YS Jagan, AP’s Hope For A Better Tomorrow

By Reshmi AR

YS Jagan Mohan Reddy is a force to reckon with, not just in regional politics, but on the national stage. The YSRCP supremo has proved this over and over again from the time that he took on the mantle of his father, following YS Rajasekhara Reddy's sudden and tragic demise.

He decided to chart his own political course refusing to bow down to the diktats of the ivory-towered high command of the Congress party and its state leaders in undivided Andhra Pradesh.

In terms of political challenges which lay ahead, he had a mountain to climb, but the YSRCP chief took on the immoral combine of the TDP and Congress with single-handed determination.

Also Read: YS Jagan, A Mass Leader Whose Words Match Deeds

The entire state of undivided Andhra Pradesh, as also the rest of the country watched in shock and disbelief as TDP and Congress came together to persecute him. However, for YS Jagan, this period proved to be political baptism by fire, as it were and he emerged taller and stronger as a powerful political figure.

The chord he struck in the hearts of the common citizens on his Odarpu Yatra,which he undertook to console the families of those who died of shock following his father's demise, made the nation stand up and take notice of this young politician, who established a deep grassroots connect with the people of Andhra Pradesh. In YS Jagan, people saw a mirror-image of his father, in his promises they saw a hope of the return of the golden epoch of the late Dr. YSR and behind his actions they knew that here was a leader who like his legendary father, matched words with deeds.The 2014 Lok Sabha and Assembly elections saw the BJP-TDP combine trying to stave off the challenge posed by the emerging leader.

The Congress had already been reduced to a rump in AP and had lost all semblance of credibility. The results of the 2014 elections showed that the TDP riding the Modi wave across the country, was only marginally ahead and soon Chandrababu Naidu and his cronies turned it into a synonym for corruption. YS Jagan, as Leader of the Opposition, exposed scam after scam, be it with respect to the new capital of Amaravati, the Polavaram project or sand mining mafias among several others, unmasking the real face of the TDP. It became clear to the masses that the TDP rule was a sordid saga of corruption.

The tremendous ground-level response that the YSRCP chief's Praja Sankalpa Yatra has been evoking has sent shivers down the collective spine of the TDP top brass.The Yatra, already in its last phase in Srikakulam after coursing through twelve districts , is a walkathon that YS Jagan has embarked upon to get a first hand report on people’s problems. Wherever he has been going, people have come in street after street, village after village and town after town spontaneously pouring out their woes certain that the legendary YSR’s son would usher in Rajanna Rajyam with his Navarathnalu. The YSRCP manifesto which will encompass Navarathnalu proposes to provide a tangible solution to every single problem that he has encountered and that the people from all walks of life are facing on a day-to-day basis.

Even as he laments that his father's people-friendly schemes are being watered down by the TDP government, YS Jagan holds out the promise of a better tomorrow for Andhra Pradesh where every citizen’s needs are taken care of without any bias.

Incidentally, even as these words are being penned, the YSRCP Chief is quietly celebrating his birthday amidst the common masses understanding their problems, empathizing with their condition and assuring them that he would stand by them through thick and thin.

Also Read: YS Jagan’s Padayatra Nearing Finish Line