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Misgovernance personified

The gunning down — with automatic weapons — by the police of protesters demanding land distribution at Mudigonda village of Khamman district in Andhra Pradesh was indefensible. That the police used AK 47s against an assembly of people incensed by the insensitivity of the Congress government to the plight of the landless and land-poor spotlights the anti-human nature of the regime’s response. The movement to compel the State government to distribute surplu s land spearheaded by the Communist Party of India (Marxist), a Congress ally, has landed Chief Minister Y.S. Rajasekhara Reddy in deep political trouble. To buy time, he took the bureaucratic route of appointing a committee to go into the issue of land distribution. His administration’s immediate answer to the movement was resort to a State police that has a notorious reputation for brutality. Is it any surprise that the award of compensation, after another round of day-long public protests in the course of which the families of the six people gunned down in Mudigonda refused to remove the bodies from the vicinity of the Collectorate and turned down the government offer of jobs, has done nothing to mitigate the tragedy?

The callously incompetent way in which Chief Minister Reddy has responded to the challenge is evident from the timing of the announcement of his government’s acceptance of the recommendations of the Koneru Ranga Rao committee — in the wake of the Mudigonda killings! Additional evidence of heavy-handedness was the removal — in the dead of night, just before the bandh was to begin — of two Left leaders from the scene of their fast to hospital. Over the past year, Dr. Reddy has worked overtime to squander the powerful mandate Andhra Pradesh voters gave his party three years ago. Despite tall claims about the achievements of this Congress regime, especially in the countryside, the truth is that it has scored a series of own goals. The slew of corruption charges against persons close to the Chief Minister; the repeated flouting of the rule of law; the outrageously authoritarian but failed offensive against the financial base of Ramoji Rao, one of India’s top media captains; and an autocratic style of functioning have eroded the credibility of this government. Meanwhile, Chandrababu Naidu, the leader of the main opposition, the Telugu Desam Party, has systematically gone about learning from the grassroots and recovering lost stock. Will the Congress high command, which seems to be in a state of denial, do anything to set its house in order in South India’s largest State — before the demand for Dr. Reddy’s removal becomes a groundswell?

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