The Return to Shared Wisdom
and Civic Realities
25th
Friday Evening Team Gatherings (FETE)
September
11, 2026: Press Club Hyderabad
Vanam
Jwala Narasimha Rao
After
a six-week pause, bridging Hyderabad to the US, our Friday Evening Team
Gatherings (FETE) return to the Press Club to deliberate on a bizarre civic
reality. When arbitrary Booth Level Officer (BLO) notices threaten the voter
franchise with ridiculous, beyond-narration non-conformities, we must ask: why
is citizen X seamlessly retained while citizen Y is abruptly eliminated? Beyond
mere administrative error lies a deeper, systemic vulnerability. Let us step
past silent observation and look into how modern bureaucratic categorization
subtly mirrors the chilling social engineering of Aldous Huxley's BRAVE NEW
WORLD.
The
Friday Evening Team Gatherings (FETE) at the Press Club Hyderabad stand as a
distinctive, informal forum where senior journalists, communication
professionals, administrators, and public intellectuals meet as equals to
convert lived experience into an enduring public resource. Initiated organically
without formal budgets or predetermined agendas, this 'Fellowship Celebrating
Continuous Civic Engagement' has matured over twenty-four documented sessions
into a vibrant living archive of collective memory and institutional wisdom.
Anchored
in the principles of respectful dialogue and intergenerational learning, the
forum purposefully resists polarization, cultivating measured reflection and
contextual understanding on critical themes spanning media evolution, public
policy, and constitutional governance. It was during these continuous weekly
exchanges: which recently paused for a six-week hiatus while I was away in the
United States, and also due to incessant rains, that our circle turned its
analytical lens toward immediate, local civic anxieties.
The
disruption of our regular meetings coincided with a wave of absurd, complex
notices issued by Election Commission of India (ECI) Booth Level Officers
(BLOs) regarding discrepancies in the voter verification drive. This reads as: ‘You
have not filled in the details related to you or your relative that could
establish you or your relative as a registered elector in the electoral rolls
prepared during the previous SIR’ and directing to appear before the Assistant Electoral
Registration Officer, on the lines of issuing Summons from a Court. And where
to appear none knows!!!
The
arbitrary nature of these notices, where one citizen’s name is effortlessly
retained while another’s is inexplicably eliminated without logical pattern,
sparked a profound debate among our members, instantly bridging our local
democratic realities with the chilling, engineered stratifications of dystopian
literature. This reminded me the famous book: BRAVE NEW WORLD of Aldous Huxley,
that I read decades ago, which is still in my memory, stands as the first
masterpiece of its kind to expose how systemic discrimination and exclusion can
be flawlessly engineered using the very language of democratic consensus.
By
cloaking oppressive hierarchies in the familiar rhetoric of stability, choice,
and social harmony, it reveals how modern societies can quietly vote away human
equality. The core of Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World rests on the absolute
elimination of human chance through systemic categorization: sorting the
population into Alphas, Betas, and Lower Castes straight from the Laboratory Bottle,
while isolating the naturally born ‘Savage Minority’ behind electric fences.
When we overlay this template onto the ongoing Special Summary Revision (SSR)
of Electoral Rolls, a reality hit home by these ridiculous and often
beyond-narration BLO notices.
Paradoxically
we find an eerie parallel in how bureaucratic tools foster hostile
differentiation. In our Friday Circle discussions, we observed the baffling
phenomenon where citizen X is arbitrarily included while citizen Y is
systematically eliminated, a process ending in mere observation rather than a
clear judgment. Just as Huxley’s World State uses engineered labels to lock
individuals into pre-determined slots, these erratic voter drives risk creating
a high-tier ‘Alpha’ class of verified, effortlessly enfranchised elites, while
pushing vulnerable or arbitrarily flagged citizens into an isolated, ‘Non-Lab-Born’
periphery of the digitally disenfranchised.
The
gap in our public discourse is that we often view these Special Voter Drives
through a purely administrative lens of ‘Data Cleaning,’ ignoring the
structural hostility and anxiety they introduce into the citizenry. If
algorithmic parameters (the invisible data boundaries that sort and score
humanity) or erratic clerical interventions: all disguised as democratic consensus,
systematically flag certain individuals for deletion based on trivial anomalies.
It mirrors the hatchery's intentional deprivation of oxygen to engineer lower
castes.
As
we resume our Friday Evening Team Gatherings after a six-week hiatus, the
urgent learning point and caution for our like-minded journalists,
administrators, and thinkers is to scrutinize how seamlessly state databases
can transition from toolkits of civic organization into apparatuses of social
engineering. We must remain vigilant against any systemic drift where a
citizen's basic franchise is treated not as an inherent, sacred right, but as
an arbitrary bureaucratic grade, threatening to split our democracy into an
engineered mainstream and an isolated, disenfranchised reserve.
