into the electoral battlefield, one has worked behind the scenes to shape the course of his father’s party. Yet another has tried to do his bit in support of his father, who incidentally is seeking to make a mark in the political arena. Some of them will eventually step into their fathers’ shoes and carry on their political legacy, of course, only if the people and the respective parties fully support them. Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister Y S Rajasekhara Reddy’s son Jaganmohan Reddy is seeking election to the Lok Sabha for the first time from Kadapa constituency. Telangana Rashtra Samiti president K Chandrasekhar Rao’s son K T Rama Rao is fighting the state Assembly polls from Sircilla segment in Karimnagar district. Praja Rajyam Party chief Chiranjeevi’s son Ramcharan Tej is busy building his career as a young film hero. He has taken time off from his latest film shooting schedule to propagate the PRP’s election symbol rail engine. Telugu Desam Party president N Chandrababu Naidu’s son N Lokesh Babu is looking after their family’s Heritage Foods business. He, however, remained behind the scenes to draft the TDP’s election manifesto for this election and worked extensively on schemes like Cash Transfer and Youth Empowerment aimed at economically empowering the youth and the poor. Jagan has never been active in politics so far and confined himself mostly to his business ventures. This time, however, he chose to carry on his father’s legacy and jumped into the electoral battle from Kadapa. “My father has done a lot for the state. Hence I want him to see as the Chief Minister once again,” Jagan says. Rama Rao quit his high-profile job as the south-Asia operations head of a software firm and support his father in the quest for securing statehood for Telangana. Since late 2006, Rama Rao has been playing an active role in the Telangana Rashtra Samiti affairs and found it an opportune time to try his political fortunes in this election. Having returned from the US after obtaining a master’s degree in Business Administration, Nara Lokesh Naidu focused on his family business. For the past two months, Lokesh became part of the TDP’s “think tank” to draft its election manifesto. He is the brain behind the TDP’s Cash Transfer Scheme and also Youth Empowerment Scheme that are expected to be the vote-spinners for the party. “We worked for more than 1000 hours on each scheme to make them really effective. These schemes were not drafted for any short-term gains but have been designed in such a way that they give long-term benefits to the youth and the economically weaker sections,” Lokesh emphasizes. On his political plans, Chandrababu’s son asserts: “I am working for the party. I am not trying to create an individual identity for myself.” He ruled out the possibility of taking a political plunge in the immediate future. Chiranjeevi’s son Ramcharan Tej, who is just about 20-year-old, too asserts that he is not into serious politics. “I am only supporting my father in a small way that I could. He is the sole leader and he can carry on by himself,” Charan said. Charan has so far acted in only one film Chiruta, a runaway hit, and is currently shooting for his second movie Magadheera. Chiranjeevi himself is not interested to bring his son into politics at this stage as the filmy career is of primary importance to them.

NTR's daughter: Daggubati Purandeswari's USP

2009-04-10T00:22:00.003+05:30

Desaraju Surya
Visakhapatnam: She may have made a mark as a first time MP and also a Union minister but the “NTR’s daughter” tag continues to be Daggubati Purandeswari’s USP. She is now fighting her second election from a different constituency, having won from Bapatla Lok Sabha segment in her maiden political venture. “Visakhapatnam is not new to me. I have good connections with the city as well as the people here,” Purandeswari says, recalling her days when she used to accompany her legendary father N T Rama Rao on film shoots to this beautiful port city. Purandeswari is pitted against former MP and senior TDP leader M V V S Murthy, who is vigorously using the “local” tag to promote his chances. Another “local” candidate is BJP’s D V Subba Rao, a former Mayor of Visakhapatnam. A cricket administrator and a former chairman of Bar Council of India, Subba Rao, however, suffered a hipbone fracture while campaigning last week and is now reduced to bed. “Though it is a multi-cornered contest, people of Vizag have shown a lot of warmth and affection that should make my victory easy,” Purandeswari has said. But a section of the Congress, led by former Union minister and a local heavyweight T Subbirami Reddy, is said to be working against Purandeswari, though not overtly. Subbirami Reddy, a Rajya Sabha member, himself wanted to contest the Lok Sabha election but the Congress high command rejected his plea. Asked about the efforts within the Congress to sabotage her prospects, Purandeswari simply remarked: “I don’t think of any such thing. Yes, there is the ‘rebel’ factor but very less as compared to other parties. The Congress leadership is talking to the so-called rebels and in the interest of the party they are working together.” Purandeswari is meeting practically every section of the electorate daily and also holding special meetings with trade unions, caste associations, traders and other communities. “The kind of response that I am getting from the people here makes me feel that I am blessed. My objective is to work here with all of them and come out successful,” she points out. Besides the “NTR’s daughter” USP, the Union minister is also banking on the programmes of Y S Rajasekhara Reddy government in the state. “A lot has been done in the last five years both on the development as well as welfare fronts. That should stand the Congress in good stead,” she noted. Wittingly or unwittingly, the NTR’s family has been dragged into political mud-slinging in this election more than at any other time. The Congress has been tactfully using Purandeswari and her MLA husband Daggubati Venkateswara Rao to take on the TDP chief N Chandrababu Naidu in particular. “To me, my family is very important. My commitment to the Congress party is also important. I am completely against personal accusations but I can’t stand answerable to what somebody else is speaking,” Purandeswari maintains. It was only on one particular occasion, during the TDP’s Yuva Garjana rally last year which marked the political re-entry of her younger brother and film star Nandamuri Balakrishna, that “I reacted personally against a person (read Chandrababu) who did not care for my father or who did not even want his name to be carried forward,” she points out. “It was the only time where I brought out the personal sentiment. It was more out of pain that my own brothers should not be used or misused in whatever way,” she added. Corruption is one issue that the opposition parties have chosen to nail the Congress in this election. Asked about it, Purandeswari shotback: “I would like to ask those people pointing fingers to say if there was no corruption during their time.” This was her way of hitting out at Chandrababu Naidu, her younger sister’s husband.

