1
Politics is all about power and the state power is meant to acquire ownership over the state assets. The welfare of the people is only a byproduct of competitive politics. Once you acquire ownership through political power, you can do whatever you desire. You can sell off the government and farmers’ lands, mortgage or transfer them to corporates, you can buy luxury buses and cars for your tours, you can renovate camp office and office with hundreds of crore, you can even rebuild them in the name of vastu, you can demolish buildings, get new ones constructed… all with peoples’ money. It’s this ownership that engenders the fiercest battles in politics.
Anybody(no need to cite names)who is in politics plays the game only to win the ownership of the vast estate called state.
2
Politicians, however, should not be too obsessed with this motive to gain power. This is bad politics and It would jeopardize the basic objective. Jagan’s political career is marred by bad politics from the very beginning itself. He earned notoriety as a son who tried to sit on thrown through a signature coup even before the funeral rites completed to his dead father. How far it is true, whether Jagan is directly involved in it or not, or some J-zealots did all this is immaterial now . But it had become a major sources of embarrassment for Jagan. It is difficult to erase this episode from the memories of the people.
Everybody was under the impression that Jagan was a man in a hurry and he himself spoiled his chances of becoming chief minister. All his hard labor, Odarpu Yatras, fierce speeches, YSR good will and even the belated-stubborn stand he took against the partition of the state could not save him from the ignominy of the defeat in 2014. Reason, the bad politics he practiced. He was too obsessive with the post of chief minister. Ask anybody in state, pat comes the reply, “had he been a bit patient, he would have become the chief minister in 2014.”
3
The dharna, he organized near CRDA office in Vijayawada on Wednesday, was clearly an indication to the replaying of the old tragicomedy. The program was meant to organize farmers against the forcible and undemocratic way of acquisition of fertile lands by the government to build a ‘world-class’ capital. It was definitely not the time to talk about becoming chief minister. He should have resisted the urge to tell the people that no force on earth could stop him from becoming chief minister. He should have confined himself to the issues of capital and politics of TDP.
He clearly and unwittingly announced to the whole world that he was organizing these struggle to become chief minister. He also forecast the political fall of chief minister Chandrababu Naidu. His obsession with the post of chief minister was so strong that he got slipped into a delirium of one-upmanship which has not gone down well with those who were observing him from afar. It was clear that what was happening there at the dharna was not the fight for justice, but a fight to settle scores with Chandrababu Naidu.
“Since Chandrababu Naidu is determined to build the capital, It should be opposed with equal determination as an opposition leader” was what his speech conveyed to the people across the state. It appeared as if he was organizing dharna with a sole motive of becoming chief minister rather than coming to the aide of the farmers, who are set to lose multi-crop and uniquely fertile lands. Till then, the TDP, which had been on the defensive on capital lands issue, grabbed the opportunity to launch an aggressive attack on him for this “would be chief minister” remark. Not only the ministers, even the intellectuals at the Special Status Sadhana Samiti had to appeal the political parties not attempt to settle scores using problems of the people.
4
This too much obsession with the post of chief minister, when the elections are too far away, has the potential to derail his agitational politics. It may earn him tons of cheers from his cheerleaders and those affected farmers, but it would hardly please others who are outside the pen of YSRCP.
