CM Chandrababu Naidu's Divyang Shakti or Divine Drama?

Divyang Shakti or Divine Drama?  

When Free Bus Rides to Tirumala Become the New Opium of Andhra Pradesh

Chief Minister Chandrababu Naidu has launched “Divyang Shakti” — complete with free APSRTC buses for differently-abled devotees to have Srivari darshan in Tirumala. Newspapers splash the headline like it is the second coming of Lord Venkateswara himself. Cameras capture Naidu garlanding a wheelchair-bound devotee, tears are zoomed in, hashtags trend, and the TDP social media machinery declares victory over “neglect of the disabled.”

Let us stop clapping and start thinking.

From the politician’s lens, this is textbook image-laundering.  

Naidu, who once sold the dream of “World-Class Hyderabad” while rural Andhra bled, now needs a quick emotional reset after five years in the wilderness. Nothing works faster on the Telugu psyche than the deadly cocktail of God + Disability + Freebie. A ₹15–20 crore bus scheme costs less than one irrigation project, yet delivers a thousand times more tears, votes, and viral videos. It is not welfare; it is precision-targeted sentiment mining.

Periyar E.V. Ramasamy would have spat on this drama.  

He said in 1944:  

“Anybody who goes to Tirupati and comes back saying he has seen God is either a liar or a lunatic.”  

Today he would add a third category — the politician who sends the lunatic in a free bus and then claims credit for the pilgrimage.

Because what is the root cause of disability in Andhra Pradesh in 2025?  

Endosulfan-sprayed cashew plantations in the agency areas that the same TDP government once promoted. Fluoride-contaminated groundwater in Nalgonda and Anantapur that no one bothered to fix for thirty years. Malnutrition stunting one in every three children in the Rayalaseema drought belt. Industrial pollution in Visakhapatnam and Kakinada that even the NGT admits is causing respiratory cripples by the thousands.

The five elements are poisoned, and the Chief Minister’s solution is… a free bus to ask the same polluted sky for mercy?

Swami Vivekananda roared in Chicago and later in Madras:  

“You who are crying for help to gods, first help yourselves! The poor, the illiterate, the ignorant, the afflicted — let these be your gods!”  

Naidu inverted the call. Instead of making the afflicted walk on their own feet with dignity, he made them ride on his buses — so that he can walk taller in front of cameras.

B.R. Ambedkar’s warning rings louder than Tirumala bells:  

“Political tyranny is nothing compared to social tyranny, and a reformer who defies society is a more courageous man than a politician who defies the government.”  

Naidu is not defying society; he is sedating it. Give a crippled man a free ticket to see God instead of giving him clean water, unadulterated milk, cataract surgery, or prosthetic limbs that actually work on Andhra’s cratered roads. The man will fold his hands before the politician along with the deity. Perfect photo-op, perfect vote.

Could the same money have bought something that actually reduces disability tomorrow?  

₹20 crore would have funded:

- 40,000 cataract surgeries (₹5,000 each) — restoring sight, not just darshan.  

- 10,000 prosthetic limbs from Jaipur Foot (₹2,000 each).  

- 2,000 reverse-osmosis plants in fluoride-hit villages, preventing thousands of future bent spines and crippled legs.  

- Free LPG connections to 50,000 rural households so that women stop inhaling smoke that damages unborn children’s lungs.

But none of these give a backdrop as dramatic as the Tirumala queue line.

Bhagat Singh wrote in 1928:  

“The sanctity of law can be maintained only so long as it is the expression of the will of the people.”  

Replace “law” with “religion” and you understand the deeper fraud. When politicians become middlemen between you and your God, they are not serving faith — they are taxing it.

The most dangerous man in India today is not the atheist who denies God.  

The most dangerous man is the believer who uses God to sell bus tickets, collect votes, and postpone real solutions.

Andhra Pradesh, wake up.  

The next time a politician offers you a free ride to see God, ask him why he made the journey necessary in the first place.

Because a society that accepts free buses instead of clean air, pure milk, and working limbs is not pious — it is comatose.

And no amount of Tirumala prasadam can cure that coma.  

Only revolted intelligence can.

And shame on those who mix the two for votes.