Chiranjeevi can break the Congress vote bank by playing the same old caste card.
Few politicians have elicited the kind of hysteria that Telugu film actor Chiranjeevi has evoked. Remarks were made in December 2007 that he was “likely to enter politics”. Between then and now, the Congress did its best to capitalise on the fact that his daughter Srija had to elope to get married to a boy of her choice; that his brother, actor Pawan Kalyan, had to get a divorce decree in an out-of-court settlement after a woman alleged that he had committed bigamy (a divorce was granted, suggesting a marriage had taken place); a Congress leader, Raghav Reddy, snidely remarked that Chiranjeevi was “at best, a leader of Opposition”; and Andhra Pradesh Marketing Minister Marappa said that Chiranjeevi is such a mercenary, he even treats blood as merchandise: A reference to the chain of blood banks run by the actor that give blood free to the poor but sell it to the rich.
Now, weeks after the launch of his party, Praja Rajyam, both the BJP and the CPI(M) are wooing Chiranjeevi assiduously. At the customary chai-and-samosa briefing for reporters at the BJP office in Delhi recently, there was a 15-minute debate: Did L K Advani call Chiranjeevi to congratulate him or was it Chiranjeevi who called Advani? To set the record straight about any slurs on the standing of the star, the BJP said it didn’t matter. But it was clear that Advani had called Chiranjeevi, bowing to a politician who still has to open his election account.
Why is everyone afraid of Chiranjeevi?
First, the numbers: Of the 295 members of the Andhra Pradesh Legislative Assembly, the Congress has its highest tally in recent history of 185. It really cannot go beyond this number and it will have to come down in the state election slated for mid-2009. The Telugu Desam Party (TDP), at 46, is minuscule in comparison. The Telangana Rajya Samithi has 26 and this tally is also likely to go down; the Left parties together have 15, against the BJP’s 2 — which explains why the BJP is so anxious to ride on the back of the Praja Rajyam.
To form a government, a party has to get at least 148 MLAs, a figure that the Congress might be hard put to reach given a combination of anti-incumbency and the Chiru factor.
In the present Lok Sabha, out of 42 seats that Andhra Pradesh sends, 30 MPs are from the Congress (one, Chegondi Harirama Jogaiah, resigned from the Congress as well as the House last month and has joined Chiranjeevi). So in the Lok Sabha too, the Congress cannot expect to replicate its performance and Andhra Pradesh could well be one of the states that will decide whether or not the Congress can come to power in the forthcoming Lok Sabha elections.
Given such high stakes, to quote Jogaiah, are all political parties going to get “get washed away in the Chiranjeevi tsunami”?
The answer lies in caste politics.
The problem with the Congress in Andhra Pradesh has always been a rapid turnover of chief ministers, but even the two most distinguished ones, P V Narasimha Rao and N Sanjeeva Reddy, who went on to become prime minister and president of India, were Brahmin and Reddy respectively. The Congress has never offered the people of Andhra Pradesh a CM from the Backward Classes (BC).
The most prominent BCs are the Kapus: Some sub-castes are considered backward while others are counted among the forward castes (in itself a conspiracy to divide them, but that’s another issue). Chiranjeevi is a Munnuru Kapu — from the forward among the backward. United, Kapus and other backward sub-castes can represent a politically-electrifying force in Andhra Pradesh politics.
BC disempowerment has lain dormant but festering. Successive Congress governments have tried to balance the politically-dominant and economically-prosperous Kamma and Reddy castes with a judicious combination of BCs, but this has left everyone dissatisfied.
Caste consolidation as a means of politics was first achieved with spectacular success by the rich Kammas from the coastal Andhra districts who joined NT Rama Rao in the early 1980s. The rallying cry was Telugu atma gouravam (pride) but the TDP actually represented Kamma empowerment. Things got so bad for other castes that in 1988, Vangaveeti Ranga — a politician from the BCs — sat on a hunger strike citing a threat to his life from the TDP, and he was actually murdered. But even this did not really result in BC consolidation for want of leadership. A leader has now arrived.
All parties have recognised the importance of the BCs. Congress Chief Minister YS Rajasekhara Reddy has announced that 33 per cent of the seats in the forthcoming assembly election will be given to the BCs. The TDP says it will give 40 per cent seats to the BCs. In other words, if a consolidation of the Munnuru Kapus and BCs can actually be achieved, Chiranjeevi’s Praja Rajyam can be a runaway hit. Pundits are giving it anywhere between 60 and 145 seats. Either way, the Congress bank will break. The TDP bank is not a threat.
Not so, say sceptics. The problem with socially-backward classes in Andhra Pradesh is caste domination. They say that of the 800 non-resident Telugus who have come back home to ‘help’ Chiranjeevi, 720 are from his own caste. So the BCs would be well-advised to steer clear of such a grouping in their own interest.
Whatever the caste compulsions, political parties in Andhra Pradesh have been jolted into acting, and fast. This will be the state to watch in the Lok Sabha elections.
