The first sight that greets a visitor as he enters Pulivendula town through the road from Kadapa is an under-construction, gated residential complex with spacious bungalows that would seem more appropriate in Hyderabad. The road itself is broad, eminently motorable, sans any potholes. This makes the 70 km journey from a remote district headquarters to this small town that was till lately a big village, a pleasurable ride, even on a mid-afternoon with the mercury hugging 40 degree celsius.
With low hills in the distance on both the sides and fields dotted with sunflowers, the ride is through picturesque country too. “You will see this kind of road whichever side you enter Kadapa from,” says Krishna Mohan Reddy, a special grade deputy collector who has been posted in Pulivendula by chief minister Y S Rajasekhara Reddy, to take care of his home constituency. “We propose to make the entire road to Pulivendula from Kadapa, four-laned. There are four other roads important to Pulivendula. All of them will become double-laned. The internal roads of the town are also being made cement concrete”, says the official in a promise that proposes to radically transform the area hitherto more backward than even parts of backward Telangana.
Rajasekhara Reddy has been the MLA from Pulivendula five times but this time, being the chief minister, he is using all the powers at his disposal to bring development to the door step of the place that was apparently an abode of tigers centuries ago. Since it is a perpetually dry and arid area, Rajasekhara promises to bring water hundreds of kilometres from the river Krishna to irrigate the fields of Pulivendula. This will be achieved through a series of interconnected projects which will channelise the waters of Krishna thorough the Pothireddypadu head regulator to the underconstruction Gandikota dam. From this dam, situated north in the Kadapa district, the water will be lifted through five lift irrigation schemes to irrigate Pulivendula. It’s like defying gravity - Pulivendula is at a higher altitude whereas Gandikota and the river Krishna are at a lower level. But the government is spending thousands of crores to do this, an analyst pointed out.
The water will help to diversify the cropping pattern in Pulivendula which is now restricted to low revenue yielding sunflower, raw banana, bengal gram, sweet oranges and other horticulture crops that are dependent on drip irrigation. “We are proposing to undertake soil mapping in this area to figure out which piece of land is best for cultivating what”, says Krishna Mohan Reddy. An industrial base is also being proposed for the Pulivendula neighbourhood. Even as the contours of a textile mill have started taking shape, a uranium mine and processing plant at a cost of $270 million has been approved by the Andhra Pradesh government to come up 15 km away from the town. “A lot of people will come to live here. Therefore the infrastructure of the town is being developed”, says Krishna Mohan Reddy. A gram panchayat till 2005 whose sarpanch was Jayamma, the mother of Rajasekhara Reddy, Pulivendula now has a municipality that is readying an underground sewerage system. Drinking water supply storage facilities to last 10 months is being organised for the town, even as a Ring road to gird Pulivendula is on the anvil.
Yet physical infrastructure is not the only plan of Rajasekhara Reddy men. Among other things, even a Ravindra Bharati type auditorium is being planned for the town of 60,000. The Pulivendula neighbourhood, including the rural areas, has a population of 200,000. A IIIT has already started functioning in the area and the first batch of students will come out soon. A campus of JNTU is also proposed. The tourism circuit will also take visitors around the area and a local temple has been handed over to the resource rich TTD for upkeep. Pulivendula will have everything, save the fact that the nearest railway head is over 30 km from here, says an aide of the chief minister.
But TDP’s Srikant Reddy, a Stanford-returned IT entrepreneur, who will contest the Kadapa Lok Sabha seat is clearly not impressed by this development. “A reign of terror has been unleashed in the area. The development is only for the YSR family and their henchmen”, he says. Srikant is now focusing the attention of the Election Commission and people’s initiatives like Election Watch to ensure that there is free and fair election in Pulivendula. He claims that muscle power plays a major role on voting day here. Prajarajyam’s K Murthy dittos Srikant’s views. “Only a few people have benefited from this development. The YSR family has commandeered public resources and assets like land for self-aggrandizement. This is public knowledge”, Murthy declares. Needless to add, Congressmen pooh pooh all this asserting that every family in Pulivendula has benefited in some way or the other by the YSR raj.
As we motor out of Pulivendula in the midst of assertions and accusations, it seems clear that the voters of the constituency will vote solidly for the man whose continuance promises a bonanza for them.
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