The Hindu : Andhra Pradesh / Visakhapatnam News : Sportive players of the poll game

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Tuesday, May 18, 2004

Andhra Pradesh

Andhra Pradesh - Visakhapatnam

Sportive players of the poll game

MAGNANIMITY IN victory is the sign of a mature mind. Young Rahul Gandhi, son of the late Rajiv Gandhi exuded this sterling character of his last week while appealing to the people not to show disrespect to the Telugu Desam Party president and former Chief Minister, N. Chandrababu Naidu, merely because he lost the election miserably.

"He has been a tall leader of AP, who worked for his people,'' Mr. Gandhi remarked. It is noteworthy that the comment is from one in Mr. Naidu's rival camp, which has every reason to gloat over his discomfiture.

If victory takes one to Cloud No. 9, defeat makes the loser crest-fallen. Very few do not take failure to heart, and among such persons who could be counted on one's fingers is A.B. Vajpayee. In a statesman-like statement, the outgoing Prime Minister, reacting to the drubbing received at the hustings by the National Democratic Alliance and his own Bharatiya Janata Party, said: "My party and alliance may have lost, but India has won.'' A similar sentiment was expressed by Rajiv Gandhi in the mid-1980s when the Congress was routed by the Shiromani Akali Dal in Punjab in the elections conducted shortly after the famous Rajiv-Longowal accord was signed. The late Prime Minister had then remarked: "The Congress may have lost the election but Bharat Mata has won.''

* * *

THE ELECTION results are out, and the electronic voting machines (EVMs) have emerged the `real winners.'

In the age of e-governance, e-voting and e-counting have made the task of voting as well as counting easy. Gone are the days when officials had to sit beyond midnight counting the ballot papers and mediapersons give lead position of various parties as per the counting trends to meet the deadlines of their respective newspapers.

Counting used to take long hours and sometimes more than 24 hours whenever candidates demanded recounting due to low margin of victory. Now all it takes is the press of a button on each machine and later totalling. After successful completion of the election process, the District Collector, Sunil Sharma, heaving a sigh of relief, remarked: "We are all thankful to the machines that made the job easy for everybody. Even the fears on operation of EVMs in rural and Girijan areas were proved wrong with everyone finding e-voting very easy.''

* * *

WHILE THE stock markets may have gone into a tailspin over the change of guard at the Centre, locally the exit of N. Chandrababu Naidu is giving the jitters to those who had invested in real estate.

After stagnation, real estate had begun to look up in recent times in and around the city thanks to the grandiose projects announced by the Telugu Desam Party Government. Land prices, particularly along the stretch between Vizag and Bheemunipatnam and around Parvada, had risen sharply following Mr. Naidu's announcements to have major tourism and industrial projects there with private sector involvement. However, with the TDP Government being shown the door and a question mark hanging over these projects, investors in real estate are a worried lot. Reports of the Congress Government's decision to review the cases of land alienation by its predecessor has added to their discomfort.

* * *

CHANGE OF guard at Hyderabad always witnesses a sea change, with the new Government quickly removing all remnants of the previous administration. As soon as Y.S. Rajasekhara Reddy took over as the Chief Minister, signboards on the roadsides depicting schemes introduced by the previous Telugu Desam Party Government were quickly removed. Before the elections several boards and other publicity material carrying the portrait of the TDP president, N. Chandrababu Naidu, were removed in accordance with the election code.

With the Congress party's total aversion to any programme introduced by the TDP and Dr. Reddy's promise during election campaign that Janmabhoomi would be scrapped, one can take it for granted that employees can breathe easy now. However, one has to see if the Congress will dump the Clean-and-green programme also, or modify or rename it since an exercise concerning environment is essential.

The TDP might be concerned about environment but it was also a fact that the programme, held amidst a lot of publicity and participation of employees and people, brought work at Government offices to a standstill on the third Saturday every week.

* * *

DUSTY ROADS that are never visited by the sanitation staff, parvenus taking their dogs out for a stroll in the morning and evening to litter not only the roads, but edges of compound walls and wheels of stationed cars, girl-servants being sent on errands to `steal' flowers from others' premises before daybreak and before the inmates wake up (a few among them also pluck the mangoes in the afternoons when the inmates are off-guard), stray dogs sneaking into dining halls and kitchens for a bite (of food), and cats making the bedrooms theirs.

Worse, there is a procession of slum dwellers carrying water in old mineral water bottles going up the nearby hill and returning after answering the call of nature.

This is the picture not in some countryside but in Ward 26, very much part of Visakhapatnam Municipal Corporation. A portion of the north extension layout on the north western side in Seethammadhara area towards the hill is plagued by problems.

There is an 80-feet wide road running parallel to the Shirdi Sai Spiritual Centre-NRI Hospital-Port Stadium road on the northern side, which has remained a dirt track for the past three years. It badly needs a black-top with some speed-breakers as there are quite a few schools in the vicinity. Plus a Sulabh Complex. It is time the authorities concerned -- VUDA and VMC and particularly the public health staff -- showed some mercy on the taxpayers and set right things.

By R. Sampath, Santosh Patnaik, Shakeel M. Rasheed, G. Narasimha Rao and B. Prabhakara Sarma

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