HYDERABAD: The Telangana BJP is facing a strange predicament, grappling to find a middle ground over directions issued by its leadership in Hindi and conveying the same to the public, either in a language not understood by all or losing key messages in translation.
On the one hand, it needs to follow the directions of the party’s national leadership on ‘sashaktikaran’, an instance of a Hindi term, for making itself strong enough to take on the ruling BRS party in the coming Assembly elections.
On the other, much of the central BJP’s plans are unravelling at the ground level as Hindi jargon is making it tough for the party and its leaders to help their cadres.
In short, most things the BJP wants to do in Telangana to challenge the BRS and take on the Congress are being lost in translation.
The BJP is finding itself caught in a cleft stick not knowing if translating party jargon being pushed in Telangana in Hindi into understandable Telugu will sit right with the central leadership. And who, if anyone, should take the lead on this front.
“For instance, what does ‘Maha Jan Sampark Abhiyan’ mean for the people here? Or what do words like ‘Prabhari’, ‘Palak’, or ‘Vistarak’ who are to keep an eye on party activities in the constituencies mean? Why should there be booth ‘Shashaktikaran’ work? These are not making much sense to the people on the ground and frankly, it is quite vexing,” a senior party leader said.
“Instead of Maha Jan Sampark Abhiyan, we could just have something like ‘Gadapa Gadapaki BJP (BJP to every doorstep), something everyone will understand. And making matters worse is that most leaders at constituency levels are just not sure who they should be reporting to or taking instructions from. Is it the ‘Prabhari’, or the ‘Palak’, or should they be listening to what a ‘Vistarak’ tells them to do?” another party leader said.
The general mood among several leaders trying to get ground-level leaders and cadres going is that they are unable to create any sense of ownership for the party activities.
A third senior leader said: “Import of an Uttar Pradesh model of party work, or from some other northern state is making no sense thanks to simultaneous import of terminology. Things are different in a state dominated by a regional party. Even worse is that constituency level leaders feel they have been left hung to dry as multiple level monitoring is leaving everyone confused.”
