I should say I am ‘moved’ by Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister’s singing paeans for Gandhism in the Vijayawada meeting today on the occassion of Gandhi Jayanthi. This tribute to Gandhian principles ‘Vandhe Gandhiyam’ is choreographed and produced by our prime gandhian and honorable MP Lagadapati Rajagopal, whose latest gandhian act has been to trigger a police attack on the genitals of a Government employee, a leader of the NGO union. Nonetheless, off late Kiran Kumar Reddy has been showing outstanding gandhism and deserves to be understood for his spirited speech today. Here is something that illustrates how ardent a follower he is of Gandhi.
When Govt. employees gave a hartal notice, an instrument advocated by mahatma himself, this gandhian’s government made no efforts on their demands and now after 20 days of strike, it is not paying the 7 lakh employees on strike. What is particularly notable is that this is the festive season, with bathukamma and Dussera, the two most important festivals in Telangana. While the employees go without the festive joy, our Gandhian CM is busy pouring his heart about peaceful protests and Gandhi’s methods – like hartal and satyagraha!
With the ongoing Sakala Janula Samme (SJS), the CM took a very gandhian approach of ‘divide and rule’ and violent police oppression. When the drivers and employees of the state road transport corp (APSRTC) went on strike, he made no attempts to have a dialogue and instead pushed unlicensed and inexperienced home guards to drive the city buses in Hyderabad. His gandhian actions killed 3 people and injured scores of pedestrians when the rookie drivers created mayhem on the road in few separate accidents like this.
The most gandhian action is how he is tearing down the livelihood of millions of farmers in Telangana at this moment. While the water reservoirs in the state are full and can generate 65 million units of electricity, this gandhian Government chose to generate only 30 million, thereby creating an artificial electricity deficit and cutting off power in Telangana. The Gandhian CM tells the farmers in Telangana, in this busy season when they are expecting to harvest their crop, that the daily power cut is due to the strike of his Telangana brethren in Singareni colleries. By robbing the Telangana farmer their hard-earned crop, this gandhian proved how to commit genocide without raising a knife! Can anything get more gandhian than this - destroying the livelihood of millions of farmers? Think about their families, the debts they got to pay, the marriages they have to do,..
Of course, I won’t even attempt to start discussing the many other gandhian acts of police repression on peacefully agitating MLAs, MPs – no less. Only the other day, a group of MLAs who resigned months ago in protest against the delay in forming Telangana, shut themselves in the premises of the state legislature to get their resignations accepted. The Governments and the speaker who threw the spirit and procedures of the constitution to the wind won’t accept the resignations, because accepting them would open another front for people of Telangana, through the by-election, to reiterate their right for statehood. This must be the only instance of its kind in the world where supposedly democratic governments won’t accept a resignation of a public representative but instead would kick them around and arrest them!
Even as you read this, soon after the meeting, the chief minister must have gone into a huddle with the esteemed guest Gulam Nabi Azad, the numero uno gandhian Lagadapati and other prominent gandhians like KVP Ramachandra Rao, Botsa Satyanarayana, Devineni Nehru etc to discuss the status of Delhi parleys on Telangana and the more advanced gandhian means and methods to suppress the Telangana movement while deciding on a date and time to reenact the Samaikyandra drama.
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