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LESSONS FROM ANDHRA PRADESH

THE ROUT OF the TDP-BJP alliance and the landslide victory of the combine of the Congress, the Telangana Rashtra Samiti and the two Communist parties in the Assembly elections in Andhra Pradesh ought to be viewed primarily as the triumph of brick and mortar issues over click and mouse rhetoric. After nine years in office, the Chandrababu Naidu Government has been emphatically voted out of power because it neglected basic issues relating to electricity, irrigation, unemployment, education, and inadequate social security for farmers and artisans. The character of the verdict makes it clear that much more than an incumbency disadvantage was involved. What Andhra Pradesh experienced was a powerful negative vote against the imbalance between World Bank-led models of economic reform and the imperatives of welfare in a society where deprivation is a non-shining mass reality. Four consecutive years of drought, mismanagement of the relief measures, and apologetic implementation of anti-poverty programmes such as `Vegulu' only compounded the ruling party's woes. The strident negativism of the TDP's campaign backfired badly.

Over the last few years, the ruling party in Andhra Pradesh became weedy and unwieldy, faction-ridden and self-serving. Despite his genius for organisation and getting certain things done, the CEO — the darling of the corporate world and the media — seemed to have little time for issues revolving round basic needs. "You are surrounded by courtiers/Don't they give you good advice?" asked the saint composer Tyagaraja of the ruler of the universe. This seems to apply to many a Strong Leader today. Chief Minister Naidu surrounded himself with a clutch of bureaucrats and technocrats and was gradually starved of authentic feedback about real issues in the State. For all his political shrewdness, he miscalculated the decision to advance Assembly elections. The Vajpayee factor does not seem to have made any difference on the ground.

The Congress returns to power after almost a decade in Opposition, with its alliance getting a three-fourths majority in the State Assembly. On June 1, 1947, Mahatma Gandhi likened the Congressman's relation to political power to a wooden loaf. If you eat it, he noted, you are bound to suffer from colic. If you don't eat it, you are bound to starve. The challenge for the Congress is somehow to avert colic, considering its track record of factionalism and conflicting ambitions in the State. The obvious choice for Chief Minister is Y.S. Rajasekhara Reddy, to whose campaigning and mobilisational skills the party owes a good deal. The new Chief Minister must be given a free hand to constitute his own team and work out fresh policies that must address, as a matter of priority, what his predecessor failed to do. Aside from having to decide what to do about the promises made during the campaign, notably the promise of free electricity to farmers, the Congress will have the difficult job of dealing with the separate State demand of its ally, the TRS. While the party is clearly in a position to form the government on its own, it cannot summarily abandon its pre-poll ally. Political honour and credibility aside, the TRS numbers in the Lok Sabha will be of obvious value if the Congress and its allies find themselves in a position to stake a claim to form the government at the Centre. Initiating a serious and meaningful dialogue with People's War, an idea first proposed by Chief Minister N.T. Rama Rao, and thinking big about the development of an underdeveloped and Naxalite-dominated region might prove to be an effective way of responding to the demands for a separate State. The Congress has earned a tremendous mandate from the people. It must move quickly and with an imaginative plan to demonstrate that this is not a negative triumph.

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Stories in this Section

• LESSONS FROM ANDHRA PRADESH
• BREAKING OMERTA
• Interpreting the mandate
• Andhra's electoral earthquake
• The A.P. verdict
• The President's role
• Elections 2004

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