Kapus at the cross-roads

The Kapu quota crusader Mudragada Padmanabham’s much-hyped “Chalo Amaravati Padayatra” scheduled on July 26 from his native Kirlampudi village in East Godavari district ended on expected lines.

The end marks a high-level political drama. The police top brass kept insisting that they needed a formal application from the organisers for according permission to hold public meetings and padayatras.

There is a perceptible anti-Naidu feeling building up in the Kapu community. But they are in a dilemma vis-a-vis their support to either of the two players – Jagan and Pawan.

Pawan is still considered a backroom boy of Chandrababu. Basking in the flaws of his rivals, Chandrababu appears confident of having the last laugh in the game of AP politics polarised along caste lines. He draws solace from the heat of Kapus in the light of BCs becoming united to counter the demand of BC status for Kapus

The `yatrik’ refused to approach the police with such a request and courted house arrest. His yatra might have failed but he succeeded in his underlying mission to keep the embers of the Kapu quota movement alive with the drama and the media glare. Of course, he has to do so in order to sustain his moment for another two years until the 2019 general elections.

The TDP government headed by Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu too is at its best to sustain the momentum of his government’s quota promise up to the elections. Delay in realisation of quota for Kapus for one reason or the other and trying to take the Mudragada’s stride in his favour could be construed as Naidu’s manoeuvres in this direction.

Deployment of a huge contingent of police force in the village and the house arrest added all the spice to the drama. The government appointed the BC Commission in the last week of January 2016 with a mandate to submit recommendations on quota for Kapus in nine months.

It has been one year seven months now and there appears to be no sign of accomplishing the task yet. Mudragada is not aiming for political power while targeting the TDP government as he has no agenda beyond the quota for his community. Film actor Chiranjeevi of the same Kapu community made an abortive bid to project himself as the CM candidate in 2009 elections by floating the Praja Rajyam Party (PRP). Padmanabham doesn’t make such overtures through his movement.

Perhaps, he might have realised the fact that he is a better judge over analysing his self-defeating traits and the typical nature of his community lacking the knack of compatibility with the other communities. This is the lesson anyone from the Kapu community could draw from the Chiru’s flop show.

Kapus represent a major community with 22-30 per cent of voters followed by BCs in the successor state. The Kapus are a decisive factor to tilt the scales of any major claimant for power in the elections. There is a feeling among Kapus that they continued to be bearers of palanquins for either of Kammas and Reddys, who although demographically negligible have been calling the shots in politics since the Independence.

There is a reason best known to Padmanabham himself for his failure to clamour for political power for Kapus under his stewardship. He is considered as a spotless leader in his four-decade long political career. But his typical self-centred style of functioning with little belief in team work and collective leadership and impulsive decisions is bound to result in his movement as one-man show.

With this, the Kapus appear to be at the three-road junction – TDP’s Chandrababu, Jagan’s YSR and Jana Sena’s Pawan Kalyan – with an uncertainty as to which direction they can move on. “There is a perceptible anti-Naidu feeling building up in the Kapu community.

But they are in a dilemma vis-à-vis their support to either of the two players – Jagan and Pawan,” says KPN Satyaprasad, who was associated with the PRP since its inception as a childhood friend of Chiranjeevi from Bhimavaram. Jagan minces no words to back Mudragada’s agitation and that he is quick to woo Kapus in his favour.

He missed the bus in 2014 elections as Chandrababu managed to secure Kapus support with the help of Pawan Kalyan to some extent. Pawan, Chiru’s brother, is still considered as a backroom boy of Chandrababu.

Pawan Kalyan needs to grow his stature as an independent force to reckon with. He has no organisational structure with a pan-AP network yet as well as no fixed political agenda which can substitute the one being pursued by Naidu.

Basking in the flaws of his rivals, Chandrababu appears confident of having the last laugh in the game of AP politics polarised along caste lines. Therefore, he remains cool over the Padmanabham’s agitation. Given the internal contradictions within several sub-castes in the Kapu community, it is unlikely that the community as a whole becomes a consolidated force.

Chandrababu draws solace from the heat of Kapus in the light of BCs becoming united to counter the demand of BC status for Kapus.