Hyderabad Blues

Leadership Crisis

A leadership crisis has been sparked off in the YSR Congress following the Supreme Court denying bail to its incarcerated president Jaganmohan Reddy. Except for making some noises every now and then about the Congress conspiracy to keep him in jail, the party has not really reached out to people in a while. Besides, Jagan's mother, Vijayalakshmi, is ineffectual in her speeches and stumbles like a child riding a bicycle on a rail track. So the party has now cast its eye on Sharmila, Jagan's sister and feisty politico in the making. It is likely that the late Y. S. Rajasekhara Reddy's daughter will embark on her own yatra soon. The agenda would remain the same. Conveying to the masses the injustice meted out to YSR's family after his tragic death in a chopper crash.

Back on the Road

With Jagan a likely guest in Chanchalguda jail at least till March 2013, leaders are worried that the youth leader's charisma which is the mainstay of the party is fading from public memory. So if 34-year-old Sharmila takes over the reins of the YSR Congress, at least the youth and charisma factors are taken care of. Jagan was initially said to be cold to the idea of his sister taking up a major role but it now appears that the party has no option. Hence, starting October 18, Sharmila will embark on a padayatra similar to her father's. Termed Maro Praja Prasthanam, Sharmila's padayatra will last six months and cover 125 constituencies. She will start walking from the family's Idupulapaya estate and end the padayatra in Ichhapuram. The idea is to keep walking till Jagan comes out of jail and takes over the party once again. YSR Congress leaders insist that the padayatra patent belongs to YSR's family alone and the rest are poor copies. They term Naidu's 117-day tour as laughable. "Does he think it is a movie that will run for 100 days?" asks party spokesperson Ambati Rambabu. "And in all media footage that we see, Naidu is feeding someone but never eating again with the same hand. This shows that the TDP president lacks sincerity," he says. Sharmila's Prasthanam aims to "expose the failures of the State government and the Congress' nexus with the TDP in the Jagan case". But the primary idea is to revive the spirit of the party cadre.

The Other Yatri 

Chandrababu Naidu in the meantime is pulling out all stops in his Vastunna Meekosam yatra. He is promising the moon and stars as well to voters. Among his list of promises are 10 LPG cylinders in a year on subsidy, a women's bank specifically to meet the needs of self-help groups, a pension of Rs 1,500 for the physically challenged and loan schemes for women. Something else Naidu is promising is a Cheera-Saare scheme for newly-married women. They would gift a new saree and other valuables needed to start a new life. Muslim women would receive Rs 50,000 for  marriage expenses and poor girl children would be provided free education from LKG to post-graduation. There are other sops in education, employment and college fees. The long list does leave one breathless. While all the other parties are going all out to term Naidu's yatra a sham, the TRS has invented a phrase of its own to describe the same. "Naidu's Vastunna Meekosam (Coming for you) yatra should actually be called Chhastunna Kurchi Kosam (Dying for the CM's gaddi)," says K. T. Rama Rao, TRS MLA. PCC chief Botsa Satyanarayana calls it Vastunna Naa Kosam (Coming to you to revive my chances). 

Police Profiling

A Muslim scholar from the Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai, who was in the city for research on terror cases faced rough treatment at the hands of police officers. Sharib Ali and a friend Mohd Ismail Khan who is a student at Osmania University fixed an appointment with Rajvardhan Reddy, a lawyer representing one of the blast accused in the Mecca Masjid blast case. However, Reddy got suspicious and called the police complaining about Sharib Ali. Ali was then taken to a police station and questioned. His passport, ID card and letter from the institute were checked and Ali was told to pose for a photograph at the Malakpet police station. The Civil Liberties Monitoring Committee has strongly condemned the manner in which the scholar was treated simply because he was a Muslim. But police personnel say that they let Ali off after verifying his antecedents.

The Hyderabadi Eshtyle

The Oktoberfest at N Convention centre owned by actor Nagarjuna saw several Hyderabadis put on their party shoes and shake a leg while guzzling beer. Till a decade back, a Hyderabadi's idea of party wear was a round necked tee-shirt, jeans and Nike shoes. But these days, young girls show off their gym-toned bodies in itsy-bitsy dresses while flicking their chemically straightened hair off their perfectly made-up faces. The men, well, they remain the same. DJs no longer play the Summer of '69 as soon as they unpack their laptops and sound systems. It is Psy's Gangnam Style which is more of a mood-setter these days. This number is a flying rage after Kolaveri Di. But really, when will Hyderabadis learn how to dance? An average citizen's idea of grooving is to raise the right hand up in the air and swing violently from left to right. And if that's done with, jump up and down while clapping both hands in the air. When the beer takes over and these two patented moves are exhausted, the enthusiastic disco deewanes hold hands and run around in a circle, lifting each leg up alternately, tripping over each other very often. Surely, even abdominal exercises in the gym appear more graceful.