YSR down, but still looks ahead in AP

By M H Ahssan & HNN Team

With the tamasha of a general election now in full swing, politicians are stooping to new lows in their rhetoric as though Varun Gandhi’s hate speech in Pilibhit had somehow removed a psychological barrier. The television networks are full of shrill, boisterous debates as rivals try to score points and the treacherous business of poll forecasting is underway.

India Today magazine has predicted that the Congress Party in Andhra Pradesh, which won 34 out of 42 seats in 2004, is poised for a good performance although with fewer seats - about a quarter fewer than last time.
The losses will be the result of a strong showing by its arch rival, the Telugu Desam Party (TDP) of Chandrababu Naidu, which had won only 10 seats in 2004. The prediction is based on the expectation that the same factor which brought the Congress to power last time - a carefully crafted alliance - will be pivotal in this election too except that this time it is the Congress’ rivals who have stitched together a seemingly ‘winning’ coalition.


In 2004, the Congress had forged an alliance with the two Communist parties, the CPI and the CPI-M, as well as the regional party, the Telengana Rashtra Samiti, TRS, led by Chandrasekhar Rao, which wants a separate state of Telengana.

The arrangement has been reversed in this election. The Congress is going it alone while the TSR and the leftwing parties are now allied with the TDP. The simple arithmetic of this coalition suggests that it will give the Congress a run for its money. Certainly, Naidu appears very ebullient and confident and is on the go constantly, campaigning tirelessly, unwilling to take any chances.


No one disputes that the Telengana region will be crucial in determining the outcome. It has 17 of the state’s 42 Lok Sabha seats and 119 of the 294 state assembly seats. And while it’s true that Naidu’s coalition looks sturdy, the fact remains that it was hastily cobbled together at the last moment by politicians and parties who have nothing in common with one another.

For example, the TDP and the Communists have been bitter opponents of the idea of a separate Telengana state - the very raison d’etre of the TRS. As one expert told me, the coalition is inherently unstable because it arose from electoral compulsion rather than the ground reality or any natural affinity.

Quite apart from the opposition alliance’s weaknesses, there are other reasons for doubting whether Naidu and his allies are going to trump the Congress. I am convinced that the sheer amount of development carried out for the rural poor by the Congress will come into play as voters make up their minds. Congress Chief Minister, Dr Y.S. Chandrasekhara Reddy may well do a Shiela Dixit in Andhra Pradesh.

YSR, as he is known, appears to be very popular in some sections of society, particularly among the poor and the urban lower middle class. In the Muslim quarter of Hyderabad, by the famous Char Minar monument, there was a widespread feeling that while the Congress might win fewer seats than last time, it would probably do better than the TDP and its allie.

As for film star Chiranjeevi who has floated a party called Praja Rajyam Party, it remains to be seen if he can convert his huge fan following into votes. Unlike legendary leader NTR, he lacks the charisma that allowed NTR to give the Congress a tough time. NTR played on the pride of the Andhraites who, he said, had been treated as pawns by the Congress regime in New Delhi.

NTR used to travel by road for weeks in the early 1980s addressing huge crowds who used to wait patiently for him in the blistering heat. I remember a sea of men, women and children sitting on the roadside in Guntur since the morning, waiting for NTR. They waited for 10 hours until NTR eventually arrived in Guntur close to midnight.

I narrated this phenomenon to Rajiv Gandhi when I met him two days later in Vijaywada. I told him that it looked as though the Congress was going to be mauled. NTR swept the polls and his Telugu Desam party has been a constant thorn in the flesh of the Congress Party.

His successor, Naidu, also sparkled for a while as he turned Hyderabad into a technology and IT hub but he made the fatal mistake of neglecting rural development.

This is where YSR scores over Naidu. Travel through the towns and countryside from Hyderabad to Machchlipatnam and you can see the number of welfare schemes and projects for the poor which have made a good impression on farmers and peasants. In Andhra Pradesh, unlike some other states, the Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme which gives poor laborers 100 days work a year has been well implemented.

Even his detractors confessed to me that YSR personally monitored the payment for workers, the crux of problems in other areas where the records are fudged. He devised a simple scheme: putting the money directly in the savings accounts of the beneficiaries which had been opened as part of a special rural banking project.

Villagers also speak highly of a health scheme called ‘Arogyasri’ by which the rural poor and slum dwellers receive medical treatment not only in government run hospitals but, in some cases, in private hospitals too. The state government used the funds it received from the Centre under the Jawaharlal Nehru Renewal Fund to pay for the patients’ treatment.

Finally, the poorer sections of society have been receiving 20 kilograms of rice, two kilograms of dal, and two kilos of sugar for Rs 50 under another welfare scheme.

I caught up with YSR in the heart of Telangana where he had addressed eight roadside meetings. Here he was, in a region where the regional TRS had broken off with the Congress, openly admitting that his party had reneged on its promise of granting the region statehood.

Addressing a large crowd in Warangal district, YSR said the Congress was now ready to give statehood but cautioned that it would take time for the new parliament to form the second demarcation commission.

But he reminded the crowd about the achievements of his government in alleviating poverty. He also rattled off statistics showing the number of new schools and colleges that had been opened in the region; how the irrigation network had been expanded to cover the whole area; and how the literacy rate in Andhra Pradesh was now second highest in the country, after Kerala.

The progress certainly hit me as I travelled around. In 1977, a cyclone devastated large parts of Andhra Pradesh. It was like a tsunami except that in those days we didn’t even know the word. I saw the destruction in the towns and villages of coastal Andhra, famous for its natural beauty and the tremendously rich soil in the hinterland where rice, sugarcane, cotton, and tobacco grow.

Some 50 villages near Vijaywada were flattened. Around 10,000 people perished in a few hours on the night of 11 November, 1977. Huge waves, some as high as 20 feet, swept away people, homes and livestock. For three days the area remained unreachable because even the railway lines had been destroyed. I was among the first journalists to reach Diviseema, 50 miles west of Vijaywada. In those days, Vijaywada was nothing but an overgrown village.

Now it is the third largest city in Andhra Pradesh and has a four lane expressway. There are at least two five star hotels and the port of Machchlipatnam is soon going to be developed. The main street, Bandar Road, is as modern as anything in Hyderabad.

Not all of this development, of course, can be attributed to YSR and the Congress. But his message to voters will be that a substantial chunk has taken place in the past five years under his rule.

I fear that Naidu and his TDP may struggle to rubbish these achievements. That is where YSR may enjoy an advantage over his rivals in this election.