Key contests in Andhra Pradesh polls

2009-04-10T00:12:00.001+05:30

Desaraju Surya
Hyderabad: There are a number of “key constituencies” out of 294 Assembly and 42 Lok Sabha in Andhra Pradesh. But only a few of them are the real eye-catchers as the “bigwigs” of the state’s political class will be seeking their fortunes yet again from those constituencies.
Curiosity will, however, be on three segments – two from where the Telugu Megastar Chiranjeevi is fighting his maiden electoral battle with the promise of “ushering in a change” and another where a former Indian Administrative Service officer N Jayaprakash Narayan is in the fray with the promise of “cleansing the rotten political system.”
The constituencies from where the likes of Chief Minister Y S Rajasekhara Reddy and Telugu Desam Party president N Chandrababu Naidu are contesting too are “prime” segments but they will hit headlines only if the main contenders – by any (remote) chance – lose the election.
Chiranjeevi, as a devotional sentiment, is contesting from temple-town Tirupati from where he also launched his political party Praja Rajyam in August last. The second segment is Palakollu in his native West Godavari district, under which falls Mogalturu, the village where he was born and brought up.
It should be a smooth sailing for him in both the places. Tirupati has a sizeable ‘Balija’ population, a community to which Chiru belongs. The native sentiment should work in his favour in Palakollu.
Jayaprakash Narayan, contesting from the newly-carved out Kukatpally Assembly constituency in Greater Hyderabad, banks on the votes of “settlers,” called so because they are “non-locals” who came from other parts of “Andhra” into “Telangana.”
Pulivendula in Kadapa district is Rajasekhara Reddy’s fiefdom while Chandrababu turned Kuppam in Chittoor district into his bastion.
Rajasekhara Reddy’s son Y S Jaganmohan Reddy, who has been in the eye of an Opposition storm for “amassing wealth” through “illegal means” by “breaking many laws”, jumped into active politics and is contesting the Lok Sabha elections for the first time from Kadapa. Rajasekhara Reddy vacated the Kadapa Lok Sabha seat in 1999 for his younger brother Vivekananda Reddy who, in turn, vacated it for Jagan this time.
Union minister S Jaipal Reddy has shifted to a new constituency yet again. In 2004 he won from Miryalaguda in Nalgonda district but lost the segment in delimitation. He is now seeking his fortunes from the newly-formed Chevella Lok Sabha constituency in Ranga Reddy district. “My native village is just a few kilometers from Chevella. So, I can’t be a non-local here,” he argues even as there is strong opposition within the Congress to his candidature.
Another Union minister Daggubati Purandareswari also had to shift to a new Lok Sabha constituency, Visakhapatnam, this time as the one she represented in 2004, Bapatla, fell in the reserve category in the delimitation. She was reluctant to contest from Vizag but the Congress high command simply ignored her plea for a preferred constituency. The “NTR’s daughter” tag alone could be the saving grace for her, given the intense groupism in the Congress in the port city.
Renuka Choudary, another Union minister, is seeking re-election from Khammam. The Congress is not strong in this region, marred by groupism, but the opposition too is in the same position.
Telangana Rashtra Samiti chief and former Union minister K Chandrasekhar Rao moved to Mahbubnagar Lok Sabha constituency this time from Karimnagar, a seat he won in 2004, 2006 and 2008 – the last time with a bare margin in the second bye-election that he caused in less than two years. Mahbubnagar is not known to be a TRS stronghold and as such KCR finds himself on a loose wicket. Though KCR wanted to contest from his native Medak constituency, he had to give up for the sake of his “sister” actress Vijayasanthi, who merged her Talli Telangana Party with the TRS. For Vijayasanthi this is the first election though she began her political journey more than a decade ago with the BJP.
Two film stars of yesteryears, U V Krishnam Raju and M Murali Mohan, are locking horns with each other in Rajahmundry Lok Sabha segment. Krishnam Raju served as Union minister in the A B Vajpayee government and quit BJP to join Praja Rajyam Party on the eve of the elections. Murali Mohan has been an active member of the TDP for many years now but is facing the electorate for the first time. Here, the sitting MP Undavalli Arun Kumar of the Congress is also a strong candidate making it a keen triangular contest.
As the No. 2 in the Telugu Desam Party, T Devender Goud had always had a cakewalk in the three Assembly elections that he faced. By quitting the TDP in June last, forming his own political outfit Nava Telangana Party and subsequently merging it with the new-born Praja Rajyam Party, Goud lost much of his clout but he is now testing his luck by contesting to the Lok Sabha (Malkajgiri) and the state Assembly (Ibrahimpatnam) simultaneously. That nothing much is being talked about him these days is a sign of the things in store for Goud, his adversaries point out. He sure looks to be facing a rough weather.
Actress Jayasudha joined the Congress a few months ago and bagged the Secunderabad Assembly ticket. A strong presence of Christian voters (about 15 per cent), who could influence the outcome here, is the USP that Jayasudha is trying to bank upon.
Chiranjeevi, while keeping his two brothers and actors Nagendra Babu and Pavan Kalyan away from the electoral battle, fielded his brother-in-law and Man Friday Allu Aravind for the Lok Sabha from Anakapalle constituency, adjoining Visakhapatnam. His hopes are pinned on the community base in the constituency.
The PRP nominated two former IAS officers for the Lok Sabha contest – Vara Prasad from Tirupati (SC) and Thota Chandrasekhar from Guntur. Retired IPS officer D T Naik of PRP is fighting the Lok Sabha election from Mahbubabad (ST) against a former police constable Balram Naik of Congress, making it an interesting tussle.

