Praja Sankalpa Yatra Diary, Day 31: People Get Auction Notices Instead Of Promised Gold Under TDP Rule 

Kuderu, Anantapur District: I set out on my Padayatra from here at 8:30 this morning. All along the route of the padayatra, people in large numbers have been walking along with me, pouring out their problems of diverse kinds. Listening to them, it became evident that the government has been insensitive and completely indifferent to the plight of all sections of society. In other words, it has not spared any segment of society when it comes to ignoring their plight!

A retired bank employee approached me with some documents and when I looked closely at them, I discovered that they were newspaper notifications announcing the sale of gold pledged with banks against loans. He had pledged the gold that his family had and now the government issued auction notices after promising loan waivers!

Farmers took agricultural loans pledging their precious gold ornaments because Chandrababu Naidu has promised to waive off these loans. The gullible farmers believed him and thought that the gold they had pledged with the banks could be claimed by them once the loans were waived by the government. After all, this was one of the promises made by Chandrababu Naidu. Sure enough TDP came to power. And the farmers got notices from banks asking them to clear the loans failing which the gold they had pledged would be auctioned.

I met a farmer Venkat Reddy along the way. As it turns out, he needs a transformer for power supply to irrigate his fields and was told that he owed 2700 rupees as surcharge, which he offered to pay. He wanted the work to get done and approached officials of the electricity department with this request. However they told him that they would give one transformer to two farmers. If Venkat Reddy was ready to clear the dues of another farmer, they would give him the transformer he requested, the authorities told him! This bizarre logic baffled Venkat Reddy beyond description.

His simple question to them was--why should I clear the dues of someone else? However, electricity department officials persisted with this is logic devoid of any reason. Without a transformer Venkat Reddy’s agricultural activity has been suffering. This only shows the apathetic attitude of the state government towards farmers. Needless to say, there are thousands of farmers like Venkat Reddy in this region whose condition is pitiable, to say the least.

I set foot in Uravakonda in Singanamala constituency of the district and as soon as I reached this place, I was reminded of the Handri-Neeva Sujala Sravanthi project. Water from this project has not reached the villages of this region even though 80% of the work on this water supply project had been completed during my late father Dr. YSR’s tenure. Five long years ago, water from the Krishna river had reached Jeedipally reservoir and farmers had hoped that water would soon turn this region into a lush green agricultural belt. It was with this fervent hope that they parted with a section of their land.

The irony today is that while the canal there has water in full flow, water supply does not reach the fields in this area because work on the distributaries has not been completed. In this constituency alone, 80,000 acres would get irrigated if the work on distributaries get done and in all, 1,80,000 acres would get irrigated in the first phase of the project. The government however, has turned a blind eye to the distributary network and to irrigating the fields of this region.

In conclusion, I have a question for Mr. Chandrababu Naidu. Why is it that you have ignored what little is left of the project work on the Handri-Neeva Scheme? Is it because you are afraid that the credit for this pioneering project would be attributed to my father the late Dr. YSR? Why have you chosen to neglect the small part of the work which would see the completion of this project? Is it fair on your part to ignore the humanitarian crisis which the farmers of Anantapur have been facing and instead look at the problem through a political lens? When farmers are committing suicides after having been betrayed by you on the promise of loan waivers and after having sunk deeper into a worsening crisis of debts are you not responsible for this deepening agricultural crisis and the suicide of farmers? Are these not political murders?