Land for tiller – was once a famous slogan, mostly popular among the Communists. Media baron Cherukuri Ramoji Rao was also a hard core Communist activist.
Even now, he has a lot of soft corner towards Communists and there is a talk that he liberally donates funds to the Left parties and their meetings.
So, naturally, Ramoji must also be very fond of this “Land for tiller” slogan. But the times are changing now and so do slogans. May be the land for tiller has now changed to “land only for those who can till.”
Ramoji Film City is surrounded by hundreds of acres of barren land. The erstwhile Y S Rajasekhar Reddy government assigned this land to some landless people.
But none of them could till the land because it is full of rocks and hillocks. So, they could neither till the land nor could construct a house over there.
Had it been Ramoji Rao, he would have perfectly used the land by constructing a villa on a hillock or a film setting on another.
He could have even converted the hilly terrain into a forest for shooting purposes. Only Ramoji has the capacity and not the common farmers.
For that matter, even Telangana chief minister K Chandrasekhar Rao is also a common man, because he too cannot till the land.
During the peak of the Telangana agitation, he declared that the moment Telangana state was formed, he would get the entire Ramoji Film City razed to the ground and till the land with thousands of ploughs.
But after coming to power, KCR could not fulfil his promise. May be he had no thousand ploughs or two thousand bullocks.
So, what did he do? He simply expressed his inability to till the land of the Ramoji Film City. Not only that he surrendered more than 300 acres of land surrounding the film city to Ramoji Rao, saying the government cannot till the land.
Moreover, he even said there was no way the land could be measured because it is not horizontal but is a hilly terrain. So, the Revenue department authorities did not even bother to measure the land and handed it over to Ramoji Rao.
What can he do when everybody expressed their inability to till the land worth over Rs 30 crore? And KCR also took enough precautions to pre-empt protests from the farmers who were given this assigned land.
He said the money generated from the sale of land to RFC would be distributed among the land assignees. So, khel khatam!
Only Ramoji can till the land. So, land belongs to only him!