Film stars and politics

2009-03-27T01:22:00.002+05:30

Desaraju Surya
Hyderabad: The trend of film star jumping into politics in Andhra Pradesh has not started with the legendary N T Rama Rao. Much before Rama Rao launched the Telugu Desam Party in 1982, his contemporary and childhood classmate Kongara Jaggaiah had already served as a member of Lok Sabha from Ongole.
N T Rama Rao, however, was the real trend-setter. With his advent into politics, many movie artists, directors and producers too started taking the political plunge.
Hero Krishna was elected to the Lok Sabha once on a Congress ticket but he subsequently did not stay active in politics. Another hero Krishnam Raju first joined the Congress and later shifted to the BJP and was elected twice to the Lok Sabha. He served as a minister of state under Atal Bihari Vajpayee. Just two days ago, he quit the BJP and joined the Praja Rajyam Party floated by Telugu Megastar Chiranjeevi.
In fact, Chiranjeevi was the only hero with a massive fan following to launch a political party after NTR.
Heroine and national award winner ‘Urvasi’ Sarada was elected to the Lok Sabha on behalf of the TDP. Very recently she quit the party and joined the Congress.
Noted director Dasari Narayana Rao was elected to Rajya Sabha twice on Congress ticket and till recently served as a minister of state in the Manmohan Singh Cabinet. Another director K Raghavendra Rao is an active member of the TDP but he always remains behind the scenes. Likewise, actor and producer M Murali Mohan too remains behind the scenes in the TDP and has never contested an election. His contemporary and another actor-producer M Mohan Babu was elected to Rajya Sabha during NTR’s time but subsequently fell apart with Chandrababu Naidu and distanced himself from active politics. Now, he is virtually supporting the Chief Minister Y S Rajasekhara Reddy.
Character actor Kaikala Satyanarayana too was elected to Lok Sabha on behalf of the TDP but he has now quit the party. Another character actor late Ravu Gopala Rao too was active in the TDP given his association with NTR.
NTR’s son Nandamuri Balakrishna, one of the top heroes in Telugu, used to campaign for the TDP during his father’s time but stayed away from politics for over a decade when his brother-in-law Chandrababu Naidu was at the helm of affairs. Only in late 2008 did Balakrishna start taking a serious role in TDP affairs what with Chiranjeevi launching his own party. Balakrishna, along with his nephew and upcoming film star NTR (Junior), is one of the star campaigners for the TDP in this election.
Chiranjeevi apart, the Praja Rajyam Party is star-studded with his actor brothers Nagendra Babu and Pavan Kalyan being key leaders in the eight-month-old party. Chiranjeevi’s brother-in-law is a noted film producer and is the key man who runs the PRP affairs.
A couple of heroes like Rajendra Prasad and Suman too actively campaigned for the TDP.
Character actors Kota Srinivasa Rao and Babu Mohan were elected to the state Assembly on BJP and TDP tickets respectively and the latter even served as a minister in Chandrababu’s Cabinet. They are still active in politics.
Heroine-turned-character actor Jayasudha joined the Congress a few months ago and is now contesting the Assembly election for the first time from Secunderabad.
Hero-heroine couple Rajasekhar-Jeevitha too has joined the Congress but is not in the fray.
Many character artistes and producers used to sail with the TDP during and after NTR’s time but have virtually become inactive now.
Yesteryear heroes Bhanuchander and Sudhakar joined the Congress couple of days ago but they will have little role to play.
Every time during elections, some film stars, directors and producers join one party or the other with the hope of grabbing a ticket but many simple fizzle out.

A unique train journey

2009-03-25T00:57:00.001+05:30

Desaraju Surya
Vijayawada: Last week I was on a train journey – a journey of a different kind.
I was one of the passengers accompanying Lok Satta Party president N Jayaprakash Narayan – as part of my journalistic duty -- on board a special compartment attached to the Krishna Express bound for Tirupati.
Narayan, a former Indian Administrative Service officer who quit his job after having served as a secretary to the then Chief Minister N T Rama Rao, chose to take the rail road for a novel election campaign for his party in the run up to the April elections in Andhra Pradesh.
It was a simple campaign planned by a simple man that Narayan is. There were no frills, no hungama whatsoever and those who accompanied him were disciplined. By any count, the trip was a grand success and Narayan has certainly set an example for others to follow.
Empowering the youth by creating jobs and enforcing “new politics for the new generation” is the mantra that Lok Satta Party is following to attract the voters.
The party, founded two years ago by Jayaprakash Narayan, promises to create 50 lakh jobs by developing at least 1000 satellite towns across the state at a staggering cost of Rs 40,000 crore.
To take this slogan to the people, he embarked on this 530-km train journey from Secunderabad to Nellore, addressing whistle-stop meetings at important railway stations en route. A specially-hired second class bogie was attached to the Tirupati-bound Krishna Express for Narayan’s yatra, which he undertook following in the footsteps of Mahatma Gandhi and former US President Franklin D Roosevelt.
“Satellite towns will be developed in every district depending on its size. At least two lakh jobs will be created in these satellite towns so that youth need not migrate to towns and cities in search of livelihood. Our emphasis is on strengthening the grassroots,” the Lok Satta Party chief explained to people.
He may not have created waves like other high-profile politicians but the unassuming JP, as he is fondly called, struck the right chords with the electorate.
At one small railway station in Nalgonda district, there were just two women to greet him but JP readily obliged them with autographs even as the train halted there for just a minute.
At Bhongir in the same district, the party candidate contesting the April 16 Assembly election came with a group of supporters to welcome JP during the trip. He addressed ordinary passengers at another station even as the party “volunteers” distributed leaflets listing the Lok Satta’s promises. No where were crowds mobilised to show off the party’s strength and ordinary passengers and workers formed his audience.
“We are not promising heaven, like the so-called traditional parties have been promising. We are only assuring the people that their basic needs will be taken care of and life will be made merrier for them by all means,” JP said.
“Politics these days has been revolving around three families in the state. The main parties have totally ignored the grassroots but the Lok Satta Party will make politics revolve around the people again,” the former bureaucrat promises to thunderous applause from youth who gathered in a sizeable number at Warangal railway station.
As the train started moving after a two-minute halt, JP reached for the general compartment attached to the special bogie and interacted with the passengers for over 30 minutes. Greeting every passenger personally, JP explained his party’s main objective of cleansing the current politics and bringing back dignity to the lives of people.
With such plain speaking, the Lok Satta Party chief could only win wide applause from the people.

Andhra Pradesh's coffers drying up!

