Attacks on Dalits, minorities tarnishing nation's image: KTR

Hyderabad: The BRS working president KT Rama Rao on Thursday said that though the Constitution, which resembles modern values, provided primary rights and security to all sections, attacks on Dalits, minority sections across the country were taking away civilisation values and demeaning the country's prestige internationally.

Rao introduced a resolution stating that the party should progress with the spirit of separatist agitation to bring a qualitative change in the country. He said this(attacks) type of attitude was not good for the country.

Rao said despite vast cultivable lands and rivers people of the country were suffering with poverty because of the lack of vision and commitment of successive governments at the Centre. He said the country had abundant water with 70,000 tmcft flowing in rivers; only 20,000 tmcft was being utilized; the rest was draining down into seas.

"If this water is utilised effectively, water can be supplied to all 41 crore acres of cultivable land in the country. The governments at the Centre are mute spectators to the plight of farmers even as water is going waste. This resulted in shortage of irrigated water."

Rao said countries which were smaller than India were constructing big reservoirs. A small country like Zimbabwe had the world's largest reservoir with 6,533 tmcft. There should have been at least two or three reservoirs of this size in the country. Due to failure of the Union governments in initiating farmer-friendly policies, many ryots were committing suicide in different States, he said. In many cities and towns, water was being supplied once a week, reflecting the sorry state of affairs in the country, the minister pointed out.

Rao said that being replete with natural resources and being the world's largest democracy, India was still plagued with basic issues like provision of sufficient water for households and farmers, communal differences, unemployment. He said the country should have been provided electricity on the lines of Telangana, but instead, the public sector units were sold at throw away prices to corporates, he alleged. He pointed out that the BJP government skipped the Census for the first time; worst thing was that policies were framed based on the 2011.