Anantapur: It is not just the direct benefit transfer (DBT) schemes paid out welfare money but also developing a foolproof system for their effective delivery at the beneficiaries’ doorstep, besides offering numerous other services through the village and ward secretariats, that has endeared Chief Minister Y.S. Jagan Mohan Reddy to the people.
However, the narrowing down of the YSRC voter base to these beneficiaries is a cause of concern to the ruling party contestants from the two erstwhile Rayalaseema districts of Anantapur and Kurnool, which have a combined strength of 26 Assembly segments and four Lok Sabha seats. In the absence of any wave for or against the government, a keen contest is on cards in many of these seats.
“My mother waited for five years during Telugu Desam rule and never got pension. She used to make the rounds of government offices. After the change of government in 2019, she was granted pension within three months and availed it for a few months before she died with a sense of satisfaction,” said Padma, owner of a roadside hotel.
This summed up the success of saturation mode adopted by the YSRC government for the disbursal of old age pensions. “This was against restricted release of pensions by the previous government,” Padma added.
While the men gathered at her hotel spoke ill of the taste of liquor they get these days, that too at an exorbitant price, and some of whom even condemned the arrest of Telugu Desam president N. Chandrababu Naidu at “such an old age”, another woman, a shopkeeper adjacent to the hotel, extended her wholehearted support to “Jagananna”. The reason, she said, pointing to her school-going daughter, was the payment of Rs 15,000 under “Amma Vodi” a scheme to discourage school drop-outs.
The beneficiaries were happy over the volunteers delivering the pension amount at their doorstep which they said was helpful to the elderly and the differently-abled. “Last month, old people suffered because they had to walk all the way to the offices to collect their pension,” complained Kondappagari Krishna Reddy, resident of Bondireddypalli, once a faction-ridden village near Raptadu in Anantapur district.
The village secretariats helped the ruling party enhance its image by seamlessly offering a whopping 545 state-related services and another 200 of the Central government. “Earlier, we had to go all the way to mandal office and wait for days or months to get caste certificates or land records. Now if we apply through Mee Seva, volunteers are delivering even adangal and 1B certificates at the doorstep,” said Obulayya, a farmer.
But, the ruling party contestants were also wary of the party heavily depending on the beneficiaries and distancing itself from the others. “We lost sections that solidly stood behind us, for instance, government employees. We no longer enjoy strong support among the OCs. We also could have more effectively countered the narrative built by the Opposition that Jagan did nothing except pressing the button to pass on the DBT amounts,” said a contestant on condition of anonymity.
Echoing the fears of the ruling party leaders, Sanjeevappa, a resident of Bukkarayasamudram near Anantapur, says he and his wife would definitely vote for Jagan Mohan Reddy but his daughter and son-in-law, private company employees, were unhappy over the state government ignoring development and in particular not succeeding in getting industries.