2009-03-19T00:46:00.002+05:30

Desaraju Surya
Hyderabad: Andhra Pradesh is heading for bankruptcy.
The state that boasts of a Rs 1.05 lakh crore Budget for the 2009-10 financial year, now hardly has cash reserves that are sufficient to meet the salary bill for the next two months besides the election expenditure.
The state government has approached the Reserve Bank of India for sale of securities to raise Rs 1915 crore to keep things moving. In the last four months the state has raised Rs 7,000 crore through sale of securities but all the money was ostensibly utilized on individual benefit schemes with the April elections in view.
As a result, all projects ambitiously launched by the Congress government have come to a standstill.
Contrary to what Chief Minister Y S Rajasekhara Reddy boasted, the global economic meltdown dealt a telling blow to the state economy as well resulting in a severe shortfall in revenues.
“Yes, it is a distress. Our revenues have certainly fallen but we are somehow managing the affairs,” a key official in the finance department said.
Bureaucrats running the finance department are, however, not willing to speak any figures. “This is election time and please don’t ask us for figures. It will send wrong signals and we will be in trouble,” the key official pleaded.
The finance department head, principal secretary I Y R Krishna Rao, was willing to say this much: “The situation is not bad as we have not gone for any overdraft facility. We can manage.”
A couple of examples clearly indicate how bad the state’s finances are. The government owes Rs 3400 crore to contractors executing various projects under the ambitious Rs two lakh crore irrigation development programme – Jalayagnam. This has virtually brought the project works to a halt as the contractors are unwilling to execute works without cash flowing.
The state government owes about Rs 12,000 crore to the power utilities, particularly the distribution companies (Discoms). Last month, the government released Rs 1050 crore out of the total outstanding, which is hardly sufficient to overcome the acute resource crunch being faced by the Discoms. Given the worst ever power crisis being faced by the state, Discoms are forced to buy power at an exorbitant price – Rs 12 to Rs 14 per unit. “Even if we are paying that much, there is no power available. Even if power is available, we have no money. The government is simply asking us to borrow from banks but we already owe crores of rupees to them. We are literally at our wit’s end,” head of a Discom lamented.
Though the state government was spending significant amounts on populist schemes like housing, free power, health insurance, Rs 2-a-kg rice and several others, it somehow managed to run the show in 2006-07 and 2007-08 financial years as it sold away hundreds of acres of government lands and raised about Rs 20,000 crore. With the real-estate bubble bursting in 2008, the Rajasekhara Reddy government could not sell land and this choked the revenues. At the same time, political expediency forced the Congress rulers to come up with one populist scheme after the other – ranging from enhancement of scholarships to students, fee reimbursement, waiver of loans to different sections, payment of incentives to farmers (who could not avail of the loan waiver) and the like.
The incentive (to farmers) bill alone touched Rs 1750 crore this year, as against Rs 800 crore initially estimated. At the same time, revenues through commercial taxes took a dip because of the economic slowdown while revenue from excise alone has been keeping the cash registers ringing, highly-placed official sources explained.
Now, the state government is knocking on the doors of banks, including the World Bank, to seek loans. Nothing explains the current scenario better than the government’s eagerness to secure a Rs 1300 crore loan from the World Bank for urban projects. “For more than two years we behaved as if we did not want any financial assistance from the World Bank and kept the project in cold storage. With our finances drying up, we have again gone to them with a (begging) bowl,” a high-ranking official noted.
Even individual departments, that are seeking release of funds from the state finance department, are reportedly being directed to raise loans from banks to carry on their projects.
As things stand – and with much more ‘populism’ in the offing after the polls – Andhra Pradesh seems to have no way out of the financial morass.

Andhra Pradesh heading for a hot poll

2009-03-05T23:11:00.002+05:30

Desaraju Surya
Hyderabad: Elections-2009 will be by far the hottest in the history of Andhra Pradesh. For the first time, the state will witness a triangular contest between the ruling Congress, the “Grand Alliance” (of Telugu Desam Party-Telangana Rashtra Samiti-Communist Party of India (Marxist)-Communist Party of India) and the Praja Rajyam Party floated by Telugu Mega Star Chiranjeevi.
On paper, however, it will be a “multi-cornered” contest with other players like Bharatiya Janata Party and Lok Satta Party of bureaucrat-turned-politician N Jayaprakash Narayan in the fray.
But the impact of these two outfits will be not significant by any count and as such the fight will essentially be between Congress, Grand Alliance and Praja Rajyam Party.
The Congress is ready to fight the elections on the “development-welfare” plank while the Grand Alliance have a range of issues – ranging from corruption to Telangana – to attack the ruling party with. Chiranjeevi wants to do an “Obama” in Andhra Pradesh and is harping on the “change” mantra.
Andhra Pradesh could well decide who would form the next government in New Delhi. For the Congress, the stakes are too heavy. An impressive performance – an encore of 2004 – by the Congress here will put it in the driver’s seat even in New Delhi. By sending as many as 33 members to the Lok Sabha in 2004, Andhra Pradesh electorate enabled the Congress party to form a government at the Centre in the company of other political outfits.
But the Grand Alliance, which is aiming at forming the so-called “Third Alternative” government at the Centre, is bent on spoiling the chances of the ruling party by exposing the Congress primarily on the corruption issue apart from a host of other “failures.”
Equally bent is the PRP to mar the prospects of not only the Congress but also the Grand Alliance. On the face of it, the PRP may well give a tough fight to both the Congress and the Grand Alliance by splitting their votes in most pockets in the state but its aspirations may actually come a cropper if it fails to secure a common symbol for all its candidates. As things stand, the infant party – that solely banks on the charisma of Mega Star Chiranjeevi – is unlikely to get a common symbol and will have to make do with multiple symbols for its candidates. The most significant aspect of Elections-2009 will be the total isolation of the ruling Congress in the state. In 2004, the Left parties had aligned with the Congress while Telangana Rashtra Samiti was also part of the alliance that ousted N Chandrababu Naidu from power. TDP had only the Bharatiya Janata Party for company in 2004 but the combination could not outwit the Congress-Left-TRS combine.
The 2004 poll outcome makes for an interesting study. The Congress, which polled 38.56 per cent of the total valid votes, bagged 185 seats in the 294-member state Assembly while the TDP with a 37.59 per cent vote share could manage only 47 seats. The CPI got 1.53 per cent votes (six seats), CPM 1.84 per cent (nine seats) and the TRS 6.68 per cent (26 seats) while the BJP secured 2.63 per cent and just two seats. The Congress won 33 seats, TDP four, TRS two (down from five after the split and subsequent bye-elections) while CPI, CPM and MIM bagged one Lok Sabha seat each.
Elections-2009 will, however, be entirely different. The CPM, CPI and TRS have now crossed over to the TDP with the sole objective of dislodging the “corrupt” Congress. The BJP has none for company this time and is striving to rediscover itself in the state.
Here comes the PRP into play which could mar the Grand Alliance’s prospects as well as those of the ruling Congress. How much will the vote split be is hard to predict but at least in the coastal Andhra region and to some extent in Rayalaseema, Chiranjeevi's party could cast its spell. The PRP's impact is expected to be the maximum in East Godavari and West Godavari districts, which hitherto used to be the TDP's citadels. In north coastal Andhra too -- comprising Srikakulam, Vizianagaram and Visakhapatnam districts -- Chiranjeevi's party is likely to eat into the traditional TDP votes much to the comfort of the Congress. In the final analysis, this could prove to be the most decisive factor in determining who comes to power. Of course, the outcome in Telangana will also be crucial as the region has as many as 117 seats.
The Congress, however, is putting up a brave front saying no combination or force could prevent it from retaining power. "It will be a positive vote for the government, which is quite unprecedented. The slew of welfare measures, apart from the major development works including the construction of irrigation projects, will stand us in good stead," Chief Minister Y S Rajasekhara Reddy boasts.
May 16 will be the Judgment Day for all of them.

