Barrelakka (sister who owns buffaloes), a 25-year-old unemployed Dalit Mala woman whose original name is Karne Shireesha, is building a new culture of electoral morality in Telangana, a state where money power has increased several fold after bifurcation. An independent candidate from the Kollapur assembly constituency in south Telangana, she is representing the state’s unemployed youth from an unreserved consituency, and her distinct communicative abilities and the clarity in her speeches have been grabbing eyeballs from the masses and the media alike. Now a popular online content creator, Barrelakka first went viral in 2021 after posting an Instagram video about her decision to buy four buffaloes using her mother’s hard-earned money, because she was unable to avail a job in Telangana despite being a degree holder.
Her decision to contest the election has got the constituency’s three rich candidates from the Bharat Rashtra Samithi (BRS), the Congress, and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) worried, which is apparent in the way she has been frequently threatened to withdraw her candidature. On Tuesday, November 21, her school-going younger brother was allegedly attacked by a group of assailants near Pedda Kothapalle in Vennacherla village. Many subsequently alleged that the accused were linked to the ruling BRS, and at one point Barrelakka broke down in front of the media. “I wanted to win and do justice to a few people, but I did not think this would happen. I'm doing this to address the issues faced by unemployed youngsters and fight for them. But they (other parties) are doing so much to me, I have received many threat calls,” she said.
The threats, however, have done little to deter her from her goal.
Rather, Barrelakka has received massive support on social media, with several supporters arriving at the Kollapur constituency from across Telangana and beyond to extend their solidarity. Her story is the reflection of an electoral system that allows the rich a free hand to harass the poor and vulnerable, where money and muscle power play critical roles. Her continued commitment to her right to contest, and to tell the truth to voters is setting a new trend in the state.
Spotlight on unemployment
In its ten years of rule, the biggest unfulfilled promise made by the BRS is the provision of jobs to millions of unemployed people in the state. And now, a young girl from a poor household is using her election campaign to shine light on this flaw. She has narrated her struggles of spending loaned money on coaching centres, living in the unaccommodating city of Hyderabad, and preparing for the Telangana State Public Service Commission (TSPSC) Group I examination, while depending on the food from free roadside feeding centres or temples that dole out prasadam for several days. She studied and successfully wrote her exams despite her struggles, only for her written exams to be cancelled on one pretext or the other.
Barrelakka is a BCom graduate with a working mother and two younger brothers. Her father, who was a drunkard, had left home one day after selling the 10 guntas (1/4 acre) of land they owned, without informing his wife. The BRS government's Dharani portal, an Integrated Land Records Management System, allowed any owner to sell their land without the consent or signatures of their family members.
“My father sold that land without telling my mother or us. I went around begging and touching people's feet to get our land back, but there is no way for us now to retrieve it. My land has been swallowed by Dharani and my drunkard father,” Barrelakka had said in a TV interview.
With her land gone, Barrelakka had hoped to find a job in the newly carved-out Telangana state. Chief Minister K Chandrasekhar Rao, popularly known as KCR, and his party had promised to provide jobs for youngsters soon after the bifurcation. Barrelakka was 15 when the state was formed, and says she has participated in the statehood movement as a school student hoping she could help her mother by earning a government job in the new state.
So she wrote several state service examinations including for Group I, Group II, Sub Inspector, and Constable jobs. Each time, however, the selection process kept getting postponed or the exams she wrote cancelled due to paper leakage and other issues.
The KCR government has mostly remained indifferent to Telangana’s massive unemployment problem. The state’s education system has also reached a point of near-collapse, as the government failed to put serious effort into rebuilding the sphere that had fallen dysfunctional during the statehood agitation. When compared to bifurcated Andhra Pradesh, Telangana has left the fields of education and employment mostly unattended. Barrelakka is a victim of this failure.
Read: The unemployment problem in Telangana: What jobs data tells us
How Shireesha became Barrelakka
With no job prospects in hand, Shireesha was at a point where she was clueless about her family’s future, when she learnt to make videos on her phone and started posting them on her Instagram handle @barrelakka. In one of her videos in 2021, she went into the details of why she had to become a cattle-rearer despite being a BCom graduate, resignedly stating how she struggled to find a job in Telangana. The video soon went viral, grabbing media attention and turning her into the face of the unemployment crisis in Telangana.
“Hi friends, I am your Barrelakka,” she says in the video. “However hard we study, and whatever degrees we acquire, we will not be given jobs in Telangana. That is the reason I bought four buffaloes with my mother’s [hard-earned money]. Now, I have come to the fields with my buffaloes.”
In 2022, the police registered a suo motu case against her under IPC Section 505(2) (statements conducing to public mischief - creating or promoting enmity, hatred, or ill-will between classes). The allegation was that she attempted to defame the government by making a reel highlighting the government’s failure to announce job notifications in Telangana. She was made to run pillar to post over this case, making her life more miserable.
It was as a last attempt in her struggle for survival that she filed the nomination for Kollapur constituency. As I am writing this article, her campaign is gaining more followers, many of them carrying small contributions in their hands to donate, willing to stay by her side even if they had to sleep on the roadside. Local songwriters and singers have made powerful campaign songs on her behalf and uploaded them on YouTube. The atmosphere created by Barrelakka’s campaign reflects a newborn moral force this election, catapulting her into the role of a moral political fighter. Whether she wins or loses, she has already shown a way forward to the struggling youth of Telangana.
Kancha Ilaiah Shepherd is a political theorist, social activist, and author. His latest book is The Clash of Cultures—Productive Masses Vs Hindutva-Mullah Conflicting Ethics. Views expressed here are the author’s own.