YSR.. the visionary??

Well.. I m not stopping the 'What if??' series.. I shall continue it by providing discussions to the posted questions..

As we all know, it was a major tragedy for the AP state Congress yesterday. YSR has been missing since Wednesday. After 24 hrs his track on air was lost, the chopper was traced and his body was recovered. By that time, a long night in the jungle along with a deal of rainfall sufficiently heavy to decompose the burnt body has happened and the body was eventually wrapped up in clothes for display.

I've been rather bewildered at the media's (all regional news channels) remarks about YSR for the last 3 days, to be honest. First of all, they started off with quotes like 'The visionary leader missing', 'Our beloved CM missing', etc., As time progressed by and finally when his death was declared at the crash site, the quotes were changed to 'The greatest visionary leader', 'Apara bhagiratha', 'The best CM till date', etc., Keeping this aside, even after 9 hrs have passed after the chopper had gone missing and search operations were going on, they were still debating during the night on the reasons why "YSR has not communicated yet".

This shows how much ignorant the media (regional news channels) are about chopper crashes. First of all, its not the duty of the 'Visionary CM' to communicate if there has been an emergency landing. It is the protocol of the pilot when an emergency landing really happens and he will definitely stick to it. Secondly, when a chopper has gone missing without any 'distress signal', after some time of no communication from pilot, it can be safely assumed that it is not good news. Of all the TV channels that did an exclusive coverage on this search mission, only CNN-IBN was pointing to these really significant points. In contrast to this, the regional channels were simply encouraging the innocent average viewer to pray to God that YSR would return safe and continues to hold the office !!

In addition to this, the very news channels, that discussed about the failures of YSR's last term and stuff a week before he died, started regarding him as 'The greatest visionary CM', 'Apara bhagiratha', etc., Now I ask this question, "Does a person really become a hero after he has died?" It is not any kind of rule that we need to regard people by false praises when they die. A person's deeds, whether they are good or bad, will always remain the same even if he dies. No one needs to mask either the good things or the bad things. It would be sheer 'unintelligent hypocrisy' if one does so.

Talking about YSR in particular, many people who offered their condolences on-screen regarded him as 'The greatest visionary leader'. I could not understand how he was visionary. It is true that YSR did not care about creating wealth in the state in his term of 5 years. He simply distributed and increased freebies like Pensions, Fee reimbursements, Houses and the highly regarded Arogyasri, etc., Its a hard fact that he did not even bother about losing huge projects like Volkswagon and Tata Nano which would increase the productivity of the state, boost the economy of AP and create some lakhs of jobs. Lets not forget how much passive he has been in the KG basin issue recently.

Coming to the aspect of agricultural focus which, according to YSR, was given the highest priority in the last term, we have seen a complete U turn. Even the much awaited 'Polavaram project' has seen nothing more than a foundation stone that was laid some 4 years back. In spite of the good rainfall for the last 5 years, the agricultural productivity has not increased much. The price of rice has got tripled now and no comments on the price of Red gram (its around 120 INR per kg in AP presently). And YSR recently  in an assembly session advised the people of Andhra to take 'sturdy rice' and 'mattar' instead of the above foods !!

In this way 'The multi-faceted YSR' has also become a nutritional expert  giving senseless diet charts to people instead of giving a subsidy on food items in the recently proposed state budget. Even the state budget was ridiculous. Only 26 crores of capital expenditure were allocated for Energy and industries whereas 15,361 crores were for agriculture and  irrigation. 532 crores were allocated to health, uplift of scheduled castes and housing. Only God knows how many crores in these 15361+532 would be misused in the single year of 2009.

I did not mean that increasing pensions, giving fee reimbursements and freebies is wrong. But at the same time, much focus needs to be given on the 'wealth creating schemes'. The Government cannot simply allocate its annual budget to distribute freebies. The tax money needs to be used for these welfare activities. Increasing employment opportunities creates wealth and increases the number of tax payers. This in turn needs to be allocated for the freebies and stuff. Simply ignoring these things and running the state will definitely increase the 'vote-bank' for the party. But it would simply destroy the state's economy somewhere in the near future.

YSR was definitely 'The greatest visionary' in the perspective of AP congress party. But he is 'One of the worst Administrators' in the perspective of AP state welfare. One thing here, he does not become a 'great leader' when he gets elected for the second term by means of freebies. Even if common people embrace him, the facts speak for themselves and it would be totally the stupidity of someone who ignores these things.

I thank myself for not presenting the scandals in which YSR faced several allegations in this post. Its ironic that YSR is finally buried at 'Idupulapaya' which has become the biggest land scandal in the beginning of his previous term.

May his soul rest in the very magnitude of peace that he created in the state !! I think this is a fair statement.


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