BAHADURGARH, FEB 17: There were the village elders with hookahs in tow, young men who had tied their cattle outside the grounds and were now waiting for the him to arrive and veiled women with children on their laps. In the remote landscape of Kanonda in Haryana, they were waiting for the CEO of Cyberabad.Om Prakash Chautala's publicity managers had gone around villages explaining to farmers, milkmen and their wives what the cyberworld is all about. And if that did not make sense to the villagers, they had told them that the suave Chief Minister was a hotshot with the poor in Andhra Pradesh.So when Naidu arrived to campaign for Chautala for the February 22 elections, thousands turned up. Dressed in cream trousers and shirt with matching socks, when Naidu arrived at the dusty school grounds of Kanonda village, a marriage band in red and white was waiting to greet him. There were hundreds of men with green turbans (the Indian National Lok Dal colour) in hand. All of them wanted Naidu to try the turbans until he had five turbans thrust upon his head. But the welcome ceremony did not end at that. Villagers threw currency note garlands around his neck with the pradhan announcing the worth of each one.A puzzled Naidu looked on. Chautala thanked the villagers for the worthy welcome. He told them that Naidu was synonymous with progress and that he was here to help the farmers. The villagers clapped.It was all hunky dory till Naidu began reading out a speech in Hindi that was written in Telugu. Obviously, most villagers failed to decipher the new language, broken Hindi spoken with a heavy Telugu accent. The crowd wasted no time in conveying their uneasiness. The women tried to sneak out of the school grounds, one by one, until a sea of humanity was seen jumping out of the boundary wall of the school. Women constables were unleashed on the crowd. The policewomen managed to make the women sit still for a couple of minutes until things were back to normal. Now it was the turn of the village elders. When that did not work, the husbands who were sitting in a barricaded section of the ground shouted at the women from their end to keep still till the speech was over. It worked.Naidu knew he could no longer go on. All his talk in Telugu-Hindi about Haryana being the land of Kurukshetra where the Mahabharata was fought was not making any headway. Statements about the misrule of Congress and the need to have Sonia Gandhi out of national politics and reviewing the Constitution was not making sense to the crowds either. So he kept his script aside and started off in fluent English: ``Information Technology is the future of this country. I am here to bring progress to your state. We will receive international acclaim if our state launches IT action plans.''The crowds cheered. ``No one had ever addressed us in English,'' an old woman said. ``He is the first person who has realised we are no less than city-dwellers.'' A translator kept prodding the Chief Minister but the crowds wanted to hear Naidu alone. Encouraged by the crowd's overwhelming response, Naidu went on and on for full 45 minutes. ``You must not let Sonia Gandhi rule the country,'' Naidu pleaded. ``If you are a self-respecting farmer, never vote for the Congress.'' He assured the villagers that the Constitution would soon be reviewed and in all probability a person with foreign origin would be debarred from ruling the country.``Chowdhury Devi Lal is the embodiment of courage. His commitment to the welfare of farmers brought me to campaign in Haryana. Telugu Desam and INLD share a common vision of developing the rural heartland,'' he announced.After the speech, he left Kanonda village in a helicopter. ``This is the biggest attraction when politicians visit us,'' said an old man. ``I love waving to the politicians when the helicopter takes off.'' Naidu heli-hopped to three more villages, including Meham, before he flew off to Hyderabad.
