Note to the clueless: Andhra Pradesh is ruled by the SECULAR CONGRESS party. CNN-IBN and NDTV will not be bothered by petty stuff like that since they have far more important events to cover this week (Hint: oh, never mind. )
In any case, we got curious. Since this is info tech. savvy Andhra Pradesh (totally built by current CM YSR Reddy, including Satyam's good parts, scams belong to his predecessor Chandra Babu Naidu), the GOs (Government Orders) are available online.
Unfortunately records are available only upto Februry, 2008. Even then, we decided to do a few quick searches under Minorities Welfare. The data is very unstructured and hard to analyze.
Roughly Rs. 15 crores was spent during the past year on items such as:
GO No: 745About Rs. 3 crores was spent during the past year on items such as:
Date: 06/12/2008
Sanction of Rs.10,00,000/- lakhs towards Grant-in-aid for Construction of Compound wall and improvement to Edgah-Al-Edduzzaaha-Aur-Eddulfitar at Lakkireddypalli(V) & (M), Kadapa District
GO No. 576Needless to say, this is neither comprehensive nor very accurate. Collating and analyzing such information is the job of independent think tanks.
Date: 27/09/2008
Sanction of Rs.10.00 Lakhs towards Grant-in-aid for construction of (10) ten Churches in Medak District
We will end the post with a quote from an article:
Andhra Pradesh is rife with thuggery. There is one business group which claims a Rs 1,800-crore turnover in steel. It has only one small problem. It has no steel plant. A second company has got contracts for irrigation projects from the Andhra Government worth Rs 15,000 crore, but has a working capital of only Rs 55 crore. Do the math, and you know that there are ghost projects hovering all over the State. Another company in the same racket (co-owned by a ruling politician’s son) has Rs 12,000 crore worth of projects on its order books and a working capital limit of only Rs 50 crore from a nationalised bank.
You might ask, legitimately, why newspapers do not expose this odious stink. The price of independence is high. When the chairman of the Eenadu group, Mr Ramoji Rao, refused to be Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister Rajasekhar Reddy’s lackey, the State Government went after his businesses with vicious ferocity. Every instrument of coercion in the State Government, the Union Finance Ministry, the Registrar of companies, the Income Tax Department and even the Reserve Bank of India, was used against Mr Ramoji Rao’s Margadarsi Financiers. When this did not break Mr Rao, bulldozers were sent to demolish permanent structures in his Ramoji Film City on the excuse that they were built on land assigned to weaker sections. Quite clever, that: Not only does Mr Rajasekhar Reddy bludgeon the media, but he tries and milks it for votes as well!
[Flattery please; who wants friends? MJ Akbar, The Daily Pioneer]
8 comments:
excellent write-up.
Must commend you on your sense of sarcasm; its aged like fine wine :)
By the way the MJ Akbar link (at the end of the write up) does not work.
Can people like you please stop "politicizing" (yes, with a 'zee') corruption?
The only silver lining is this: ask any man on the street on what's happening in AP and they tell you the same thing -- YSR is a thug.
Correction: continuing to age.
I think cellaring (indira gandhi 'emergency' style) might do the trick
Thanks, link fixed.
Barbarindian,
All well made points. The point is this has been going on since last few years and no national media organization could come up to expose the huge amounts of corruption at various levels of the govt machinery.
As to the local media, you have already mentioned 'Eenadu group' but there are other local newspapers like 'Andhrajyothy' that had also tried to blow the lid on the government but then its editor was also targeted and arrested on various charges. To add to it, a new newspaper 'Sakshi' was launched by the CM YSR's son and it had become the official mouthpiece of the government.
Barbarindians, the world also needs to hear about how the funds from TTD are being misused by Samuels and his gang of money mongerers. Especially with TTDs new TV channel SVBC, where there is a campaign to project Samuels as the saviour!!! I hope you could look into this too and dig out some more facts.
arvindblogs:
Heard about the Andhrajyoti incident. If I remember correctly, the newspaper staffers were booked under the atrocities against Dalits act for burning the effigy of a Dalit politician. There is not much one can do in India when the D-word or the M-word is invoked.
CodeNameV:
Will swoon down upon Andhra Pradesh when Samuel goes up for reelection.
barbar,
I knew a Muslim journalist (Times of India) who, whenever America would be invoked, would express, from hatred to stoic fatalism, because of the Iraq war.
Her eighteen year old son went to Godhra and showed us all photographs, and an anti-Modi exhibition happened in our school (Modern School).
The media took it up "Young boy from Delhi exposes Gujarat pogrom"
Her son is now in America. He gets an annual salary of considerably more than the average journalist.
His work?
As a reporting photographer.
Sashwat:
The genocide launched many careers. It is said that many young journalists are totally frustrated that more isn't happening!
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