Padayatara Special

Padayatara Special: Politicking Wishesh 

Namaskaram andi!

Hope you are enjoying your special exclusive from Wishesh.  This is just to bring out the lighter side of the issue while no harm is intended to anyone. This section includes gossips from the grapevine for reader enrichment. In today's columns we shall discuss about Padayatra political saga for garnering public vote, various thoughts expressed by leaders on the ongoing trends.  Do send in your comments or criticism for us to give you the best..............(Wishesh AarKay)  

History of Padayatra: Probably Padayatra or walkathon's started long ago, but those days they were part of human life as an efficient mode of transport was not available. But now a days it has become a way to enlighten public and to assure them of ones availability. Those days due to lack of proper transport they used to walk, but these days our leaders walk as their air conditioned, well-equipped vehicles follow them enroute.

TDP doyen and founder N T Ramarao, was the known modern leader who started this mass contact program of reaching the public with his bus yatra in the early 80's and that made him the first non-congress Chief Minister to rule the state in 1983.

Then we had the late Chief Minister Y S Rajasekhara Reddy who embarked on a walkathon in 2003 covered 1475 km during hot summers covering 33 constituencies. The event Prasthanam, reinstated Congress in power after a long gap in 2004. and since then has been ruling the state.

And now our TDP supremo N Chandrababu Naidu embarked on Vastunna Mee Kosam and has successfully gone past YSR by completing 1500kms covering 40 constituencies. Babu wanted to enlighten the corrupt practices of the ruling party that had led to the downfall of the state in amny ways.

On the other hand YSR's daughter, Sharmila also went on a Padayatra, 'Maro Prasthanam' but had to cut short the journey due to an injury. Sharmila wanted to highlight the ways her brother was detained on vindictive stances by the ruling party hand-in-glove with the opposition.

The irony was that a 60+ old veteran with all complications like diabetes and BP is able to walk healthy and cover 1500 kms while a young woman who was hale and healthy had cut short her walkathon citing injury. Anyways we have to move on to discuss what the leaders are feeling about these yatras.

Babu's Padayatra is just for records: YSRCP MLA, Gadikota Srikanth Reddy expressed that Babu's padayatra was only for records. He also criticized the senior leader for embarking on a 'morning walk' type walkathon. If Babu's walk is as the leader describes than what should Sharmila's yatra be called as?

No-crowd Padayatra: Congress chief whip Gandra Venkataramana Reddy claimed that Babu's padayatra was a n-crowd padayatra. While in reality media images revealed large gatherings at each of the meetings of the veteran enroute. The Congress leader adds that the party activists are struggling to bring in crowds. He also claimed that Babu's event was mainly to avoid many political embarrassing situations, for which he had no answer and divert public attention.

On the whole, at the moment Babu has bettered all records and is leading all the way. However in comparison to the salient points that were achieved by YSR and Babu while in rule, the former had opted for people's welfare while the later opted for infrastructure development (http://www.andhrawishesh.com/home/hot-buzz/36366-babu-becomes-maha-netha-.html). 

Both were right and visionaries, in their own perspective. Hope we get the next leader who is a right blend of these two stalwarts.