Same old state

Laxmi Raju, 24, was once an active Janashakti cadre. ‘‘The TRS is sure to win this time. There is strong support for the party,’’ he says. Karimnagar MP, K Chandrashekara Rao, just quit his post in response to a ‘‘challenge’’ by a Congress MLA. ‘‘He was in the centre for almost two years but the Telangana state still hasn’t come through. Nothing has happened,’’ says Raju. But he adds that he is still loyal to the TRS and will vote for him.

‘‘There are supporters of other parties as well in the village,’’ says Kumar, ‘‘but they can’t be open about their loyalties because they are afraid of the Maoists,’’ he says simply. Manas Raju, a fifty year-old farmer pipes in, ‘‘There is no water here—we need pipes to brought here. We have no roads here, while even smaller villages have concrete roads.’’ Ask him what he thinks of a separate Telangana state—the TRS’s main agenda—and he says, ‘‘that should happen. We need our own state. But we also need development, and that hasn’t happened.’’

The ex-Naxalites agree. ‘‘We don’t know if the Telangana state will ever come through. But whether it does or not, we know that we need basics like the bus-stop and roads.’’ Every time someone mentions a bus-stop, others present nod their heads in agreement, and begin discussing how the construction of a bus-stop was once begun, but never completed.

These former Naxals are not farmers. They all do small odd jobs around the village or drive autos. Less than a kilometre away, Puttu Suresh’s family is sitting in their little mud house next to their cotton field. ‘‘There’s no way the TRS will win this election,’’ he says in the Telugu peculiar to the Telangana districts. ‘‘He came here with the promise of Telangana, but nothing happened. He came once every few months and spoke of Telanagana but nothing happened. He was there in Delhi for more than two years, but no Telangana. People here are angry with him for that,’’ says Raju. The only English word Raju speaks is ‘‘referendum’’. He says, ‘‘Only if this election is a referendum for Telangana will we vote for the TRS, then he will certainly win.’’

Raju’s joint family has fields of cotton and maize. ‘‘More than 200 acres of cotton were ruined by the rains in the village. Almost 25 per cent of my fields have been washed out,’’ he says. On the demand for a separate state, he says, ‘‘We need our own identity. But that may never happen. But what we really need is development—we need the water pipe from the Lower Manair Dam to come to us, we need roads, we need irrigation.’’

Closer to the state highway is another village that shares many of Nukalamarri’s problems. But Marpaka differs in one important way. It doesn’t figure in police records as ‘Naxal afflicted’. Marpaka is also home to former Union Minister Vidyasagar Rao, the BJP’s candidate for the election. The sarpanch of the village, CH Swamprada, is an active TDP worker, and also Rao’s niece. ‘‘If Vidyasagar Rao contests, then this village will vote for the BJP or else it will be the TDP,’’ she says. The TRS, according to her, has no chance in the village.

Unlike Nulkalamarri, the people here are clear that the issue of development is much more important than Telangana. Hanumantha Rao, chairman of the Village Water Users Committee, takes us to the irrigation tank of the village. ‘‘For many years we had drought. This year, we put sandbags on the sides of the tank to keep water in but the flood washed them all away. Not much of the water stayed, now we just have enough for two months,’’ he says. The village depends mostly on water tankers from Karimnagar for water. ‘‘Every month the village spends Rs 25,000 on water,’’ says the Sarpanch. Here too, about 25 per cent of the crops have been ruined. With black cotton soil, both the villages grow cotton, maize and red gram. Next to the tank is acres of paddy fields, but years of drought have rendered them waste and they are now overrun by thorny Babul trees. ‘‘We need to desilt the tank, clear out the paddy fields, and start cultivating them,’’ says Hanumanth Rao.

‘‘Telangana hona ya na hona, development to hona,’’ he says with conviction.