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| Aditi Phadnis: Son-rise in Andhra? |
| Aditi Phadnis / New Delhi Sep 05, 2009, 00:35 IST |
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The late YSR’s son may be the next CM with most MLAs backing him
It is now almost certain that Jaganmohan Reddy, the late Y S Rajasekhara Reddy’s 30-something son who is currently representing Kadapa in the Lok Sabha will succeed his father as chief minister of Andhra Pradesh. Caretaker Chief Minister and Finance Minister K Rosaiah has said he would not like to continue as CM and. Also, the younger Reddy is unlikely to behave like Sonia Gandhi, citing the call of the conscience and turning down the invitation. As many as 120 out of 150 MLAs have sent a signed statement to the Congress President urging her to nominate Reddy (Jr) to Andhra’s top job.
So the strong feudal tradition that Andhra Pradesh politics has been known for will continue in the next generation as well. Party MP Kishore Chandra Deo has gone on record as saying that Jaganmohan Reddy is too young and inexperienced (he has been an MP for four months, having been elected for the first time) and that the Congress in Andhra Pradesh should be able to find someone among 150-plus MLAs to lead the government. But it is the son of the CM that MLAs seem to favour.
In the highly factionalised politics of the Congress in Andhra Pradesh, this comes as no surprise. If a movement led by film star N T Rama Rao in the 1980s became a political party with the slogan Telugu atma gouravam (Telugu pride), it was largely because of the competitive politics in the Congress where leaders were prone to cutting off their noses to spite their faces. This caused a rapid turnover of chief ministers during Indira Gandhi’s prime ministership and although she remains a darling of the state, she and the Congress fell precipitously from favour for ‘insulting’ the Telugu people during that period.
For a while, Telugu Talli (the Telugu motherland) subsumed caste and region, but the Reddy domination was displaced by the Kamma domination, which in turn was turfed out by Reddy domination again. So N T Rama Rao’s son-in-law Chandrababu Naidu created a new caste equation under the rubric of the new economy; and when he was ousted, the Reddy leadership, with all its economic prosperity, decided to put its faith Y S Rajasekhara Reddy.
The ‘if you’re not with me, you’re against me’ political tradition was started by Rajasekhara Reddy when he first became the chief minister in 2004. The first scam hit headlines in 2005. It involved Volkswagen, the German carmaker and Vashista Wahan Private Limited, the company purportedly registered as the special purpose vehicle for setting up Volkswagen’s India project at the port city of Visakhapatnam.
The Central Bureau of Investigation is probing the charge that the company misappropriated the equivalent of ¤2 million (Rs 11 crore at the then exchange rate) invested by the Andhra Pradesh government through the Andhra Pradesh Industrial Infrastructure Corporation at the behest of one of Reddy’s ministers — the minister was not sacked, but was merely transferred. Between 2005 and 2009, he has gone from strength to strength: His wife is now an MP, his brother is an MLA, one of his close lieutenants is the chairman of a municipal corporation and another, the chief of a Zilla Parishad.
The Volkswagen company returned Rs 11 crore to the government on the advice of Reddy’s advisor D A Somayajulu. There is no doubt that the younger Reddy will benefit from his advice as well.
Leaders like former Andhra minister M Satyanarayana Rao, former union minister and deputy leader of the Congress Legislature Party (CLP) G Venkataswamy, and former CLP leader P Janardhana Reddy may now have no option but to endorse the leadership of Jaganmohan Reddy. But in YSR’s first term, they were not consulted on a government order dealing with 5 per cent reservation of jobs for minorities (the order was challenged in the high court and has since been stayed). At the time, these leaders alleged that Rajasekhara Reddy had a small group of ministers and would pass off decisions as consensual ones. The Telangana Rashtra Samiti (TRS), an ally, quit the government in 2005, citing Reddy’s style as one reason for their decision.
And while there is much laudatory talk about Reddy’s development agenda, it is the same feudal streak that is in evidence here as well: The state government is happy to dole out money for the poor but is unwilling to make the details public to NGOs and social audit organisations. Attacks on rivals, political and economic, through means fair and foul, have been par for the course, as founder of the Ushodaya group of companies, Ramoji Rao will tell you. Several Congress MPs opposed to Reddy say cronyism was the order of the day.
There is no doubt that Rajasekhara Reddy was a leader with presence and charisma. His two terms as the chief minister of Andhra Pradesh will certainly be remembered for progressive governance, but not for institution-building.
Clarification
The article incorrectly indicates that former CLP leader, P Janardhana Reddy is alive. He died last year. The error is regretted.
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