#Sujatha Sivagnanam

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For much of its history, BRS had an efficient mechanism to read the mood on the ground:

Telangana's passionately active civil-society movement. KCR grew his understanding of the state over week-long discussions with former Naxal insurgents such as Gade Innaiah. His statehood movement was buoyed by the revolutionary poetry of balladeers, including Gaddar. The focuses of his manifestos were guided by grassroots intellectuals, such as M Kodandaram. But each of these vestiges of the old movement were progressively cut out of the Telangana that KCR and, increasingly, his son were building. In the past five years, the BRS government discredited, charged and arrested such activists in a manner so vengeful it could make the BJP blush.

Sujatha Sivagnanam, ‘Broken Record’, Caravan