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The TRS juggernaut would roll on unhindered

In the view of Opposition parties, it could be the failure of TRS and KCR on different fronts- budgetary allocations, incapacity to handle RTC strike and the like-- but still nothing could stop KCR from winning the Huzurnagar assembly seat, that too, with a thumping majority.

Interestingly, the Congress candidate Padmavathi Reddy, a former MLA, is the wife of TPCC president Uttam Kumar Reddy who had won Nalgonda Lok Sabha seat. What is more, the petitions in the high court for deferring municipal elections were dismissed and the verdict came in favour of TRS government.

It may be recalled that on October 21, the Telangana high court dismissed the two petitions seeking to stall the municipal elections citing pre-election procedural irregularities. The division bench, headed by the Chief Justice, stated that, "No election could ever take place" if intervention with elections (pre-election process or the election process) was permitted by invoking the writ jurisdiction of the HC.

"For, someone or the other would always find some excuse to move the Court to stall the elections," the bench observed and directed the Government to conduct municipal elections, which were earlier due in August.

While on the question of the stay order pending in HC regarding elections to 77 municipalities, the HC posted it to October 31 and requested the single bench to revoke its earlier decision of stay.

With these developments, we can say how the TRS is riding high despite criticism from opposition parties in the state. The announcement of the schedule of municipal polls is long awaited and the ruling party and the other parties are bracing up to take on one another.

Just like the Panchayat elections, if the TRS makes a clean sweep in the municipal polls, then it would not only pip the other parties but also have a smooth ride in all the local bodies until the next term.

Also, when we reckon about the poll results, we can predict how the TRS win in the polls will help the State's development. There can be increase in the allocation and release of funds to municipalities and panchayat raj bodies.

There are chances of expeditious development activities. The elected corporators/ councillors [except a few of other parties] will not have to wait endlessly for their proposals to get accepted by the government.

Moreover, the schemes taken up by the State government would be implemented at a faster pace. It could also bring glory to TRS party and prove that the people's mandate is in its favour so as to keep on working.

One State - One party Rule can ensure growth and State GDP to rise high. Apart from these benefits, in the long run, with more number of party functionaries in the local bodies, TRS can easily bag the MLC posts.

The citizens will have a say in the policies of the state indirectly through the local body functionaries. There are also better chances of people's grievances being heard and tackled as they can approach the area ward member. Importantly, there will be better cohesion.

The State Election Commission is likely to notify the schedule in the next few days for the conduct of municipal polls during November 2019. As many as 131 urban local bodies, including Nizamabad, Karimnagar and Ramagundam municipal corporations, are going to the polls. About 60 lakh voters will exercise their franchise.

TRS is making a determined bid to capture most of these ULBs by securing mayor and municipal chairmen posts.

Fatima Hasan, Hyderabad

Keeravani: The unsung genius of Telugu cinema

It is indeed a rare honour for Bahubali as the only Indian and non-English movie to be screened at the iconic Royal Albert Hall, London. The show ran to a nearly packed house and received standing ovation at the end!

The screening was preceded by a Question and Answer session with director Rajamouli(found clad in traditional Telugu attire!) and lead actors Prabhas, Anushka and Rana Daggubaati. The icing on the cake came in the form of a live symphony orchestra of the movie's soundtrack, performed by the prestigious

"Royal Philharmonic Orchestra" ensemble, considered as "Britain's national orchestra"!

Well, more than anybody's success, I personally take it to be a tribute to the musical genius of M.M.Keeravani, who remained unsung all these years, except at the State level.

His distinguished repertoire in Telugu needs no special mention. But how many of us know about the magic he has weaved in other languages too? Come, let us unveil his glory.

He debuted in Bollywood under the curious appellation Kreem(at which i want to "skreem" for distorting the sweet original, which was christened by his father having liked the Carnatic raagam under this name) and gave us classics which are too familiar to us like "Tum Mile Dil Khile", "Kabhi Shyaam DHale..", "Aa bhi jaa..."e, "Gali mein aaj chand nikla..", "dheere jalna" etc.

Not for nothing did Bollywood director Mahesh Bhatt call Keeravani a "national treasure"! Keeravani is also a close friend of distinguished Bollywood actor and filmmaker Amol Palekar who chose him for few of his movies like Paheli and TV serials too!

Our violinist musician had also worked with eminent Tamil and Malayalam directors too.

As "Maragadhamani" in Tamil, Keeravani won the Tamil Nadu Government's award for the best music direction for his first Tamil movie itself for the legendary K.Balachander-directed "Azhagan"(1991) starring Mammootty, Bhanupriya and Madhoo. After the "Iyakkunar-Sigaram" fell out with Ilayaraja, his next choice was Keeravani! "Jadhimalli poocharame..." and "Sangeetha Swarangal..." are some of the gems from this movie with exceptional orchestration of Veena and violin.

