andhra pradesh politics, chandrababu naidu

[No migration in Palamur]

The last time I was in Mahbubnagar for an election campaign, I was an angry man. It was in the early summer of 2004. The landscape I saw was bleak. There were only old people and children in the villages, the able-bodied men and women, having taken the buses to Mumbai, Surat, Bangalore or wherever they could find work.

Some gruel centres were being run by responsible organizations, including our party. The old and the very young dragged themselves to these gruel centres after a day of scratching around for work at pitiable wages. The gruel centres were a repudiation of every falsity that Chandrababu Naidu was telling the world. Why were gruel centres needed here when magnificent multiplexes were being built in Chandrababu’s Hyderabad? What had gone wrong in the nine years of Mr Naidu that these proud people were having to eat thin rice gruel at the end of a hard day in the sun?

I was told that nearly 6 lakh people, more than a sixth of the population of 37 lakh, had migrated. The migration peaks in April-May, when labour contractors arrange buses to take the workers away. Afraid that migrant workers would not vote in the crucial election, opposition parties went to the extent of locating the addresses of these workers, pleading with them to come back home to vote the government out.

They returned and voted with their feet.

Today I go back to Mahbubnagar as a proud man, as the representative of a government that has done something to ease the distress in this beautiful and historic district. The work we have done in Mahbubnagar is the proudest thing I have done in my life.We attacked Mahbubnagar’s distress in two ways: first, we got going on building irrigation projects that would give work to these desperate people and solve the drought problem once and for all. Second, our party’s government at the Centre put into practice a scheme that guarantees work for landless labourers. In concert, our state government took up several social welfare schemes that addressed the basic concerns of health and old-age.

The means of achieving the first objective was our Jalayagnam project. We are building four major projects in these districts: Kalwakurthy, Bhima, Nettempad, and Koilsagar. The cost is Rs 7077 crore. But it’s not the cost that is impressive. It is the acreage that will be brought under the plough: 781250 acres. By the end of 2010, benefits will begin gushing out these projects and put Mahbubnagar well on the way to becoming as green as the Krishna, Godavari deltas. I cannot wait to see the sight. No longer will the Krishna flow past sad villages in Mahbubnagar.

The other scheme that is easing the pain of Mahbubnagar is the National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme. Instead of I writing about the impact of this scheme in this district, I’ll just link you to an article by Mr P Sainath, the respected journalist. Please read this and tell me whether there has been any change or not.

I will only say this: The workers staying at home in Mahbubnagar this election season and the absence of any gruel centres are a repudiation of every falsehood that Mr Naidu is telling the people of our state at this very moment. Just as the abject poverty of 2004 was a repudiation of the lies of his nine-year misrule.