Waiting for customers at his small soft drinks shop in Vepala Singaram village, 50-year-old Sheik Saibaba, a staunch Congress loyalist, is yet to recover from the scale of victory notched up by the ruling Telangana Rashtra Samithi (TRS) in the just-concluded byelection to the Huzurnagar Assembly constituency in Nalgonda district. The outcome of the bypoll is a classic case for study by a political scientist but one has to be far removed from the intellectual discourses we get to hear in air-conditioned rooms and television studios without a sense of what is happening on the ground.
The victory in itself wasn’t that surprising given that ruling parties have an advantage in any byelection but the 40,000 plus margin is what shocked the Opposition and people alike even as it came as a pleasant surprise to the pink party. It is significant for a variety of reasons, prominent among them being: a) the constituency had always been with the Congress since its formation in 2009; b) it was vacated by no less a person than the State Congress president as recently as this May following his election to the Lok Sabha from Nalgonda of which Huzurnagar is a part; c) the polling happened in the middle of a prolonged strike by workers of the state road transport corporation for which the KCR government came under considerable flak.
Yet, nothing mattered in the end. Like Sheik Saibaba abuses his village sarpanch for switching to the TRS after having won with Congress support very recently, adversaries of the ruling party accuse it of buying up local leaders who could influence the voters’ mind. Others allege that the TRS lured voters by offering them twice the amount the Congress candidate gave. But these are minor factors in an electoral game that appears to be undergoing a fundamental change.
Long-term issues are no longer at play, it’s sentiment that matters and when it comes to that, no other party can claim greater moral authority than the TRS. Material gains do matter and people no longer talk secretively about it. K Lakshmaiah is livid that Congress chief Uttam Kumar Reddy, whose wife was the contestant, pampered those who are never loyal. “If those who were with him shifted loyalties for gains, what is wrong if we accept money? If the Congress cannot take care of us, why should we suffer for the sake of the party,” he asks, sitting in a cloth store in Huzurnagar town.
When TDP-turned-Congress leader Revanth Reddy addressed a public meeting in the town, an estimated 10,000 people attended on their own. However, when the EVMs were opened for counting, the TRS secured majority in almost all of the 302 booths in the constituency. Though reckoned as the only decent speaker the Congress can currently boast of, hailing from the distant Mahboobnagar district, he hardly had any connect with the local voter.
Not surprisingly, people believed that being with the party in power could help the constituency develop. “The aged are getting pension, farmers are getting financial support and Rs 1 lakh is given for the marriage of any girl. We will do more,” TRS nominee Saidi Reddy would tell the voter.
Agrees, Satyanarayana, who works in one of the 20 cement factories in the constituency. “There was hardly any development that Uttam could bring between 2014 and 2019 when the TRS was in power. In any case, he is now elected to the LS. The Congress is neither in power at the Centre nor in State. What would we gain if we vote for his wife now?” was one of the factors that tilted the balance.
As one travels from Kodad to Huzurnagar, lush green paddy fields greet you. Rains have been copious, farmers have been getting uninterrupted power supply and fiscal support, and cement factories are doing well thanks to the booming real estate. Overall, there is no serious reason for the voter to be disenchanted with the dispensation. If the impression of those sitting in the capital was that the RTC strike would dent the prospects of the ruling party, the ground reality was completely different. It was not even a point of discussion during the poll campaign.
According to Saidulu, an RTC driver, when they tried to explain to the voter the “indifferent attitude” of the government towards them, their response was: “you are fighting for your wages. Why should our choice of voting be influenced by it? In any case, the hundreds of shared autos that are now available in every village have changed the very nature of public transport.”
“Long Live workers’ unity” or “Solidarity with the striking workers”, the kind of slogans that one used to see on walls in the past is a thing of the past. In the age of the digital world, there is a clear decoupling of issues with polls, intra-community bonding is lost and one can’t look for a sense of solidarity. The loyalty, if it exists, is to the smartphone and the kind of information that is disseminated on social media platforms.
The Leftists have long lost their relevance. The CPI, which had initially backed the TRS, withdrew its support later following the RTC strike but back in the constituency, locals say communists happily went around canvassing for the TRS.
Add to all this, the poll strategies that KCR is renowned for. Like in a football match, house-to-house marking has been done based on the voters list and an in-charge assisted by multiple people has been appointed for every booth. They camped at the local level for well over a month, touching each and every voter and making sure they back the TRS.
If they have to stay relevant, there appears to be only one option for the Opposition: go back to the basics. It’s time they shut their offices in the capital, start engaging with the people on a continuous basis and take the fight to the rival camp, rather than indulge in rabble-rousing on TV screens.
G S VASU
Editor, The New Indian Express
vasu@newindianexpress.com