He subsequently went on to score for a couple of movies like "Vaaname Ellai", "Jaathi Malli" by the same director and his assistants like Vasanth.

In Malayalam, he scored for such legendary directors as I.V.Sasi, Viji Thampi and Bharathan. For "Soorya-maanasam"(1992), he composed a poignant song "Tharalitha raavil mayangudho" with Kerala's beloved Dasettan i.e Yesudas, which remains to be in the top 50 malayalam hit songs to this date! His last Malayalam movie was "Devaraagam"(1996) that has extraordinary melodies, still being cherished and sung in shows and competitions.

"Sisirakaala Megha Mithuna..."(evergreen top melody), "Ya ya ya yaadava eni ...." ,"Sasikala Chaartiya Deepaavalyam", a household song in Kerala, especially famous for being the "most danced female song" by children and adults alike(of late even by male college students too) in cultural events here and abroad and finally "Thaazhampoo mudi.......", that unveils Sridevi in "Tam Brahm" sartorial splendour, composed in the ever-auspicious "Madhyamaavathi" raagam with outstanding naadaswaram and veena interludes- all superbly scale the heights of melody.

The movie bombed in spite of star cast like Sridevi & Arvind Swamy, but it's songs continue to be classics! On reflection, one wonders how a relative newcomer and a stranger was sought after by the usually classical-oriented Malayali film directors in the early 1990s, and more surprisingly with the former rising to the challenge and not disappointing them at all! Probably, because he was "born for music" as rightly observed by his brother Kalyani Malik!

In Kannada too, where he had scored for several movies, he got his dream fulfilled by getting a song sung by the late legend "Annavaru" i.e Rajkumar in "Karnataka Suputra(1996)"- "Aa vidhi thandha, Sambandha, eneno........" , a brilliant soulful melody again in "Madhyamaavathi" which he later reused for the two-line ode "ee paripoorna parisuddha hrudayammutho..." played at the beginning or end of certain movies whose producers idolise Sr.NTR!

In this connection, it has to be mentioned here Keeravani also got a couple of lines sung(along with S.P.Balasubramanyam) by the illustrious multi-faceted thespian P.Bhanumathi for an epithalamion in the movie "Pelli Kaanuka"(1998), again in the same raagam.

By the way, do we know that the entire climax portion of Annamayya(1997) was pre-recored ie the background music(with all the dialogues and chorus tracks) was composed even before the scene was shot by the director under the resplendent workmanship of cinematographer A Vincent? The actors just had to "lip-sync" the whole scene when they came for shooting! This was unprecedented and probably the first in the history of Indian cinema!

I reiterate, like many other greats of music before, Keeravani too is a God's gift to our mother tongue. If Telugu is considered to be one the sweetest of Indian languages, then Keeravani has only made it even sweeter with his music that divinely distils the essence of melody! Unarguably, after Ilayaraja, Keeravani is the only music director in South India, who could match the former insofar as melody is concerned.

The good fortune of certain associations that are crucial to rendering a creative endeavour enchanting, favours only the blessed! Blessed was K. Raghavendra Rao in spotting and patronising Keeravani, to the immense delight and pride of we Telugus.

C V Krishna Manoj, Hyderabad

Good economics cares about wellbeing of the poor

Economics is too important to be left not to economists alone, but it is reflecting about the social issues that challenge everyone today. The economists, Abhijit Banerjee and Esther Duflo, who won the Nobel Prize this year, in their latest book, 'Good Economics for Hard Times', has raised a lot of controversies by winning the prize; but one thing is clear – he has taken it off its pedestal, simplified the social science, and brought it down to the grassroots.

The book encapsulates that where the economy has been failed, where the ideology has not worked and where good economics is useful in today's world has briefed in preface of the book. The authors are in favour of privatizing the public sector banks, which angered the left parties and the Congress.

He argues that growth is not an end to poverty. Today, growth in India is slow; it is aiming to achieve 8% growth. Many economists worry that middle income trap got stuck in developing countries like India.

According to the World Bank, of 101 middle-income economies in 1960, only 13 had become high income by 2008. Malaysia, Thailand, Egypt, Mexico and Peru all seem to have trouble moving up.

There are many pitfalls in middle-income courtiers and India should treat it as what it is. It is possible that India's growth has very little to do with some special Indian genius. Instead, it has a lot to do with the flip side of misallocation: the opportunities of being an economy with a large pool of potential entrepreneurs to draw upon and lots of unexploited opportunities.

