Recently, Telangana Chief Minister A Revanth Reddy urged people to socially boycott all those who did not participate in the caste survey undertaken by his government. Without going into whataboutery of his own mocking the survey conducted by the earlier Bharat Rashtra Samiti government headed by K Chandrasekhar Rao, let us analyse why people in good numbers have not participated in the survey.
They have no axe to grind against BCs many of whom in the creamy layer have also not participated. And those who participated, it is learnt, did not furnish entire information and selectively gave only such info which they felt would help them or keep them safe from possible culprits misusing their data.
Yes, political leanings might have influenced them to show their apathy to the ruling party. Basically, one of the major reasons is the trust deficit in the government headed by Revanth Reddy. As he himself is under scrutiny by virtue of the vote for note case, people do have a suspicion that their data might be compromised.
Maybe the situation would have been slightly better if only another person was a Chief Minister with a higher degree of credibility. Credibility of the CM matters a lot for people’s cooperation. The fact also remains that there was no deserving person than Revanth Reddy in terms of charisma, fighting spirit, and a Goliath fighter, ending up as a giant killer to be the CM face of Telangana.
No one should forget that Revanth Reddy was singularly responsible for not only pulling out INC from the ventilator and getting it discharged from the ICU of a political hospital and later nurturing it to a normal health status. Though the BJP helped him by splitting BRS vote, Revanth Reddy emerged as the sole nemesis for BRS. However, his failure to fulfill people’s expectations for a full year has been the talk of the town.
His revenge on KCR and co has also added to his failure because in the process he began destroying all the good works done by the latter. Hydra, Lagacherla, food poisoning in schools, and dwindling revenue not to speak of taking loans from right, left, and centre have added to his cup of woes. His split personality of using the most abusive words against KCR and family on one hand and within hours he pleading with them to give a comprehensive document of how to go about planning the twin cities etc could be another reason to be confused by the people concerning his true intentions. His behaviour reminds people of the split personality of a hero in a movie called “Aparachitudu” where one minute he is the softest spoken and the second minute he is entirely a different character full of villainy.
Coming back to the survey, the questions posed were too personal and unsafe and of many backed out with the contention that it is better to quip the survey altogether than answer only such questions that were safe.
Time and again we have seen how vital data from government departments have gone into private hands either by hacking or by selling out at a pittance by corrupt officials. These days, data mining is a cash cow. With the steep rise in cybercrimes, people have a natural tendency of not to part with sensitive information like Aadhar, bank details, etc.
Secondly, most of the people who don’t get or take a benefit from the government showed a lack of interest though they should know that statistical data always helps the government to plan major projects and make people’s lives better. The entire globe is now data driven and one wonders whether the earth would stop rotating if data sharing stops.
Maybe, for all the data that it could not collect from unwilling people, the government may prevail upon the individuals through a public notice to part with whatever information they wish to share through e-mail or WhatsApp where they feel that info is shared from public to government directly without the intermediary surveyors who may be good but are vulnerable to be suspected as data sharers.
