Who's gonna vote for a red rag?

By Abhimaan Kashyap

 

Kukatpally: A few decades back, it was a nondescript village. It is now a bustling suburb. Carved out of the mammoth Khairatabad Assembly constituency, Kukatpally has the atmosphere of a typical coastal Andhra town.

Cinema halls playing Telugu blockbusters are packed. Housing enclaves are dotted with hostels for students from the coast come here to take a quickie software course, or software bachelors sharing acco to cut costs. The pavements are punctuated by makeshift curry stalls serving bommidaila pulusu and <?xml:namespace prefix = st1 />Nellore fish curry to people craving for a taste of home. Every Friday evening, Volvo buses vroom out of the localities, carrying custom to every interior town in coastal Andhra. Ticketing agents set up kerbside desks to book and beam travelers to their home towns for the weekend.

Kukatpally is a home away from home to thousands of coastal Andhra natives. About 50% per cent of the people here are first generation migrants from Nidadavolu, Nuzvid, Nandigama, Bobbarlanka and every little place on the coastal Andhra map.So why is the TRS contesting this seat?

Why did KCR fight tooth and nail with Chandrababu Naidu to contest this seat where there would be few takers for his one-point ideology of a separate Telangana? It is one of the mysteries of the Mayakutami that this has been nature of its candidate selection for constituencies in and around Hyderabad. Dotted with scores of middle class housing developments, Kukatpally is a constituency with a sizeable population of professionals, exactly the sections who would be nonreceptive to the TRS’ brand of in-your-face rabble-rousing.  In fact, there is a local Telangana Settlers Forum, which was formed to rally together people from the coast.

Kukatpally has a mix of voters: slum-dwellers, working class people, professionals, and employees. The addition of Fatehnagar and parts of Sanatnagar to the constituency has included large numbers of industrial workers. Every party has fielded a candidate to exploit its strength here.

The Congress has fielded Vaddepalli Narsing Rao, a well-networked neta who will be able to tap vote aquifers in this dense locality. Lok Satta has fielded its chief Jayaprakash Narayan with a view to winning the support of the educated classes, the teachers, the software pros, the small and mediuml entrepreneur class.No one knows why the TRS’ M Sudarshan Rao is here and not a TDP candidate, who would have been a more likely choice.

The TRS’ chances in other constituencies in the city are chequered at best. In the 2008 byelections, it lost the two it had, Secunderabad and Musheerabad, proving that the city is not ready for Telangana yet. Given that background, it’s difficult to imagine that the people of Kukatpally will vote for KCR’s party even at the request of the TDP. Vote transfer from the TDP to the TRS is not likely to be easy, because the TDP cadre here are dispirited by the award of the seat to the TRS.

With the TRS shooting itself in the foot, the contest is left to the Congress’ Vaddepally, the Lok Shakti’s Jayaprakash Narayan and the Praja Rajyam’s Kuna Venkatesh Goud. Narayan’s campaign of course receives a lot of media attention, of course, because he is man like us. It is not certain that the large number of low-income housing layouts will adopt his call to reform all of society’s ills. Enough of them might just conclude that they need water and better roads before they will attempt a social revolution.