Growth means inclusive growth which leaves no one behind, it has to create more jobs and raise wages and improve the standard of living of people and budget is more distributed equitable to all the sections of the people's development.

But raising the quality of life means more than just consumption, it entails every poor people take care about having good health and good education for their children, about having their voices heard, and about being able to pursue their dreams.

A higher GDP may be one way in which this can be given to the poor, but it is only one of the ways, and there is no presumption that it is always the best one.

Today, the world exists both with good economies and bad economies, rich countries and poor countries and it is onus of the governments to see that welfare of their citizens ensures faster growth.

Moreover, while we do not know when the growth locomotive will start, if and when it does, the poor will be more likely to hop onto that train if they are in decent health, can read and write, and can think beyond their immediate circumstances.

Therefore, for a country like India is to attempt to do things that can make the quality of life better for its citizens with the resources it already has: improving education, health and the functioning of the courts and the banks, and building better infrastructure such as better roads and more live able cities.

He also advocated to the policymakers that a clear focus on the well-being of the poorest offers the possibility of transforming millions of lives much more profoundly than we could by finding the recipe to increase growth from 2% to 2.3% in the rich countries.

The author was thought about the poor but he has not pleased the conventional leftists because he has relied on the market forces.

The Nobel laureate reiterated that he is a professional and that his economic convictions do not follow any political line.

He offered to help out any party if they came to him for guidance on issues related to the economy.

The book states that bad economics underpinned the grand giveaways to the rich and the squeezing of welfare programmes, sold the idea that the state is impotent and corrupt and the poor are lazy, and paved the way to the current stalemate of exploding inequality and angry inertia.

Blinkered economics told us trade is good for everyone, and faster growth is everywhere. It is just a matter of trying harder and moreover worth all the pain it might take.

Blind economics missed the explosion in inequality all over the world, the increasing social fragmentation that came with it and the impending environmental disaster, delaying action perhaps irrevocably." He claimed that 'smart philanthropy' of so-called 'goodʼ economics by giving away things was not the full answer to remove world's miseries.

A survey reveals that the forecasts of the IMF on growth have in many cases turned out to be wrong. Economists are not futurologists. They often go wrong.

"Economists are more like plumbers; they solve problems with a combination of intuition grounded in science, some guesswork aided by experience, and a bunch of pure trial and error," the authors claimed. The 'trust deficit' about economists, needs to be restored.

Best economics is the least strident. "The most valuable thing economists have to share is often not their conclusions but the path they took to reach it – the fact they knew, the way they interpreted those facts, the deductive steps they took, the remaining sources of their uncertainty."

Gudipati Rajendera Kumar, Hyderabad

Kashmir should be open for all

Since independence, Kashmir has been a troubled region and Article 370 aiding separatists and Pakistan sponsored terrorists enabled them to have a field day.

As a result, peace became a casualty all these years. Unfortunately leaders of regional parties instead of finding a lasting solution have only precipitated crisis in the valley by following a confusing policy of supporting separatists.

Also, as the problem is deep-rooted, appointing interlocutors, round table conferences from time to time did not help an iota in addressing the deeper malaise affecting the Kashmiri mindset so far.

On the other hand, the situation escalated into a disaster tearing apart the centuries-old harmony in the state. Further Pakistan whipping anti-India statements off and on and sending trained terrorists into our territory through the porous borders and indulging in violence and terror activities has not only emboldened Kashmiri youth to take to guns.

This has further resulted in citizens of Kashmir getting distanced with the Indian union. By and by, militancy in Kashmir gained momentum with the help if fundamentalist groups.

Even an attempt to work with moderate Kashmiri leaders to gain the confidence of the average Kashmiri in order to bring durable and lasting peace in the valley did not yield the desired results.

In these circumstances, the centre in order to normalise the security situation and bring development in Kashmir did the right thing by scrapping article 370 of the constitution which in effect was introduced temporarily.

Further Prime Minister Narendra Modi coming out to say that with the nullification of Article 370 on August fifth, terror will certain come to an end in the valley cannot be undermined.

At the same time, Modi would do well to bring normalcy to Kashmir by opening political space and issues worked out with speedily because merely addressing militancy is not enough to assuage the feelings of Kashmiris.

To start with, Modi government facilitating the visit of 28 members of European Parliament to J&K in order to take stock of the ground situation to enable him to address to the international opinion over Kashmir is a significant move despite hue and cry raised by Indian members of parliament.

However, Modi would do well to welcome more diverse foreign delegations to J&K instead of confining members belonging to far-right parties in future to not only win the hearts and minds of Kashmiris for the socio-economic development of the state but also help in healing the wounds of Kashmiris suffered far too long due to evil designs of Pakistan with the help of vested interests.

K R Srinivasan, Secunderabad