Lugging a sack of clothes on her head and another bag of food essentials in her hand along a forest road with a few others, the stout lady could be easily be mistaken for one of the migrant workers returning home in the wake of the lockdown.
But Anasuya Dansari is a Telangana MLA who made it her mission to provide sustenance to her constituents in Mulugu, mostly STs in the forests abutting Chhattisgarh, deprived of livelihood in this COVID-19 lockdown season.
In the last 40 days, the MLA has visited about 400 villages and habitations, trudging on treacherous rocky-hilly trails, handing rice, dal etc., commodities and masks to people in need.
“I have travelled more now distributing relief than I had when I was asking votes during the election campaigns,” Dansari, a tribal herself, tells DH.
However, her voters or the relief beneficiaries now would not recognise her by her official name. The second time MLA is Seethakka for them, a former Naxalite.
Seethakka left the Maoist movement in 1997 and later became a lawyer. In 2004, she joined politics with TDP chief Chandrababu Naidu’s backing. Losing in 2004, she became an MLA in 2009. Again, losing in 2014, Seethakka is now a Congress MLA in the Telangana assembly.
“I am doing this as my duty towards my people, for my own satisfaction,” Seethakka (49 years) says. “There is no support from the TRS government. I could do all this because of donations and support of like-minded individuals.”
Though Seethakka initially planned to use the lockdown time to work on her PhD “Social exclusion and deprivation of migrated Gothi Koyas (a tribal group),” watching the hapless labourers on the roads made her shudder thinking about the plight of the tribals in the forests as markets where they sell their forest produce and buy food etc. items are also closed.
“That is how my yagnam began the day after Ugadi and will continue till I provide relief to all my people in need, until the lockdown ends,” she said.
On Sunday, Seethakka and her team trekked for over 15 Km, crossing five hills, to a village Penugolu, carrying relief and thereby “becoming the first public representative ever” to have set foot in the hamlet of 20 huts near the Chhattisgarh border. She even carried pulihora, serving the kids especially. “The habitation is not under my constituency, but I went there anyway since I was told people there are in dire situations,” she said.
Seethakka’s gallant effort is receiving tremendous support on social media platforms like Twitter.