Want land? Rush to AP

2009-03-02T00:09:00.002+05:30

Desaraju Surya
Hyderabad: Want land to set up an industry, an educational institute, a company or anything else? Well, come to Andhra Pradesh and the state government is ready to distribute any extent of land for whatever purpose. But the time is too short – hardly a couple of more days since notification for the general elections is expected any moment – and some “formalities” are to be fulfilled before the land is allotted.
The state government has in the past few days cleared numerous proposals for allotment of land to various sections and officials of the revenue department are too busy burning the midnight oil to issue requisite government orders to complete the formalities.
Journalists, government officers, judicial employees, government employees, industrialists and some private persons were given thousands of acres of land across the state.
Overlooking the protests by local people, the controversial Vadarevu and Nizampatnam Port and Industrial Corridor Limited was given 6796.44 acres of land in Prakasam district and 224.38 acres more in Guntur district. All this is land previously assigned to local people for agriculture but now the government has “resumed” it to re-allot to VANPIC, promoted by UAE-based Ras-al-Khaimah. Ras-al-Khaimah also got another 105 acres in Medak district for the Hyderabad Economic City project.
In Chilamathur in Anantapur district, the AP Industrial Infrastructure Corporation has been given 1680.99 acre for establishment of Lepakshi Knowledge City. Another 1064.86 acres has also been given in Tummala village to APIIC and another 349.24 acres in Chilamathur for development of an industrial park. All this land is said to be for the Lepakshi Knowledge City that is just about 70-km from the new Bengaluru International Airport abutting the National Highway-7.
In Anantapur district again, the APIIC got 429.11 acres in Gudipadu village for an industrial park.
In Chittoor district, 977.74 acres of land spread across three villages has been allotted to the APIIC for establishment of a Digital World City.
Several other proposals for allotment of land to journalists and government employees have also been cleared by the government and now about 200 acres of land is ready for distribution.

"SAVING IS SIN, SPENDING IS VIRTUE!"

2009-03-02T00:07:00.001+05:30

(This is a reproduction of an email circulated by a dear friend).

JAPANESE do not spend much. They save a lot. Also, Japan exports far more than it imports. Has an annual trade surplus of over $100 billion. Yet, Japanese economy is considered weak, even collapsing.
Americans spend, save little. Also, US import more than it exports. Has an annual trade deficit of over $400 billion. Yet, the American economy is considered strong and trusted to get stronger.
But where from do Americans get money to spend? They borrow from Japan, China and even India... Virtually others save for the US to spend. Global savings are mostly invested in US, in dollars. India itself keeps its foreign currency assets of over $50 billion in US securities. China has sunk over $160 billion in US securities. Japan's stakes in US securities are in trillions. Result: The US has taken over $5 trillion from the world. So, as the world saves for the US, Americans spend freely. Today, to keep the US consumption going -- that is for the US economy to work -- other countries have to remit $180 billion every quarter, which is $2 billion a day, to the US! Otherwise the US economy would go for a six. So will the global economy. The result will be no different if US consumers begin consuming less. A Chinese economist asked a neat question. Who has invested more, US in China, or China in US? The US has invested in China less than half of what China has invested in US. Same is the case with India... We have invested in US over $50 billion. But the US has invested less than $20 billion in India... Why is the world after US? The secret lies in the American spending, that they hardly save. In fact, they use their credit cards to spend their future income. That the US spends is what makes it attractive to export to the US. So US imports more than what it exports year after year. The result: The world is dependent on US consumption for its growth. By its deepening culture of consumption, the US has habituated the world to feed on US consumption. But as the US needs money to finance its consumption, the world provides the money. It's like a shopkeeper providing the money to a customer so that the customer keeps buying from the shop. If the customer does not buy, the shop won't have business, unless the shopkeeper funds him. The US is like the lucky customer. And the world is like the helpless shopkeeper-financier. Who is America's biggest shopkeeper-financier? Japan of course. Yet it's Japan which is regarded as weak.
Modern economists complain that Japanese do not spend, so they do not grow. To force the Japanese to spend, the Japan government exerted itself, reduced the savings rates, even charged the savers. Even then the Japanese did not spend (habits don't change, even with taxes, do they?). Their traditional postal savings alone is over $1.2 trillions, about three times the Indian GDP. Thus, savings, far from being the strength of Japan, have become its pain. Hence, what is the lesson? That is, a nation cannot grow unless the people spend, not save. Not just spend, but borrow and spend.
Dr Jagdish Bhagwati, the famous Indian-born economist in the US, told Manmohan Singh that Indians wastefully save. Ask them to spend, on imported cars and, seriously, even on cosmetics! This will put India on a growth curve. "Saving is sin, and spending is virtue."
Before you follow this neo-economics, get some fools to save so that you can borrow from them and spend. This is what US has successfully done in last few decades. -- Professor Jagdish N Bhagwati.

