The other day, Telugu Desam Party president and former chief minister N Chandrababu Naidu made highly objectionable comments against village volunteers, alleging that they might turn out to be a security threat to womenfolk at homes.
He was referring to a report carried by by an yellow media house on a village volunteer allegedly making sexual overtures to a woman resulting in her suicide. Naidu alleged that security of women was at peril with this village volunteer system.
“Where is the security to womenfolk at home, when village volunteers go to them in the name of delivery of goods?” he asked.
But, the factual situation in the village volunteers’ system is different.
Out of 2,48,608 village/ward volunteers, 1,30,718 members are women. It means, 54 per cent of the total number of village/ward volunteers are women.
So, who was Naidu talking about? When so many women village volunteers are there in the system, how can they prove threat to security of women at home?
How can Naidu make such vulgar comments when the government was providing employment to nearly 2.50 lakh unemployed, majority of them being women?
Unfortunately, neither the YSR Congress party leaders nor the government highlighted this point of 54 per cent of the village volunteers being women.
Instead, the ruling party leaders confined themselves to making unparliamentary comments against Naidu and the TDP leaders.
They would have got more credibility in their attack on the TDP had they come out with statistics like this. But they never seem to learn!
