Congress and its Indiramma Sambaralu

Congress is now into its third phase of Indiramma Sambaralu. For those who know little about these celebrations, let us tell you, the Congress during its rule has done several pro-poor activities in which one is the Gruha kalpa scheme under which they claim to have constructed lakhs of houses for the poor.

At several of these speeches, YSR has been seen becoming very emotional. He first highlights all the good things, then gives the statistics for everyone to see the facts, and finally he requests the people to compare the development programs of Congress and TDP and see for themselves what difference the Congress is making for them.

While this is on one side, we have had cases of thousands of poor people complaining during these meetings that the real beneficiaries are not getting any houses. We have had an NRI lodging a complaint regarding how a Construction company has cheated him of crores of rupees under these schemes. We have farmer suicides, farmer injustice in sale of cotton and so on.

Lot of things seem to be looking good on paper, but not all that good in reality. It is also true that while some get benefited, some will always remain outside this bracket. And, we haven't even started talking about how Lok Satta, TDP, Praja Rajyam and other parties have challenged Congress to publish white papers on the money spent. They all feel that a lot of public money is being diverted by selfish people before it is reaching the people.

It is has been seen time and again in the last four and half years that the Congress has had a lot of difficultly in being transparent in their Governance. In spite of repeated complaints from Opposition, Congress resorted only to counter-allegations but has never really accepted a challenge and acted more answerably. However, transperancy, answerablity, and performance are now becoming the need of the hour as people are becoming more and more aware. Unless Congress tries become more transparent in AP, it is running the risk of losing faith in people, in spite of its performance.