IDEA AND REALITY: Why Naidu Got Logged Out

""Between the idea/And the reality/Between the motion/And the act/Falls the shadow" -"The Hollow Men" by T S Eliot

It is nearly eight decades since these famous words were written. But time

and again, intelligent human beings fail to distinguish between idea and

reality; they are unable to separate hype from fact. Even a casual visitor to

Hyderabad, like this correspondent, realized many months ago that everything was

far from hunky dory for the Telugu Desam Party (TDP) regime in Andhra Pradesh

led by its high-profile chief minister N Chandrababu Naidu.

But almost everyone who had some connection or the other with the world of

information technology seemed to hold a contrary view. Yours truly would be

roundly chided for even suggesting that the people of Andhra Pradesh (the most

economically backward state in southern India) would throw out a person who had

been portrayed by large sections of the media— particularly the

English-language financial media—as not just India's most computer-savvy

chief minister but also its most "progressive" and "forward

looking" one. So, when on May 11, it was apparent to all and sundry that

Naidu and his party had been summarily routed at the hustings, there were gasps

galore from those who had elevated this canny, journalist-friendly politician to

the status of a demi-god.

Naidu had to pay a stiff price for his political opportunism after nine years

in office. The past has this strange way of catching up with you. But before one

analyses this particular aspect of his complex personality, let us briefly

consider some of the reasons cited for Naidu's inglorious exit.

It is said that Naidu ignored rural Andhra Pradesh and that Cyberabad

glittered while thousands of farmers committed suicide after four successive

years of drought. This perception is partially true, not entirely. The fact is

that the TDP lost the elections in Hyderabad and Secunderabad. The entire state

defeated him and his party — the Congress alliance won 226 seats in the

294-member state assembly.

Naidu was opposed to the formation of a separate state of Telengana and

hence, did not favor the Vajpayee government's decision to create Uttaranchal

(out of Uttar Pradesh), Jharkhand (out of Bihar) and Chhattisgarh (out of Madhya

Pradesh) in 2000. His views in this regard did not exactly endear him to the

people of Telengana, which is the most backward region within Andhra Pradesh.

Many political analysts and pollsters had claimed that there would be strong

opposition to the formation of a separate state of Telengana from those living

in other parts of the state. This perception was not reflected in the voting

pattern. Though the Congress on its own reduced its vote share in the assembly

elections by around 2.5%, it was able to win more than three-fourths of the

assembly seats thanks to the 6.33% swing in favor of its partner, the Telengana

Rashtra Samithi.

It is widely perceived that Naidu and the TDP were almost wiped out because

of the anti-incumbency factor. What indeed is anti-incumbency? At one level, it

is sheer bad governance. At another level, it is the belief that a new

government would be more responsive to the aspirations of the bulk of the

electorate and hence, better than the incumbent regime. Naidu obtained huge

amounts of money from the Union government in the name of drought relief. He

arm-twisted the Food Corporation of India to procure larger quantities of rice

from the state's farmers. Andhra Pradesh was the first state in India to

obtain a direct loan of Rs 2,200 crore from the World Bank at a time when

economic sanctions had been imposed against the country after nuclear tests had

been conducted in May 1998. If these huge sums of money had been properly spent,

Naidu's political fate may have been different. The state government is

currently burdened with a debt as high as Rs 60,000 crore. Should one be

surprised then that anti-incumbency sentiments ran as strong as they did?

Despite the largesse he obtained from the central government, Naidu would

from time to time hypocritically seek to assert his "independence"

from the Vajpayee government in New Delhi by highlighting the fact that his

party had neither participated in the government nor been a part of the National

Democratic Alliance coalition but merely provided "outside support" to

it. The TDP was also highly critical of the Narendra Modi government in Gujarat

after the 2002 communal riots.

Naidu wanted to have his cake and eat it too. He couldn't. The one-time fan

of Sanjay Gandhi as a Congress minister, the man who broke the party founded by

his father-in-law because he did not approve of his second marriage to a woman

half his age, the former convenor of the United Front who switched allegiance

overnight to partner its political opponents in the NDA—eventually had to pay

a stiff price for his political opportunism.

In Naidu's lexicon, subsidies had a negative connotation. Unlike N T Rama

Rao who provided rice at Rs 2 a kg, he hiked power tariffs, water charges and

bus fares. He probably thought this was good economics. It turned out to be

lousy politics. His successor and former party colleague Y S Rajasekhar Reddy

has said he would provide free power to farmers. The loss to the state's

exchequer would be around Rs 250 crore, which, according to the new chief

minister, is lower than the amount spent annually by Naidu on his own publicity.

His trip to Davos, his plan to start Formula One racing in the state, the

establishment of the Indian School of Business and his exhortations to Bill

Gates and another Bill (Clinton) evidently failed to impress the voters of his

state. On the contrary, he acquired a pro-rich image, which schemes like the

Janmabhoomi program (to involve the community in building rural projects) failed

to alter.

This writer had interviewed him on one occasion in his office. His PR

managers had wanted the interview to be confined to his US trip to meet the

founder of Miscrosoft. When I started asking him questions about the days he was

pally with Sanjay Gandhi, the PR managers and bureaucrats surrounding him got

very upset with me. "You are not supposed to be asking such

questions," they complained. Naidu remained impassive. He said he preferred

to look ahead.

Naidu made much of his computer-friendly ways. It seems many of his

colleagues were not equally enamored of IT as he was. Despite all his efforts,

Hyderabad lagged way behind Bangalore, Chennai and Gurgaon even in the area of

IT exports. If he had indeed reduced corruption significantly and used computer

technology to usher in a transparent, accountable and hassle-free form of

governance in the state, would the voters of the state have thrown him out the

way they did? The question is rhetorical.

Nasscom's Kiran Karnik stated on May 13-the day the results of the 14th

general elections were known-around the time it had become clear that the BJP-led

NDA government would not be returning to power, that the defeat of the TDP would

not have "any adverse impact" on the IT industry. The new chief

minister of the state would help himself and the people of his state if he

successfully uses IT for the benefit of the poor and underprivileged, quietly

and convincingly, minus the hype and the hoopla. Will he bridge the hiatus

between idea and reality?

All eyes are on the medical doctor who walked 1,500 km over two months

braving the dust and the heat of summer.

Paranjoy Guha Thakurta The

writer is director, School of Convergence and a journalist with 27 years'

experience in print, radio, television and the Internet. He has co-authored a

book titled A Time of Coalitions: Divided We Stand and directed a documentary

called Idiot Box or Window of Hope.