MY JOURNEY AS A JOURNALIST

2009-02-27T00:13:00.004+05:30

Desaraju Surya
I turned 20, as a journalist, today. For me, it has been quite an eventful journey and a fantastic learning process.
On this occasion, I would first like to express my sincere gratitude to a few persons who actually shaped me as a journalist and helped me grow. Messrs Ananthaneni Ravi Kumar, P Hari Prasad, Boddu Bhaskar, Suresh and Peddada Navin were those who guided me through the initial days of my career – which I began as a news contributor for Eenadu Telugu daily way back on February 26, 1990. And then, there were the likes of V Gopalakrishna Murthy (Gampalagudem Murthy) and Chilukuri Venu who too used to enable me learn the fine art of writing.
I was literally a college drop-out with absolutely no interest in academics. All I possessed at that time was just common sense, some general knowledge and a youthful zeal. A few years into the profession, I acquired a graduate degree and subsequently pursued a PG diploma course in journalism and mass communications, a PG diploma in international business and PG in public administration.
I had always been an avid listener of news on radio since my childhood days and also a good reader of newspapers (Eenadu, Andhra Prabha and Indian Express) which helped me understand news and style of writing.
The way the likes of Kandukuri Suryanarayana, Addanki Mannar, Koppula Subba Rao, Prayaga Ramakrishna read out the news on All India Radio, left an impression in my mind and that kept me going from the day one of my career. I literally followed the script, so to say. I also used to listen the English, Hindi and Sanskrit news bullet-ins on radio and subsequently on Doordarshan. I have no hesitation in saying that those bullet-ins were the “real” news presented in a lucid style without any distortions and gave the information required for people. They were, in fact, an education in news writing as well.
I was very childish at the time I began my career as a journalist. But the seniors in Eenadu were very appreciative and always helped me out by teaching the basics of news reporting and offering me valuable suggestions to improve myself.
There was one “Satyam master” who used to edit reports for Newstime, an English daily then run by the Eenadu group, in his post-retirement as a lecturer.
Noticing the interest in me, he encouraged me to write a few reports in English for Newstime. The legendary cricketer Kapil Dev visited Vijayawada on a promotional trip once in April 1991 and I took the opportunity to report that in English. It was published as a two-column box story in Newstime and I was elated. There were many who patted me on the back for that and it only spurred me to learn more and write more.
During my Eenadu days, I also used to write filmy reports for their film weekly Sitara and I covered the 100-days celebration of Gang Leader, the Chiranjeevi-starrer. It was the first time I physically saw my idol Chiranjeevi and the report came out very well.
Subsequently I quit Eenadu, re-joined it for a few more months before I was unceremoniously thrown out. That, however, proved a blessing in disguise and provided me an opportunity to work independently in a small newspaper called Mahanagar (evening daily). Later, I worked for another evening daily Pledge under the able guidance of senior editor (late) Kuchimanchi Satya Subrahmanyam. I shall never forget him. He was the one who brought me into English journalism and ensured that I continued in it though at one point I thought of going back to Telugu writing. Subrahmanyam garu, with his vast experience, was a very good teacher and a nice human being.
The newspapers may be “small” but the exposure they provided was really big. I was very fortunate to have worked in those newspapers, particularly under Subrahmanyam garu. Otherwise, I would have been nowhere in this profession despite having learnt a good deal of news reporting in Eenadu.
My first major break came in 1997 when I was appointed a trainee reporter in Deccan Chronicle. Mr Sriramulu was my chief in the Vijayawada bureau and working under him was another memorable experience. He is a thorough professional and man of great knowledge. He is a workaholic and a task master too. I should remember (late) Jagannathan here. He was our affable news editor and a great classical Carnatic singer. He was a good teacher as well.
In 2001, I moved over to The Times of India and was with it for six years. The only inspiring person here was M H K. He continues to be my friend, philosopher and guide.
Two persons need mention here: P B Koteswara Rao (Balu) and M Sambasiva (Samba). Only I know the kind of inspiration they have been right through my stints in DC and ToI.
From a stringer, I have now risen to become a Principal Correspondent after 19 long years in the profession. I value it a lot since only I know that I did not take any shortcuts. There have been ups and downs through these years but somehow God has helped me overcome the troubles and continue my climb. Good friends were always there to keep me going.
Undoubtedly, I have been “very sincere” to my profession right from the day one and continue to work with the same kind of zeal, devotion and sincerity. I have never compromised on values and I can certainly be proud of my achievements, even if they are only a few.
Only three or four people who too began their careers like me 18-19 years ago have succeeded in rising to a good position now. Murali (TV9), Bala Krishna (The New Indian Express), Pavan (Mumbai Mirror) and Yugandhar Reddy (Vizag). Hardwork and sincerity were their traits too. And, that’s the secret of success. Many others faded into the oblivion.
For me, there is still a long way ahead.

India's nuclear ambitions

2009-02-19T01:06:00.003+05:30

Desaraju Surya
Hyderabad: Vowing to realize the dreams of Homi Jahangir Bhabha -- father of India’s atomic programme -- of achieving high level of energy security and energy independence for the country, Atomic Energy Commission chairman Anil Kakodkar has said India would set up manufacturing facilities for fuels required for all nuclear reactors over a period of time.
“We do expect augmentation of manufacturing capacity and associated modalities for characterization and quality control,” he said, inaugurating a three-day international conference on Characterisation and Quality Control of Nuclear Fuels, organized by the Nuclear Fuel Complex, at the Ramoji Film City in Hyderabad.
“Our ambition, however, is not restricted to fuel manufacturing alone but we would also like to set up a whole range of fuel cycle activities with the help of collaborators abroad and domestic technology development. We will do that both in the front end as well as back end of the fuel cycle,” Kakodkar said.
There’s a very broad canvas to work upon, he added.
Stating that India’s strengths lay in fast reactors and thorium, he said today the country was in a domain where “we can play with fertile and fissile fuels at will.”
He suggested a shift from Uranium-238 fuel to Thorium-232 which has a greater benefit given its higher fissile energy. “Thorium fuel cycle is much more proliferation-resistant,” he pointed out adding that they were ready to collaborate with anyone interested in sharing expertise in fuel cycle technology.
Observing that India was entering into a new era, Kakodkar saw large growth in nuclear power generation capacity with nuclear reactors and nuclears fuels coming from abroad. “The march towards diversity will continue.”
Canada’s Cameco Corporation president and CEO Gerald W Grandey, International Atomic Energy Agency’s nuclear fuel cycle and materials section head Chaitanya Ganguly, Indira Gandhi Centre for Atomic Research director Baldev Raj, Bhabha Atomic Research Centre director S Banerjee, Nuclear Power Corporation director (technical) S A Bhardwaj, Nuclear Fuel Complex chief executive R N Jayaraj and delegates from various countries like Russia, Canada, Korea and Kazaksthan attended.

Indian public sector banks: the growth mantra

2009-02-15T00:28:00.002+05:30

Desaraju Surya
Hyderabad: Union Home Minister P Chidambaram has asserted that there was no question of diluting the government's equity in public sector banks from the current 51 per cent. "Public sector banks in the country will remain to be public sector banks," he said, addressing a huge gathering after inaugurating the Union Bank of India's 2501 branch here. Indian economy remained stronger despite the global financial meltdown, thanks to the strong public sector banks. "The previous NDA government sought to dilute government equity in public sector banks to 33 per cent, which was a grave mistake. But on assuming power, the UPA government has abandoned the idea and that has energized the public sector banks," Chidambaram pointed out. Listing out the series of policy initiatives launched by the UPA government to strengthen the public sector banks, the former Union Finance Minister said: "We encouraged banks to raise capital from the market. Thanks to this initiative, business flourished and banks became more efficient. We have also enlarged the power of managements and gave large autonomy to the banks. The degree of autonomy is large and it has increased responsibility. With responsibility, accountability too increased." Also, banks were nudged to go into new areas and double lending to agriculture and small and medium enterprises. New opportunities led to new growth as the banks rose to the occasion and met the challenges, Chidambaram noted. "The last five years have been a complete vindication of the UPA government's banking policy. We, however, still need greater policy support to sustain the growth story," the Union Minister observed. Referring to the Union Bank of India's growth story, Chidambaram said from a business of Rs 50,000 crore in 2000, the bank's business mix shot up to Rs two lakh crore by September 2008. "In the next ten years, UBI's business will touch Rs 10 lakh crore," he added. UBI chairman and managing director M V Nair was also present on the occasion.

