Political gimmicks turn people off

Hyderabad: Candidates donning the roles of chaiwala, juicewala, lassiwala, autowala, dhobiwala etc. are no longer attracting people.

These were helpful for candidates earlier to strike a chord with voters, but people are now viewing them as mere “circus acts”.

Voters are grilling the candidates on the problems being faced by them such as lack of drinking water, roads, drainage issues etc., ignoring whether they are serving tea at Irani cafes, offering juice, lassi at roadside joints, washing clothes and doing laundry at dhobi ghats, riding an autorickshaw etc.

Candidates such as Danam Nagendar, V. Hanumantha Rao, Vishnuvardhan Reddy, Kishan Reddy and others faced the wrath of people when they tried to don these roles with voters directly telling them that they needed leaders who could solve their problems, not who were into gimmicks.

Recently, when Mr Nagendar tried to help a woman ironing clothes as part of campaigning in a lane in Himayathnagar, he was left red-faced when the woman refused to handover the iron box and instead asked him why he had not visited the locality in these five years after winning the elections and becoming a minister in 2009. She went on to say that they needed leaders who were available for common people and not those doing gimmicks like these. An extremely embarrassed Mr Nagendar bowed before her with folded hands and left the place.

Sitting MLAs from the Congress are facing public anger more than others as people are pointing out their failure in addressing their problems despite being in “power”.

The trend of donning roles of common men became popular with the success of late YSR’s statewide marathon padayatra ahead of the general polls in 2004, where he used this method to mingle with people.

Since then, all poll candidates, irrespective of political parties, have been taking up padayatras for campaigning against the earlier method of addressing people from campaign vehicles.