A CAN-DO SPIRIT IN THE DECCAN

It has taken almost a decade for the Congress to recover from the mystifying coma it went into ever since Telangana was born. Although its ground presence was so entrenched and pervasive that it had never really vanished, a strange defeatism seemed to afflict it.

- Amarnath K. Menon

Two-time chief minister K. Chandrashekar Rao’s party, now named the Bharat Rashtra Samithi (BRS), meanwhile, claimed near-total ownership of state politics. But now, widespread speculation about a truce between KCR and the BJP-led government at the Centre has created just the opening the Grand Old Party needed.

Since it was Rahul Gandhi’s brief foray into Telangana during his Bharat Jodo Yatra that offered the first glimpses of a new life, it was fitting that it fell to him to prophesise a rebirth. At a massive Jana Garj ana (People’s Roar) rally in Khammam on July 2, the Congress leader said: “Our victory in Karnataka was propelled by poor people and the marginalised, the farmers, labourers, youth, Dalits and minorities vexed with the misrule there. The same will happen here.” He promised Rs 4,000 a month as pension to widows, senior citizens and disempowered groups if the Congress retakes its former bastion. The party, it seems, is finally getting serious about wresting the state that was signed into existence by one of the last legislations of the UPA government in 2014.