The manifesto announced by Telugu Desam Party president and former chief minister N Chandrababu Naidu on Sunday evening has clearly exposed bankruptcy of ideas for the yellow brigade.
It appears Naidu has clearly fallen into the trap of YSR Congress party president and chief minister Y S Jagan Mohan Reddy, who has been banking on his populist schemes to come back to power.
Naidu has been, all the while, criticising Jagan for pushing the state into debt trap by resorting to indiscriminate borrowings to distribute money to the people like “pappu bellalu” (jaggery and dal).
But now, the same gentleman has come out with schemes that would cost the exchequer a bomb, provided the TDP comes to power. He wants to do the same by distributing more money to the people.
In fact, there is no link to what Naidu said in his inaugural speech and what he had announced in the manifesto.
He said he would create wealth and distribute it among the poor; but the manifesto has no mention of how he is going to create wealth. All that it spoke about was to distribute money to different sections of people, left-right-and the centre.
What is worse, there is nothing new in the manifesto as almost all the schemes appear to be a rehash of what Jagan has been implementing in the last four years, except for the name change. If the YSRCP says Jagananne Maa Bhavishyathu (Jagan is our future), Naidu says “Bhavishyathuku Guarantee.”
He spoke about Vision 2047 but he failed completely to disclose what his vision is all about. One wonders whether he wants to make more people beggars. It clearly shows Naidu wants to blindly follow Jagan to break the latter’s vote bank!