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Pink summit prelude to polls
The plenary of Telangana Rashtra Samiti (TRS), which will meet here on Friday, is expected to reflect on farmers’ welfare measures that the government had initiated thus far, the political direction the party intends to give to the nation and attend to grey areas in the party which might play spoilt sport in the elections.
Hyderabad: The plenary of Telangana Rashtra Samiti (TRS), which will meet here on Friday, is expected to reflect on farmers’ welfare measures that the government had initiated thus far, the political direction the party intends to give to the nation and attend to grey areas in the party which might play spoilt sport in the elections.
Of all the welfare programmes that KCR has come up with, Rythu Bandhu, is being dubbed as the mother of all such schemes as it is intended to give a new lease of life to the farmers. The scheme, which is being rolled out on May 10, is sure to benefit KCR at the hustings if it is done properly, not missing out any farmer and not giving any scope for any controversy.
The mega event will leave no one in doubt over who is the most formidable political force in the state. The huge hoardings everywhere in Hyderabad and elsewhere in the state speaks of the importance the party is according to the event which should turbo-charge the party workers till the elections.
The managers of the pink summit want the TRS to win the psychological war with the Congress by unnerving it with its sheer size. The Chief Minister is expected to explain the efforts he has made so far in building a federal front to a serve as an alternative to the Congress and the BJP.
He will also narrate to the delegates the details of his meetings with his West Bengal counterpart Mamata Banerjee and JD(S) chief HD Deve Gowda and others. The TRS leaders are quite upbeat over the preparations for rollout of Rythu Bandhu almost coming to an end just ahead of the plenary programme as it has the potential to be a game changer, pushing the Congress, principal opposition party in the state, to a corner and rallying farmers behind the TRS.
The scheme which will benefit about 70 lakh farmers in the state has an allocation of Rs 12,000 crore. Each farmer, regardless of how much land he has, would get Rs 4,000 per acre as agriculture input for kharif and an equal amount for rabi. For kharif, the government has set aside Rs 6,000 crore of which Rs 2,000 crore would be disbursed in the first leg of the programme beginning on May 10.
At the plenary, Rythu Bandhu is expected to be discussed where the TRS top leadership would explain to the party machinery how it could chip in, in making the scheme popular. Already Information Technology Minister K T Rama Rao is positioning himself as the master of ceremonies at the plenary and has already begun entrusting responsibilities to the party leaders as to how they should go about ensuring that the message of good work that is being done by the government will reach the people.
KCR, who knows well which side of his bread should be buttered, had dreamed up the scheme just one year before the elections. It has taken even the Centre off guard given the political returns it promises. Chandrasekhar Rao himself had said that that Home Minister Rajnath Singh had praised him profusely for coming up with such a scheme to benefit farmers.
Under the scheme, the money would be handed over to the farmers so that they could use it for purchasing inputs like seeds, fertilizers or pesticides and be done with it.
No repayment, nothing. After conceiving the programme to help farmers, KCR had also come up with his own idea of creating an infrastructure for implementing the programme to derive maximum political benefit from it. By creating Telangana State Farmers’ Coordination Committee and appointing MP G Sukhender Reddy as its chairman, he had ensured that the TRS would be the principal political beneficiary of the government’s largesse.
Though he faced criticism that the Farmers Coordination Committee would emerge as a parallel institution to the department of agriculture and the BJP slamming him for bribing farmers into voting for TRS in the next election, KCR ignored the criticism as he knew the kind of political benefit he would get by creating the Coordination Committee.
The new institution would have a state-level body, then similar bodies at district, mandal and village level. Each committee at all these levels would have TRS workers as members. A pastmaster in political craft, KCR knows how to be ahead of his rivals. As Congress leaders are fighting among themselves, KCR is all set to steal the show at the plenary.
By: R Prithvi Raj