The Congress' treachery

2009-02-13T00:33:00.002+05:30

Desaraju Surya
Hyderabad: When it comes to hoodwinking the people, none can probably beat the Grand Old Party of India – the Congress.
Words like deceit, treachery, sham, betrayal, fraud and trickery would be too small to describe the Congress' ways.
Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister Y S Rajasekhara Reddy’s statement in the Assembly on February 12 on the Telangana statehood issue is yet another clear example of the Congress’ con game. A party that rode to power in the state on the promise of creating the Telangana state, failed to keep its word in five years and has now shamelessly come out with a ‘statement’ that it would constitute a committee to look into the contentious issue. What a SHAM!
Everybody knows how Rajasekhara Reddy, despite all major parties in the state having consented to the bifurcation of Andhra Pradesh, played spoilsport all these years and made the Congress high command ignore the public sentiments on such an emotional issue. What’s more appalling is the stance of Congress leaders from the Telangana region. They were the first to raise the bogey of Telangana but once the party rode to power in the company of Telangana Rashtra Samiti they conveniently pushed the issue on to the backburner. It was nothing but deception of the worst kind and the Congress leaders have to be blamed – in fact banished – for having caused bad blood between people of various regions of the state.
Now, with elections to the state Assembly as well as Lok Sabha just about two months away, the Chief Minister – and, of course, the Congress party – was left with no other option but to come out with some stand on the separate statehood issue. Hence this new drama by Rajasekhara Reddy.
But the time’s up for the party and it should sure bite the dust in the fast-approaching elections.
At the outset, doubts are being raised on whether or not the proposed joint legislature committee on the contentious Telangana issue can be constituted at all given the fact that the current Andhra Pradesh Assembly now remains “only on paper” for all practical purposes.
Besides, the “sanctity” of such a committee is also being questioned as the “outgoing” MLAs may not have the locus standi to deal with such a critical issue.
Though Chief Minister Y S Rajasekhara Reddy sought to assert that “we have never in the past deceived any one on the Telangana issue nor will do in the future,” all opposition parties termed his statement in the state Assembly precisely as “yet another deception.”
Besides, the Chief Minister had merely made a ‘statement’ indicating his government’s decision to constitute a “committee of members of both Houses of the legislature to deliberate upon Telangana and related issues” and made no formal plea to the Assembly Speaker to obtain the House’s consent for the move.
“Consent of the House is very much required to constitute any such committee. The government has not obtained any such consent nor did the Speaker follow due procedure in this regard. So, how can the committee be constituted,” former Speaker of Assembly Yanamala Ramakrishnudu questioned.
Moreover, the committee, even if put in place, would not have any sanctity since it would have many outgoing members.
He pointed out that the Chief Minister’s statement on Telangana was nothing but a “laughing stock” as due procedures were totally violated in making the statement on the floor of the House.
And, the opposition parties also questioned the ‘timing’ of the Chief Minister’s statement: it was made at the fag end of the final day of the final session of the current Assembly which, for all practical purposes, ceased to function with elections due in two months.
“Why did the Congress government remain silent for about five years and not constitute such a committee much earlier,” Ramakrishnudu wondered.
“The Pranab Mukherjee Committee constituted by the UPA on Telangana was a farce. Now, the committee mooted by the Chief Minister is only a drama,” TDP deputy leader in the Assembly Nagam Janardhan Reddy remarked. It was a clear attempt by the Chief Minister to hoodwink the people of the Telangana region yet again, he alleged.
BJP floor leader G Kishan Reddy questioned the validity of the proposed committee when the Assembly itself would be dissolved soon. “It only re-established Rajasekhara Reddy’s intention to block the formation of Telangana state by any means,” he charged.
TRS MLA T Harish Rao remarked that by proposing the committee, Rajasekhara Reddy had “dug his own grave” besides leaving the hearts of Telangana people with a wound. “He will never be forgiven for the kind of treachery he has committed on Telangana,” Harish Rao added.
For the record, government whip Mallu Ravi asserted that the current Assembly would be in place for the next three months and hence the proposed committee could be formed. “Consent of the House is not required for forming the committee,” he maintained.

A pleasant outing for World Bank vice-chief

2009-02-11T02:40:00.004+05:30

Desaraju Surya

Hyderabad: World Bank vice-president Katherine Sierra had a pleasant outing in a tiny village in Ranga Reddy district of Andhra Pradesh on February 9. Interaction with members of women Self-Help Groups (SHGs) and the "tremendous progress" they have achieved under the Development of Women and Children in Rural Areas programme has left the top official from the World Bank "highly impressed." Katherine was in Andhra Pradesh on a day's visit to Mondegourelli village in Ranga Reddy district to study the implementation of the Dwcra scheme and the empowerment of women through various initiatives undertaken by the government. Aided by a high-level team of officials including World Bank's Indian co-ordinator Parmesh Shah, Society for Elimination of Rural Poverty chief executive officer T Vijay Kumar and Ranga Reddy district M Dana Kishore, Katherine went around some houses in the village under Yacharam revenue mandal and quizzed the SHG members about the thrift activities micro-finance facilities, employment-generation programmes, skill development activities and the overall functioning of the groups. The SHG members explained the novel three per cent interest scheme launched by the state government and the benefit accrued from it. The World Bank vice-president, in particular, was appreciative of the initiatives for the physically-challenged persons. Katherine also interacted with local farmers and learned about the innovative sustainable agricultural practices, including pesticide-free farming, adopted by them. She told the SHG members as well as the accompanying government officials that the World Bank would try to adopt certain features of the SHG movement in Andhra Pradesh while formulating programmes for women and child empowerment elsewhere.

