‘The Congress Didn't Respect My Dad After His Death'

Less than three years after its founding, the YSR Congress fell short of power in Andhra Pradesh by just 2 per cent of the votes in 2014 . Its leader Y.S. Jaganmohan Reddy, in the middle of a padayatra ahead of the 2019 election, speaks to Outlook about the circumstances of his dramatic departure from the Congress, the problems facing the state today and what he intends to do. 

- Y.S. Jagan Mohan Reddy

What is this padayatra all about—3,000 km over six-seven months sounds big?

We are doing this padayatra because of the government of Andhra Pradesh. The CM has betrayed the people. What brought N. Chandrababu Naidu to ­power were major promises that swung the vote. He said he would waive all farmers’ loan repayments, knowing well that the agricultural loans came to more than Rs 87,000 crore in total. Earlier, both farmers and women were getting zero-­interest loans, enabled by an interest subvention from the central government, to which the state government was also contributing, and there was 97 per cent repayment to the banks. Then this man said, “Don’t pay, I will waive the loans.” Forget waiving the loans, he stopped paying the interest subvention. So the zero per cent scheme has collapsed and farmers are being charged 15-18 per cent as penal interest. All this has translated into the sown area in Andhra Pradesh dec­reasing over the past three-and-a-half years. The farmers are in the doldrums, suicides are taking place, and there is no appropriate support price for the produce, not even foodgrains. In this district (Chittoor), the farmers are not happy with the prices of sugarcane, tom­ato, groundnut and rice. The prices collapse when the produce is in their hands, and increase after it changes hands to the middleman, who wants to procure everything cheaply. This has only added to the farmers’ distress.

So is this a throwback to 2003, when your father started a padayatra? That was also a time of rural distress.