My
recent six-week absence from these enriching weekly exchanges was marked by a
deeply fulfilling journey across the Atlantic to Houston, Texas, serving as a
reminder of how shared heritage connects us globally. However, hearing, while on
a drive in the car radio, a discussion on voter list maintenance in Houston, that
mirrored India’s Special Intensive Revision (SIR) highlights, a sobering
political truth came to my mind: fundamentally, all modern democracies operate
as functioning oligarchies that constantly police the boundaries of who
belongs.
While
India's Election Commission uses the physical SIR to scrub rolls, the United
States engages in its own highly digitized administrative gatekeeping, actively
deploying aggressive automated database matching ahead of the 2026 midterm
elections. By masking systematic voter purges and interstate data culls under
the neutral language of ‘Election Integrity’ these democratic oligarchies
utilize algorithmic parameters to subtly lock out marginalized populations and
quietly code away human equality under a false veneer of public consensus.
notwithstanding
this, I shared about my honor to attend the Golden Jubilee Celebrations of
Houston Sahitee Lokam, a premier literary organization sustained by the vibrant
enthusiasm of NRIs of Telugu origin. Following a warm luncheon meeting with the
members, I participated as the Chief Guest for their monthly literary program, Nela
Nela Vennela. There, I had the privilege of presenting an analytical
perspective on the Ramayana, highlighting the nuances between its well-known
narratives, lesser-known traditions, unknown variations, and profound
philosophical core truths.
I
mentioned about the formal launch of my book on Sundara Kanda a day before my
preponed return trip, due to untimely demise of my brother-in-law, Paediatrician,
Dr AV Manohar Rao, in Sugar Land Ashta Lakshmi Temple. The volume was
graciously released by Mrs Asha Reddi, a prominent and highly respected
attorney in Texas. Known as much for her legal acumen as for her profound
humility and deep-rooted commitment to cultural preservation, Mrs Reddi’s
elegant presentation added immense dignity to the publication.
Asha
Reddi’s humble, unassuming approach to community leadership perfectly mirrors
the quiet grace of genuine contribution: a quality I later found myself
celebrating with friends back home at the Hyderabad Press Club. As the
conversation drifted to the recent release of the Sundara Kanda, our table
naturally unfolded into an evocative, multi-dimensional discussion on the
Ramayana, beautifully anchored by senior journalist and regular participant
Mallepally Laxmaiah.
He
shared fond childhood memories of performing on the traditional village stage
in Chirutala Ramayana, vividly recalling how he once inhabited vastly
contrasting characters like Child Rama, the plotting Manthara, and the
formidable warrior Indrajit. This recollection pushed our collective debate
past individual belief systems or theology, focusing instead on the sheer
brilliance of Valmiki’s structural characterizations. We deliberated on how
even Manthara, despite her cunning nature, was crafted to speak articulately on
Raja Dharma in her own right.
The
conversation traced the complex architecture of Ravana’s crisis management, the
precision of Hanuman’s tactical ‘surgical strike’ on Lanka, and the tragic
irony of Indrajit’s ignorance regarding the full scope of his own Brahmastra. Ultimately,
our circle arrived at a shared consensus: irrespective of judging which side is
superior or inferior, the Ramayana endures as a profound epic that mirrors a
fundamental, irreconcilable conflict between two distinct worldviews,
institutional systems, and value frameworks as lived out by Rama and Ravana. At
this stage, Mallepally Laxmaiah, consented to be the Chief Guest for my book
Sundara Kanda release in India, in addition to its release in USA.
GK
Murthy, N Hanumanth Rao, Aruna Attaluri, Mallepally Laxmaiah, Dr Bharat Babu, Saye
Sekhar along with his friend Ravi, and myself participated. We were also
delighted to welcome a first-time participant, Shiva Mohan (former Faculty of
ASCI), whose insights added fresh value to our table. If this shared spirit
continues, our Friday Evenings may well evolve into something much larger than
anticipated: not in physical size, but in deep academic significance.
The
model is simple, powerful, and ready to be sustained across generations. What
began as a simple, casual ‘Thursday Evening Thought’ over conversation and a
social drink has beautifully evolved into our purposeful ‘Friday Gatherings’ at
the Press Club Hyderabad. This initiative is neither about nostalgia alone, nor
is it about individuals seeking recognition. And, hence, Looking forward to
seeing others too at our next table. Let us continue to turn lived experience
into an enduring public legacy.
Meet. Reflect. Document. Continue.
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