Will neglect of agri be Naidu's Waterloo?

The man who claimed that his party would continue to be in power till 2020 to fulfill his dream of making the state a 'Swarnandhra Pradesh' (golden state) is now seeing the ground under his feet slip.

Was that claim a mere overstatement and had no real basis or had N Chandrababu Naidu failed in his attempts to create a sustained support base for his Telugu Desam?

With a marginal degree of difference, all exit polls conducted for the first and second phase of current elections have predicted the rise of the Congress like the proverbial Phoenix and the defeat of the Telugu Desam Party in the Assembly elections.

Ruling party leaders though have been putting up a brave front by strongly disagreeing with exit poll results, probably in view of the repoll being ordered in 65 polling stations, scheduled to be held on Wednesday. Yet, available indications show that the TDP leadership has already slipped into an introspection mode.

TDP supremo and the architect of 'Vision 2020', Naidu is learnt to have cancelled his Australian vacation to take note of the emerging situation for the purpose of future responses besides doing a quick post-mortem on the performance of the party machinery during the elections in the state.

But unlike the claims of the ruling party, the trends being projected by the exit polls have very strong grounds, says Professor Haragopal, who teaches political science in the University of Hyderabad (Central University).

Though cautious of the fact that the final outcome is yet to be known, Haragopal observed that the exit poll results are a clear indication of an agrarian crisis that has been deepening in the state for the past several years.

"The total neglect of the state agricultural sector by the Naidu government in the past nine years have been one of the important factors behind the possible defeat of TDP," he said.

"Over two-thirds of the state's population depend on the agriculture sector. There are about one crore landless agricultural labourers and 75 lakh small and marginal farmers living in rural areas. No party can be in power without doping something for these sections of the populace," Haragopal said.

"Once I told him that his model of development will not suit the state's economy. Agriculture had no place in his model. All through the years, he has been living in a kind of virtual reality. Those sections who benefited under his rule are not in a position to influence the opinion of these large rural masses," he said.

According to Haragopal, Naidu was trapped in his own image of being a hitech and high performing chief minister.

The backward castes, the major support base of the ruling party and which is composed of a major chunk of small and marginal farmers beside traditional crafts, have also been badly affected by the rising cost of cultivation and uncertainty in prices of farm produce apart from the power problem.

"Among other factors, the problem of unemployment, lumpen cadre base, drifting away of minorities have also played a very big role in this elections." Haragopal pointed out.

Though 50 per cent of the electorate in the state is between the age group of 18 to 35 years, the Naidu government had not done any substantial work on the employment generation front, according to political analysts.

One of the major complaints which came from across the rural areas in the state this time was about the TDP cadre amassing wealth at the cost of government schemes.

"Beside the utter neglect of the farm sector by the Telugu Desam government, TDP cadre themselves proved to be a major liability. People saw them amassing wealth in the guise of development," M Krishna Murthy, Rajya Sabha Congress member, deputed by the AICC as the observer of party affairs in the state, told Business Standard.

"The contractor class in the state has grown on the Rs 54,000 crore loans spent by the state government, and this formed the cadre of the Telugu Desam party. Contractors are generally devoid of any value systems and people naturally hated them," Haragopal said.

Another major loss that was expected to happen to the ruling party was on account of the minority vote shifting out. Apprehensive about Naidu's relations with the BJP, minorities have totally drifted away from the TDP after seeing Naidu in the company of L K Advani when the deputy prime minister's 'Rath Yatra' entered Hyderabad.

It is understood that local clerics had started a whispering campaign alongside an informal diktat that the minorities should not vote for the TDP.

It is also reliably learnt that the Muslim clerics toured the entire state and addressed captive audiences in mosques asking them not to vote for the TDP.

But TDP leaders strongly deny these observations. Party spokesman C Ramachandraiah said that any analysis can be possible only after the actual results are announced.