The Telugu people have seen two bureaucrats, taking voluntary retirement from their services and joining public life to serve them. Ironically or interestingly, whatever it may be, both of them have failed in their second innings.
It was first IAS officer Jayaprakash Narayana, who took voluntary retirement to serve people.
He was a successful bureaucrat as Collector in Prakasam district and played key role in the late N T Rama Rao’s regime of TDP.
He was admired by the youth and others and he enjoyed the highest level of worship by the people. Even the media too, for its own reasons, gave him greater importance.
Having seen all this, he took voluntary retirement from the service and started Lok Satta, as a service organisation.
A large number of youth joined him in the course of time and people offered voluntary service to the society along with him.
He then thought of politics and converted the Lok Satta into a political party.
He won the Assembly seat from Kukatpalli in Hyderabad while his party candidates all over the undivided AP, lost their deposits. He is now ignored and his identity is lost.
Then comes IPS officer from Maharastra cadre, V V Lakshminarayana, who called the shots as Joint Director of CBI, placed in Hyderabad.
He was used by the powers to fight against Jagan Mohan Reddy and his actions as CBI JD were given highest priority by the media for political reasons.
He became a role model for the youth and every educational institution had him as chief guest after he left CBI and went back to Maharastra cadre.
Looking at this publicity, he took voluntary retirement and floated several ideas about his political career.
Leaving his admirers aside, he joined the Jana Sena and contested unsuccessfully from Visakhapatnam Lok Sabha constituency in the last elections.
Now, the image is gone, as was the case of his predecessor, Jayaprakash Narayana, and this one-time hot favourite of the Telugu youth, is finding it hard to have a dozen people around him these days.
Thus, the media lifted these two bureaucrats for its own reasons and dumped them for political reasons. Thus, the political parties backed them for their own reasons and finally dumped them on the streets.
Thus, the two bureaucrats have failed to use their own intelligence to make an assessment of the publicity that they were getting in the media and the support they were receiving from the political parties.