'They can have our sympathy. Not sentiment'

V V Balakrishna
First Published : 25 Jul 2010 03:49:21 AM IST
Last Updated : 25 Jul 2010 11:13:47 AM IST

SIRCILLA: In Sircilla, before answering any questions on the byelection, they ask you where you're from. If from Telangana, a smile breaks out and an instant connect is established. The smile says we're kindred. If from coastal Andhra, they take pains to assure you that people from the coast are nice and welcome to stay here, except that elected rep who made such a spectacle of himself on TV back in December last year.

Sircilla is a weaving town, notorious for the suicides of weavers until a few years ago. The suicides have abated but signs of the distress are still evident in the hand-to-mouth wages paid to workmen and in the alcoholism rampant among debt-ridden masters. Fine cloth yarn is woven here, but people throng to the pavement shops in the bazaar by the bus stand to purchase cheap polyester cloth brought in by traders from Maharashtra.

To appearances, Sircilla is a bustling town but jobless young men hang around at small businesses running errands. At the periphery of town, farmers bemoan the futility of tilling for there's no water for the crops. The buses are good but there could be more services to Bidar, Nanded and other addas for migrant workers from here.

In other words, there's plenty here for bypoll candidates to fight over. But this election is not about problems. It is about Telangana. No candidate is badgered about bijli, sadak and pani. They are all asked only one question: When will Telangana come?

Affecting distaste, Veeresam Goud, a daily wager, asks, "Why are these fellows campaigning at all?'' Chips in his fellow worker Anjanna, "We should not allow them to campaign. It is our mistake.'' The subjects of their impatience are the Congress and the TDP. The import of their impatience is that the Big Two parties are wasting their time. The post has been taken. Nonetheless, the three main candidates are working up a little dust here. All three of them are pulling long faces in order to get what is called the sympathy vote. Each of them has a different claim to it.

First, the favourite, K T Rama Rao is playing the Telangana martyr who renounced his hard-won Assembly seat in December when the constituents bid him do it.

In the last election in April 2009, K T Rama Rao was seen as something of a milksop compared to his mercurial Dad, combative cousin Harish Rao and winsome sister Kavitha.

He scraped through by 171 votes, which, for a prince of the TRS, was considered as good as a drubbing. But since his renunciatory act, he’s won himself a decent claim to the S vote.

Congress candidate K Mahender Reddy’s claim to the bechara vote arises from that very electoral skirmish. Last time, as an Independent - albeit supported by Congress strategists - he almost bested the TRS yuvraj.

So he can tug some heart strings too.

And then, the TDP candidate Putta Kishore says he deserves a little S because his party leaders went uninvited to the Maharashtra border and tested the mettle of police lathis in that state last week.

But this bypoll is not about Sympathy, it is about Sentiment. As A Lingam Goud, a student, puts it voters are not interested in any factor other than separate statehood for Telangana.

“The TDP and Congress candidates are both good men. They can have our sympathy but not our sentiment.’’