It’s been one month since senior IPS officer RS Praveen Kumar quit his plum post and plunged himself into politics in Telangana. He has joined the Bahujan Samaj Party. But, how has the journey been? This is the question tormenting his friends and foes alike. What has he achieved and is he going in the right direction?

Honest insiders admit that the moment he joined the BSP, he had lost the initiative. The very Dalit groups, in whose name Praveen Kumar swears, are not with him. The Dalits seem not really enthusiastic about his political foray. In the last 15 days, he has attended only one organisational rally. He addressed a meeting of the BSP workers in Rangareddy district. Beyond that there is literally no political activity on his front. This shows the lack of enthusiasm among the Dalits about his political activity.

In the last 15 days, he met an ailing Manda Krishna Madiga, Congress Dalit leader Addanki Dayakar of Thungathurthi and the family of the girl who was gangraped in Singareni Colony in Hyderabad. But for an occasional tweet about Chakali Ailamma or Ganesh Chaturthi, there is literally no activity on his social media too. Fund crunch and lack of interest among the Dalits is said to be the chief reasons for the lack of activity. Sources say that no big name has joined the BSP during the last one month. No Swaero, the gurukul alumni that he had so fondly nurtured, is with him now.

RS Praveen Kumar must now be realising that running gurukul schools with the support of the government machinery is one thing and running a political movement is another thing. With schemes like Dalit Bandhu, the Dalit community would rather prefer to be with the political elite than with a challenger like RS Praveen Kumar.