A few kms before Nagaripalli village in Chittoor district on NH-71, the ancestral home of Chief Minister Nallari Kiran Kumar Reddy, a group of men squatting on a cement platform near a temple, indulge in the typical time-killing exercise you find in most villages across Rayalaseema where non-farm employment is scarce and farming is a dread in the absence of assured water. It was only 11 a.m. but 55-year-old Bavuddin, who belongs to a Muslim sect, waits for his village-mate, already on a high, to finish his morning quota of liquor so that he could safely deposit him at his home. For close to four decades, he voted for no one else except a member of the Nallari family — ...

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