Southern Notes: House with a swimming pool

House with a swimming pool

While the votes will be counted on Sunday, May 2, voters were the winners for the moment – in terms of the number of freebies promised, and in terms of gifts and cash gained on voting day. Both political alliances, the AIADMK-BJP and the DMK-Congress, promised a veritable golden era in terms of what would accrue to the people. Aspiring politicians pulled out all the stops, with one of them, 33-year-old journalist R Saravanan of Madurai South, even promising a trip to the moon; he also promised a free iPhone, helicopter rides and house with a swimming pool for every household. There were reports that gifts were continuing to pour in even after voting was over; gold coins, TV sets, groceries and even meat was being given to beneficiaries by block-level party cadres to their voters.

Ironically, one voter, Brinda, from Karur even had the effrontery to complain about the poor quality of anklets – she alleged substandard silver had been used to make them -- handed out on election day. While women voters were given anklets and pieces of jewellery, male voters were issued tokens which could be redeemed for gold coins after voting. TN has been the frontrunner in electioneering in many aspects, and this seems to be continuing.

Kerala bucks the trend again

Kerala seems to be a completely different land compared to the rest of India; it seems to do things very differently. Take Covid for instance... in January and February, when new corona cases had fallen to new lows, the coastal state began reporting spikes in new infections. On Jan 1, the state reported 27 per cent of new cases in the country; this shot up to 46 pc by Feb 1. And then when the corona cases in the rest of India began to catch up, the opposite happened. On March 1, Kerala’s new cases had once again subsided to 27 pc; and by April 1, the state’s share had gone down to 4 pc.

So, how did Kerala manage to contain and bring down new corona cases in 8-10 weeks, while it was in the midst of a fiercely-fought election campaign? Once again, it seems the excellent Kerala model of test, trace and contain was the answer. Aggressive testing, vaccination and early detection and quarantine helped the authorities to get a handle on the situation; the mortality rates were low throughout, and at no point were the hospitals overwhelmed.

A new star in the making

There’s a new political star in Telangana from the YS Rajasekhara Reddy clan. YS Sharmila, daughter of the late YSR, chief minister of undivided Andhra Pradesh, and the sister of Jagan Mohan Reddy, chief minister of today’s Andhra. Kicking off her campaign in Khammam in Telangana, she evoked memories of her late father as she lit into Chief Minister KC Chandrasekhara Rao [KCR] to send the big crowd gathered there into raptures.

This signalled the launch of a new political party in Telangana, though the formal inauguration is likely to happen on July 8, on YSR’s birth anniversary. The personable and articulate Sharmila, in the headline of the Indian Express reporting the event, said she ‘showed fire, and YSR’s soul.’ She lashed out at what she called KCR’s misrule, but also at the Congress and the BJP.

Dressed in a simple blue-bordered Pochampalli cotton saree, she promised to uphold Telangana pride and rights as the crowd cheered. A brother and sister combination ruling the two Telugu-speaking states no longer sounds improbable in the future.

Reverse migration 2.0

The night curfews in Bengaluru and Mysuru [and other towns], and other draconian covid announcements [including compulsory testing] have sparked fears of another lockdown in the state’s large migrant worker community. Crowds, several thousand strong, were seen thronging the capital city’s main KSR rail station as workers from Uttar Pradesh and other Hindi-speaking states, as well as people from Bengal and Assam, tried to find a way to get back home.

The bitter experience of March 2020 when the lockdown caught them unawares has made them wary that it could happen again. They were caught in a limbo then, with the government unable to deal with the situation, and survived some difficult times with the help of NGOs and other good Samaritans. Moreover, the inconsistency of the authorities, saying one thing and backtracking later, has not helped matters. Though the government refuses to call it an exodus, many of the workers gathered at the railway station, feared that a lockdown was coming and didn’t want to take chances; they wanted to be home before that happens.