Hyderabad/ Vijayawada/ Visakhapatnam: The Telugu Desam spent Rs 2.5 crore on the Uttarakhand floods. Not to pay to build houses for locals, who have lost everything, not to pay for their food, clothing and medicines, not to help them re-establish their lives by starting up businesses. Not even to the Uttaranchal government’s relief fund.
 
Instead, it spent the money to provide medicines and food to survivors and to fly them to their homes, giving many an opportunity to travel in an aircraft for the first time. Not much else. And in the process, sought to refurbish the image of party president N. Chandrababu Naidu as a ‘doer’.Oh yes, a part of the money was spent to fly mediapersons to show Naidu in ‘action’. That expense too perhaps comes under ‘flood relief.’
 
The point is this: The defence forces and disaster management agencies were rescuing stranded pilgrims. The state government’s task was to merely transport them home, especially because many had lost all their belongings, apart from going through harrowing experiences as they escaped the cloudburst and floods.
 
But Naidu jumped in, Narendra ‘Rambo’ Modi style, to duplicate the effort of the government. The money was paid out from the NTR Memorial Trust, which is generated by donations, and which is in no way related to the Telugu Desam. But garnering the publicity, and perhaps votes, was the TD MPs and MLAs.
 
“When the state government has failed, we cannot sit idle,” was the slogan of the TD leaders all through. This led inevitably to the clash last week, when TD and Congress MPs jostled with each other.Naidu had to finally apologise for the embarrassment.
 
The TD has milked the event for all it is worth. The TD’s official website telugudesamparty.org highlighted the party’s derring-do. The party went to Facebook as well, with a theme song on the Uttarakhand tragedy and depicting Naidu and his son Nara Lokesh, consoling the victims and offering them help etc.
 
The song, Kadili raandi manushulayte (come forward to help if you are human) was an N.T. Rama Rao’s film. Enjoying the drama were the survivors. 
 
Speaking to this newspaper, G. Durga Rao, a municipal contract worker of Vijayawada, said it was a great opportunity to fly, thanks to the TD. He said six others of Mallikarjunapet in Vijayawada, who are petty vendors, got free air tickets.
 
T. Nageswara Rao and his wife Lakshmi of Mangalagiri said, “We never dreamt of travelling by an aircraft.” After surviving the ordeal in Uttarakhand, “God provided us an opportunity to travel in a flight.”  Nageswara Rao runs a roadside kiosk.
 
Sobhi Pulla Rao, who runs a small canteen at Amaravati in Guntur, and his wife Bharathilakshmi were “lucky” to fly back home thanks to their first-ever air experience. P. Satyanarayana, who runs a small shop at Sriharipurama in Vizag, was especially lucky. His family had gone to Hardwar in a bus, but returned by the TD flight.
 
Ponduri Janakamma, 50, of Sompeta in Srikakulam district, had never even visited an airport. “I had never visited an airport but landed in Vizag in an Airbus with the kind-hearted people of TD,” she said.