Yet another year is coming to a close for Telangana chief minister K Chandrasekhar Rao and within a few months, he is going to enter the election year.
Going by the media reports, KCR appears to have an eventful year, as he has introduced several schemes seemingly for the welfare of various sections of people.
But what he has done in the last one year has really failed to impress the people and an anti-establishment wave is silently spreading across Telangana, say political observers.
During the last one year, KCR tried to woo a cross section of people, especially backward classes in the name of distribution of sheep, cattle, implements etc.
At the same time, he also tried to impress Brahmins, Christians and Muslims by announcing sops. However, on the ground, these schemes have failed to reach the actual beneficiaries.
The chief minister sought to win over the Muslims by getting a bill passed in the assembly increasing their reservations from four to 12 per cent and that of STs by three per cent. But in reality, the promise remained on paper.
The double bedroom scheme has not taken off in several constituencies, while the KG to PG scheme remained a non-starter.
The irrigation project works seem to be on full swing but are facing several legal hurdles. The government received setbacks in courts with regard to payment of compensation for project evacuees.
The increasing number of farmers’ suicides has created a lot of unrest among the rural masses.
The biggest issue that has generated a lot of negative impact on the TRS government was the Nerella incident in which the police tortured Dalits and OBCs for opposing the sand mafia of the TRS leaders.
The lack of distribution of land to Dalits and fighting between the Lambadas and Adivasis are also turning against the government.
Yet, KCR sought to overcome the negative factors by putting up big shows like the public meeting at Warangal on the occasion of TRS plenary, Global Entrepreneurship Summit, launch of Metro Rail in Hyderabad, World Telugu Conference etc to divert the people’s attention.
He thought by making cosmetic changes in the city and bringing lakhs of people from rural areas to Hyderabad, he would get a tremendous boost to his image.
It remains to be seen how far he would turn the tide in his favour in the next one year.
