“V” is for vanquished

On April 18, the Delhi-based Centre for Policy Alternatives published its comparative study of the four southern states. Of the four, half of Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh were going to the polls 48 hours later, while Tamil Nadu and Kerala were not facing the ballots till May 10. Obviously, the states where the findings of the study could have a possible impact among the educated voters were Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh, the two states which were also electing an assembly and where the anti-incumbency factor was reported to be strong.

The study found Andhra Pradesh to be lagging behind its southern sisters in almost everything — per capita gross domestic product, literacy rate, infant mortality, life expectancy, gross industrial output and human development index. On many of these issues, such as the incidence of poverty, Andhra’s performance was found to have declined over the last 20 years while that of the others went up.

There is a little detail missing here. The report was released in Hyderabad at a function organized by the Andhra Pradesh Congress committee.

Nothing illustrates better how this time, N. Chandrababu Naidu’s fact-rich, technology-backed style of governance was matched blow-by-blow by his rivals before the polls. In other words, the opposition used the strategy patented by him to oust him from power. The results are now for everyone to see: a landslide victory for the Congress-Telengana Rashtra Samithi combine and the failure of the media’s favourite chief minister to return to power. On the one hand, the margin of error in the media’s poll predictions and assessments has been reduced to a great extent, and on the other, there appears to have been a gross mistake in the media’s appraisal of Naidu as the country’s most development-oriented and visionary chief minister.

The media cannot be faulted entirely for being taken in by an almost flawless blueprint for a resurgent Andhra Pradesh. Chief ministers of India do not usually have a “plan” for their state — few measures are adopted as part of a larger plan. Nor are Indian chief ministers in the habit of rattling facts and figures, and keeping a database of the district administrations.

Behind the technological aids to governance lay a slightly sordid story which the media had missed till it was time for the elections and popular discontent could no longer be contained. The story has a funny ring to it, only it is not remotely so when seen against the backdrop of rural Andhra.

After assuming charge, Naidu expressed his wish to “conference” with every district once a month. The chief minister’s wish is every block-level officer’s command. What the villagers saw in the run-up to the day of reckoning were officials — from the district magistrate to the panchayat officer — getting into a tizzy. On Day I, files had to be updated and cases followed up. On Day II, officers from the lowest level, the mandal, had to travel to the collectorate to meet their counterparts and higher officers, and prepare the briefs. Day III was spent exchanging notes and talking strategy. Day IV was the D-Day, when bureaucrats and officers sat before a giant screen or telephones with sweating palms, trying to answer the chief minister’s questions. The worst over, it was time to get back to base on Day V. Day VI, most likely a Saturday, was for relaxation, a small reward for a job well done.

What all this meant for the poor villager — who was supposed to be the beneficiary of these programmes — was a week of no work at the mandal or collectorate office, when the government provided the babus with excuses not to work.

There are more such howlers in Naidu’s long endeavour to project the image of a king who keeps a tab on the well-being of individual subjects. A bureaucrat remembered how, a couple of years ago, the chief minister had reprimanded a couple for not sending their children to school. It was a moment of some embarrassment when it was revealed that there weren’t any in the village.

True, Naidu did not will the three consecutive years of drought. A chief minister cannot possibly love a good drought. The poll equations would have changed significantly minus the droughts. But it would be wrong to attribute to them the sole responsibility of removing the Telugu Desam Party from power. The outgoing chief minister’s publicly expressed contempt for agriculture — and its manifestations in his developmental programmes — were a far bigger factor. His view of agriculture as dandaga (waste) was naturally seen as the cause of the TDP government’s failure to provide adequate drought-relief. The high-sounding agricultural projects of Janmabhoomi, Neeru-Meeru, Roshni and Aadarna ended up being more familiar to the bureaucrats than to the farmers.

When the TRS, an infant as political parties go, tied up with the Congress before the polls, it was assumed that Telengana would emerge as a major issue before the electorate. There are many who still think that the Telengana card was an ace. But the fact remains that the Andhra Pradesh cabinet that will be sworn in on May 13 will have the distinction of being elected because of an overwhelming anti-incumbency mandate.

Ironically, the main achievement of the TRS was not to mobilize voters in the Telengana region — that was expected — but to turn the tide against the TDP in its stronghold, coastal Andhra. Voters here were overjoyed at the prospect of Telengana separating, giving them some breathing space finally.

The Naxals could have helped the TDP had elections taken place soon after their attacks on Naidu. Anyone of lesser stature would have failed to garner any sympathy in the face of rising discontent, as the attack on Yerran Naidu during the campaigning phase proved. Naxal outfits like the People’s War, with their anti-World Bank slogans, managed to alienate themselves as much from the rural voters as Naidu did.

As a matter of fact, Naidu did not need any help to lose the elections. He queered his pitch with surprising ease. Even in the middle of allegations of Naidu favouring his Kamma caste brothers with business deals and plying vote banks with biriyani and liquor on election eve, few were able to seriously question Naidu’s intentions of taking Andhra Pradesh to the top of the list of Indian states. What had gone gravely wrong was the glasses through which he saw the state’s future. Not many voters are sure even now if the Congress government will be radically different from Naidu’s, although the promise of free power is immensely attractive, as was N.T. Rama Rao’s promise of rice at Rs 2 per kilogram.

Naidu’s is a classic case of a development model gone awry. He placed too much faith on the capabilities of technology as the thing for the future. Led into his dream world by the two Bills — Clinton and Gates — he failed to realize that 9 years of effort later, the words “hi-tech city” drew a blank stare from most people in his state.