Chandrababu-Rajasekhara Reddy: The spit fire

2009-02-11T02:37:00.001+05:30

Desaraju Surya
Hyderabad: For two days, the Andhra Pradesh Assembly witnessed a war of words between Chief Minister Y S Rajasekhara Reddy and Leader of Opposition N Chandrababu Naidu. The issues on which the both crossed swords were: the Satyam Computers scandal, the Maytas projects, the Heritage Foods 'scam', the benami companies floated by Rajasekhara Reddy's son Y S Jaganmohan Reddy and the money laundering indulged in by Jagan, education of Chandrababu's son Lokesh in the United States with alleged funding from Satyam's Ramalinga Raju, the Rs one crore donation handed over to the NTR Trust by three fictitious companies floated by Ramalinga Raju and, of course, the way they brought up their sons.
Day one saw Chandrababu Naidu launch a vitriolic attack on Rajasekhara Reddy while the latter took his turn on the second day for retribution.
Launching a no-holds-barred attack on his arch rival Rajasekhara Reddy, the TDP president accused Andhra Pradesh government of shielding the "guilty" by "blocking" a CBI probe into the Satyam scandal. He also demanded that the Centre order an inquiry into the fraudulent financial transactions of companies promoted by Jaganmohan Reddy. Initiating a debate on the Satyam Computers scandal in the Assembly, the leader of opposition alleged that the Reddy government hastily ordered an inquiry by the Crime Investigation Department into the Satyam Computers scandal only to save its promoter B Ramalinga Raju. "When all major laws, including SEBI, FERA, FEMA, RBI and IT were violated and when the company's operations were spread over 66 countries, how can the CID investigation unearth the truth? It was a fit case for Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) inquiry as the national agency could have co-ordinated with the Interpol to probe deeper into the scandal," Naidu said. It was a clear attempt by the state government to shield the fraudsters through the CID probe which had no locus standi in the case, he lashed out. "The Congress high command has also blocked the CBI investigation into the Satyam scandal only to suppress facts and protect the guilty," he alleged. As the Congress MLAs shouted "Heritage, Heritage", apparently referring to the alleged financial irregularities in the company owned by Naidu's family, he hit back daring the government to conduct an inquiry. Naidu demanded a judicial probe by a sitting judge into the affairs of Satyam Computers, Maytas Infra, Maytas Properties and the 14 'benami' companies allegedly promoted by the CM's son and also Heritage Foods. "The SEBI rules were violated. FEMA, FERA and the RBI Acts have been violated and even the Income Tax Act was breached in the functioning of the 14 companies promoted by the Chief Minister's son. The Government of India should immediately conduct an inquiry," Naidu said. Naidu also took potshots at the CM over the "upbringing" of his son Jagan. He was also irritated by the Chief Minister's "smile". "Why do you laugh so viciously? Why are you staring at me in a furious manner? Would you like to hit me? Come on," he thundered."You (Chief Minister Y S Rajasekhara Reddy) and Ramalinga Raju are similar in nature. Both of you want thousands of acres of land in your kitty. What will you do with such land," Naidu asked. "You better confess to your wrongdoings like Ramalinga Raju did. You too will get some respite from law," he said. Lashing out at Finance Minister K Rosaiah, Naidu said: "Had you, as an elderly man, cautioned YSR and kept a tab on his activities, he would not have landed in such a disgraceful position. But you remained like Dhritarashtra as YSR went about committing many mistakes."
On Day Two, the Chief Minister hit back strongly at the Leader of Opposition saying the latter's family members – promoters of Heritage Foods – too would meet with the same fate as Ramalinga Raju over the alleged financial fraud in the company.
"There is no difference between the financial scandal in Satyam Computers and Heritage Foods. Your family holds 33 per cent stake in Heritage and will land exactly where Ramalinga Raju has now landed (in the jail)," Rajasekhara Reddy said.
"Had he been alive, (Joseph) Goebbels (the late German propaganda minister) would have felt ashamed looking at you," an irate Chief Minister told the Opposition leader.
Rajasekhara Reddy squarely blamed Chandrababu Naidu for the Satyam scandal and the dubious rise of Ramalinga Raju. "Efforts to camouflage the financial irregularities in Satyam Computers and protect its promoters were made under your (Naidu) regime," the Chief Minister alleged and cited a letter written by RPI MP Ramdas Athavle in 2003 and also a report by income tax deputy director S Padmaja in 2002.
By enabling Ramalinga Raju share the dais with the then US President Bill Clinton on his trip to Hyderabad in 2000, Chandrababu as the then Chief Minister contributed to the significant rise of Satyam's share value. As the share value shot up, Ramalinga Raju and his family sold out their stake and purchased thousands of acres of land in the name of 300 companies, the Chief Minister pointed out.
Three benami companies floated by Ramalinga Raju had donated Rs one crore to the NTR Trust run by Chandrababu, he added.
Referring to the Satyam scandal, the Chief Minister noted: "This is a very, very sad story. No one had ever imagined that one of the top-4 software companies in the country would be mired in such a massive fraud. Failure of the Central agencies like SEBI in detecting the fraud is glaring."
Rajasekhara Reddy asserted that the Andhra Pradesh Crime Investigation Department "did its best" in investigating the fraud in Satyam following the disclosure by Ramalinga Raju.
"We have taken a clear and conscious decision to save the company and take its fraudulent management to task as it is the responsibility of both the state and the Central government to safeguard the interests of 53,000 employees," he added.
Rajasekhara Reddy challenged Chandrababu Naidu to complain to the appropriate agencies if there were any irregularities in the functioning of companies floated by his son Jagan.
"There is nothing amiss in the affairs of either Sandur Power Company or other subsidiaries floated by my son Jaganmohan Reddy and business partners. If there is anything wrong, you can approach the proper agencies with your complaint," the Chief Minister sought to say.
The Chief Minister questioned "what's wrong in it?" if shares of Sakshi newspaper floated by his son Jagan were sold at a higher price than the face value. "You find nothing wrong when Eenadu Telugu newspaper's share worth Rs 100 was sold at Rs 5,28,630. But you find fault when a Rs 10 worth share of Sandur Power was sold at Rs 71," Rajasekhara Reddy pointed out.
He alleged that Heritage Foods, a company promoted by Naidu's family, sold Rs 60 crore worth of land for a mere Rs 3 crore to a subsidiary Heritage Infra, thereby causing heavy loss to the shareholders.
"My son Jagan is being dragged into this controversy as he has exposed the fraudulent Heritage deals through his Sakshi newspaper. But this being the Assembly, I can't speak certain 'facts' about your son Lokesh," Rajasekhara Reddy said.
He went on to allege that Lokesh was a roommate of Ramalinga Raju's son in a US University. Naidu, however, rebutted this and said they studied in the same university but did not share a room.