The election results of Kovur and Mahaboob Nagar are very disappointing to many Loksatta supporters, and the happiest thing is that everyone trying to identify the reasons and coming up with different solutions. I wish someone can collide all and make a comprehensive report.
Below are all my personal opinions kept in a write-up. You may or may not agree. You may know of them, they may be simple and basic, but I feel not implemented at ground level. One thing for sure is that our current methods are not yielding. Please also don’t get to a conclusion that I am asking to behave LSP like conventional parties.
My Observations on voting patterns
1) Majority of the people doesn’t vote just because the party or candidate is good (if we segregate the people into different categories, educated may think what is good & bad but they may end up not voting, middle class weigh the benefits, look at caste, and vote. Poor only vote to a party which establishes a relationship with them through party representative. Personal relations are very important with them (can be done by village level or community level party workers). That’s why, in villages it is important to have volunteers, party cadre, community representatives from our party.
2) People are ready to vote a BAD guy who is strong, powerful, and who they think can get work done compared to a GOOD guy. That’s why I think Jagan winning seats and Reddy brother’s candidate winning Ballary seats.
3) After removing base votes (I mean people who vote to a particular party no matter what) for each party, next major chunk of votes are from anti-incumbency votes. These votes will change the governments.
4) Anti-incumbency votes mostly favor the 2nd strongest party after ruling party. People always take down the ruling party because of hate on them but not because they all of sudden liked the opposition. It’s always important for opposition to show reasons to public to hate the ruling party. Anti-incumbency made SP to win in UP, Congress to Win in 2004, and to wipe the Communist in WB. Always the next major party after ruling party benefitted the most from it. So we need to show we are also strong. We have to pull TDP back and show that we are second major party in at least some constituencies, so that we can take advantage of anti-incumbency, which is going be there in 2014.
5) Talk Talk Talk, sometime ‘talk’ will spread like wild fire. No matter how bad the media tries to make one party win, people based on the talk, will prove otherwise. Take modi case, all print and visual media was against to him but he won. In 2004, no one expected such a bad lose for TDP, Andhra jyoti, ETV and Eenadu tried to make TDP look so good but Congress won.
6) People started not voting for personal benefits. They don’t care if you promise for hospital or school or road, but they vote if you promise them with free TV, free rice, free power.
7) People do calculations and try to vote one party to make other party loose, even though they really wanted to vote other party.
8) Strength show is very important to build confidence in the voters that we are strong, big, many support us, and should strike then that we may be winning this time.
In Common man’s prospective - Majorly What LSP has done till now
1) Dr. JP has given excellent speeches in the Assembly, shown highest standards in the Assembly discussions. (None other than educated cared about it)
2) Dr. JP took the Rythu Satyagraha Yatra to lift ban on Rice Exports (well accepted and received. May be for a common man, it is the only work we did from past 3 years…L
3) Advocated for Anti-Corruption mechanism, and arranged small small meetings here and there (People recognized we always demanded for Corruption free institutions, but we utterly failed to champion the cause)
4) Party Organizing Training camps for boosting Local leadership (I can’t comment, don’t have full information on how effective they are)
5) Demanded for discussion of T-Issue in Assembly, advocated lifting of 14F (we failed again to take it to the public)
6) Announced that we support if a decision is taken in favor of Telangana. (this is not sufficient to win any votes. Majority of the people are looking for some genuine leader who can bring Telangana, because they have no other option than TRS, they are voting TRS. In recent elections, it is proven that they are loking for alternatives by electing a BJP candidate in Mahaboobnagar)
I think in overall, though we are doing great work (at least in our opinion), people are not recognizing us that we are strong enough. They basically are not reaching people. If we leave T-region for sentiment reasons, we didn’t even able to secure respectable votes in Kovur. So there is a serious problem.
What I think we should be doing
Events and Issues
1) Dr. JP need to take up one big issue in next 6 months, showcasing party’s strength and taking the issue to the logical end. We have issues like
- Hyd Water problem (since TRS is weak in Hyd and Caste politics will not yield much, and because of natural advantage we have in cities, this issue is solvable with Krishna Phase 3 and affects many, we should concentrate on this. If JP could not do these atleast second level leaders like Katari garu, or Varma garu or someone local in Hyd should take it up)
- Rythu Problems (Since we already grouped several farmers under swatantra rthu sangahs for Rythu Satyagraha Yatra, we can continue this issue with established logistics and strategies. but what I think is that, events should be centered in district HQ as we can attract town and city voters easily. Solving market yard problems can be taken up to be able to do the events in the towns.)
- Lokayukta for AP (if we pressurize Govt just like we did in Paddy export, we can champion the anti-corruption movement in the state. We have been fighting fighting and fighting for years on corruption and if we cant even make the Assembly to atleast to discuss about independent powerful Lokayukta it’s a shame. Look at Anna Hazare movement, being a political party we should with no hesitation should opt the path of Nirahaara dheeksha. If we could bring movement on this, we can be seen as crusaders of corruption in AP atleast)
….then taking other issue. For me the motto is that, Always JP should be in public on issues creating ripples.
2) In parallel, Local leaders should take up the same issue in their region to harness/tap the same momentum of JP into the local people.
3) Most of the times people caste vote to someone because he doesn’t like the other (anti-incumbency). We cannot sit tight and say we will not criticize, when we needed to give strong criticism targeting leaders of the other parties to make voters realize how bad they are.
4) Constituency leaders should focus on spreading Loksatta, recruiting volunteers and fighting on local issues. Now only big scale events can only turn the wind toward us.
5) We are restricted with funds, people, resources, media backup, lack of organization and several others. With all these ailments, without innovative methods of doing things, we cannot be able to capture the minds of voters. Rythu Satygraha Yatra is an innovative way doing things. We need more and more of such things in daily party activities.
Organizational buildup
1) Expedite Identifying the focused Assembly and Parliamentary seats immediately (unless until we focus all our strengths, no substantial representation can be achieved in Assembly). If we already have those officially identified, I am sorry I am not aware of them.
2) Establish Constituency leaders (#1), mandal level leaders (#1), Village level leaders (#1 or #2) and volunteers (at least 10-15 fulltime in each village) in each focused area. These volunteers become crucial at the time of election and on Election Day to assist the voters and can be appointed as booth representatives).
3) Establish logistics, line of command in the focused areas. Dr. JP directly reviewing the progress every month (so that they get chance to speak to the leader and direct relation can be established) will be useful to have two way communication between the leaders.
