(Wh)Y (Ha)S Jagan Mohan Lost His Mojo In Andhra?

Why Has Jagan Lost His Mojo In Just 5 Years?

In 2014, the bifurcation of erstwhile Andhra Pradesh seemed to have had a little impact on the political fortunes of former chief minister of Andhra Pradesh N Chandrababu Naidu.

• Naidu is widely credited for modernising Hyderabad and turning it into an IT hub like Bengaluru, Naidu served as the chief minister of the bifurcated state.

• Meanwhile, YS Jagan Mohan Reddy, after his father YS Rajashekar Reddy's death in 2009, was silently rebuilding the YSRCP.

• He would come to power only in 2019 but with a resounding majority of 164 seats out of the 175.

• Naidu was ousted from power just as his alliance with the BJP snapped on the issue of special status to Andhra Pradesh.

But only five years later, pollsters are predicting a defeat for Jagan in the assembly polls conducted on May 13. What changed?

Polavaram Project Delay:

• Intended to address water scarcity in Rayalaseema, it was originally budgeted at Rs 21,000 crore.

• The delay and escalating costs (over Rs 50,000 crore) have become a pressing concern.

Capital City Conundrum:

• Even after a decade, Andhra Pradesh is yet to finalise its capital city.

• While Naidu had declared Amaravati the capital, Jagan scrapped the idea for three-capital model (Vizag, Kurnool, and Amaravati).

• The uncertainty about the state's future trajectory and is a source of sour embarrasment.

A Resurgent Super Alliance In Opposition:

• The 'super NDA' alliance of TDP, BJP, and Pawan Kalyan's JSP has added complexity to the political landscape.

• BJP and TDP have done better when together. And with Pawan Kalyan attracting the Kapu voters, they're arithmetically well set.

Anti-Incumbency:

• Jagan faces challenges in job creation, water crisis, and law and order.

• Harassment of businesses and citizens by officials-politicians and favoritism in welfare schemes have dented public perception.

• Promises focused on rural and semi-urban voters, PM Modi's peak popularity, and Kammas-Rajus-Kapus favour for NDA add to the challenge for Jagan.

Sympathy and Sentiment Shifts:

• Naidu's arrest and Jagan's way of addressing Naidu in the assembly have generated sympathy for the opposition alliance.

How much of this will reflect in the Assembly as well as the Lok Sabha polls will be clear on June 4 when the results trickle in.

What It's Like To Fall Into A Black Hole?

The closest visualisation we have of falling into a black hole is the one from the movie Interstellar even though it is laced with necessary creative liberties.

My colleague Karan Kamble, who decodes science for us at Swarajya, reports that a slightly more scientific visualisation of this 'fall into the abyss' has emerged.

Scientists at NASA have used the 'Discover' supercomputer to simulate a virtual experience of a ride around and into the black hole past the event horizon.

• Event horizon is a boundary around a black hole beyond which nothing, not even light, can escape — a point of no return.

• Before going past the event horizon, we orbit around a hot, glowing disk of gas called the accretion disk starting from 640 million kms away.

• NASA is simulating a black hole similar to the one at the centre of our Milky Way galaxy with a mass 4.3 million times that of our Sun.

• In this simulation, event horizon spans about 25 million km (about 17% of the distance between Earth and Sun).

The ample stretching, squeezing, bending, and swirling in this simulation is held together by the darkness of the Singularity at the centre.

• Singularity is a region of infinite density at the centre of a black hole. Here, the laws of physics as we know them break down.

• For the faint-hearted, there's a kinder option of a fly-by around a black hole instead of the thrilling plunge.

The simulation computed by 'Discover' in five days would have taken "more than a decade" on a regular laptop.

• While 'Discover' used only 0.3% of its processing power, the project generated about 10 terabytes of data.

• The creator of these visualisations, astrophysicist Jeremy Schnittman says "If you have the choice, you want to fall into a supermassive black hole."

• Because if it isn't massive enough, you run the risk of 'spaghettification' — getting ripped apart from head to toe due to the vertical stretching and horizontal compression.

Must-watch: The simulation videos NASA put out on their YT channel are beyond anything. If you have a few minutes, they are here and here.

Until tomorrow,

Anmol N Jain

🎙️ Trending: Does This Video Reflect The Reality Of Bihar Today?

Have you seen this video doing the rounds? At an event in Bihar's Patliputra, RJD leader and former minister in the state government, Tej Pratap Yadav, was seen pushing his own party worker. Now you might ask: what's the big deal?

And even as Yadav entered into an altercation with the person, his sister and RJD candidate for the Patliputra seat, Misa Bharti, kept waving to the crowd, and a person kept singing loudly, creating a thoroughly dystopian scene. But does this reflect the reality of Bihar today? Well, our guest, Adarsh Pandit, says it's nothing new.

• 'Anyone who remembers the 'jungle raj', the rule and ruin between 1992 and 2005, when Lalu Prasad Yadav and Rabadi Devi were the chief ministers of Bihar, this was seen all around. This is nothing new!'

• 'When Misa Bharati was married, the entire capital, Patna, was ransacked completely.

• The car showrooms were opened and thrashed, and all cars were taken away just to ferry their guests who were coming from different parts of the country.'

And he continues to say that if RJD comes to power again in the state, it is what will happen again.

• Maybe Adarsh is right in saying that it's only because the youngsters vote differently and because everything is caught on camera and is available on social media that we see this issue getting attention, but this would not have been shocking for the people present at the event, who are mostly RJD party workers or supporters.

• Maybe he is also right in saying that if it weren't for the general election, RJD is still pretty strong and could perform better than BJP in the state assembly elections if they were to be held now.

Adarsh's conservative reading for Bihar is that the BJP can win 34–35 Lok Sabha seats (of the 40 seats) in the ongoing elections.

• But is it Prashant Kishore's Jan Suraaj, or is it a full-majority BJP government that Bihar needs?

• There's some answers for this and more in the latest episode of our podcast, 'What This Means'. 

Tune in now to listen on Spotify or on the Swarajya app.

- Diksha Yadav