After two successive defeats, Chandrababu Naidu, the politician once named the South Asian of the year, is relooking his image.
Nara Chandrababu Naidu has been at the forefront of the war against microfinance institutions in Andhra Pradesh. Their usurious rates of interest and strong-arm collection methods, he has alleged, have driven hapless farmers to suicide. He is a votary of free power to farmers, and believes in cash transfer of subsidies to the poor. In December last year, he launched a hunger strike for higher compensation to the rain-hit farmers of the state. Isn’t it sheer populism? Sure. Is this what Naidu has always said? No.
Not so long ago, Naidu, the longest-serving chief minister of Andhra Pradesh (September 1995 to May 2004), had hogged the national and international limelight for his reformist ways. He was the favourite of the World Bank and the world media. Time had named him South Asian of the year 1999. Bill Clinton, the former US president, and Tony Blair, the former British prime minister, came to Hyderabad, the state capital, during his term. For his Vision 2020 for the state, McKinsey had come on board for help. As a key member of the National Democratic Alliance at the Centre, he had announced his distance from left-of-centre politics. Businessmen took pride in being his acquaintance.
Tech-savvy Naidu had indeed transformed Hyderabad into an information technology hub. The new international airport, Hi-Tech City and the Outer Ring Road were conceived at his time. He gave land for the prestigious Indian School of Business as well as to Infosys, Wipro, Microsoft and other big IT companies to set up campuses. High rises, golf courses, shopping malls and multiplexes came up next. His vision for Hyderabad included a Formula One circuit and an international sports academy, though both the projects were scrapped by his successor, YS Rajasekhara Reddy.
In fact, so confident was Naidu of his own popularity that he advanced the state Assembly elections in 2004 by seeking to hold them along with the scheduled parliamentary polls. He stuck to his reformist agenda in his election manifesto. He also banked on the sympathy wave which he presumed was there after he survived a land mine blast triggered by the Naxalites in October 2003. However, all his calculations went haywire. His Telugu Desam Party (TDP) lost the elections. Post-poll analysis revealed that he focused on urban development at the neglect of rural areas.
** *
During his regime, the farm sector had plunged into a crisis mainly on account of bad monsoons and partly due to neglect by the rulers of the day. Thus, the offer of free power by the rival Congress party caught the attention of the debt-ridden rural people who ensured Naidu’s defeat. Naidu seemed to have learnt from his mistake and changed his stand by next elections in 2009. But people in the hinterland were yet to repose confidence in him and defeated his party once again in the elections.
The two successive defeats have transformed the former poster boy of Indian economic reforms. They have made him shift from his professed stand of “no-free lunches”. Naidu now advocates “reforms with a human face”. And by human face, he means, the benefits of reforms should reach the common man. One way of doing that is direct cash transfers to the poor in lieu of the various subsidies on offer. Given the weak delivery mechanism in the country, this should be considered as a solution, he says. “There should be a debate on this.”
Is there enough money in the state’s coffers? There is, now, says Naidu. “After 2004, there was a boom in the economy and real estate. The revenue of the government has gone up substantially,” he says indicating all this happened on account of the reforms ushered in by him. According to him, the additional income that accrued on account of his reforms should be utilised for reducing the gap between the rich and the poor. “Even when I implemented electricity reforms, I did not collect power charges from farmers forcefully. That was why power charges to the tune of Rs 1,000 crore were due from farmers,” says he.
But were economic reforms a sound political idea? Naidu says it took time for his reforms to yield results. “In small countries like those in East Asia, reforms percolated to the lower strata fast. In big countries like India and China, due to the trickle-down effect, the benefits of reforms have not reached the common man as expected,” he says, indicating that the Congress government, which succeeded the TDP regime in the state, has benefited by the reforms he implemented.
The tirade against microfinance institutions too, say some observers, is an astute political move. It was during Naidu’s time that self-help groups of women (SHGs) proliferated in the state. In the 1999 elections, he derived an overwhelming support from these SHGs. He expected similar support in 2004 elections but the support dwindled. May be by then the SHG members would have realised that they would be promoted irrespective of whichever party came to power in the state. The ploriferation of SHGs provided a fertile ground for the microfinance institutions to flourish. Naidu’s opposition begins to fall into place.
* * *
So has Naidu done enough to reinvent himself? “Naidu is still stuck in his old model. He does not want to lose his pro-global, forward-looking image,” says G Haragopal, the former dean of the School of Social Sciences in the University of Hyderabad. Some others rate his chances as bright. “I feel that the political future in the state belongs to Naidu. Currently there is a vacuum in Andhra Pradesh politics and Naidu has the experience and capacity to fill it,” says political analyst C Narasimha Rao.
Naidu is now confident that his TDP will capture power in the 2014 polls. “We will win 100 per cent. People are fed up with the current Congress regime,” he says. But the ongoing agitation for a separate state for the Telangana region might take the wind out of Naidu’s sails. Though he has not taken any clear-cut stand on the issue, TDP had an electoral alliance with the Telangana Rashtra Samithi that spearheaded the separate Telangana movement in the 2009 elections. The two parted ways soon after the elections. Now, they are bitter rivals engaged in trading charges against each other every day. That TDP is losing ground in Telangana is evident from the fact that its candidate lost deposits in the by-elections held in the region last year. Nevertheless, the TDP supremo points out that the results of the by-elections should not be taken into consideration for assessing his party’s prospects in the region.
“At that time, the people had voted for TRS because the seats for which the elections were held were vacated by TRS candidates. Besides, the Srikrishna Committee was set up and people wanted to demonstrate that they were for Telangana state,” he reasons. But what if Telangana is carved into a separate state? “Then we will win in both the states and emerge as a national party. TDP has strong cadre and leadership in Telangana,” Naidu asserts.
Others aren’t sure. “Naidu’s base in Telangana has been eroded. Telangana was a strong base for TDP because of the anti-Reddy stance of the artisans and agricultural labourers. This had been TDP's social base,” says Haragopal. “But the globalisation and pro-capital model pursued by Naidu hit the artisan community hard. Now they think that a separate Telangana state is the solution to their problem and Naidu is yet to declare his stand on this issue.” If elections are held in 2014, as scheduled, Naidu will have spent ten years as the leader of the Opposition — that’s a year more as the chief minister.
