Predictable Politicking

The Congress government in Andhra Pradesh may have survived the noconfidence motion in December, but its problems on many fronts apart from internal squabbling are staring it in the face at the dawn of the New Year. Besides, with issues like power cuts and water scarcity yet to be addressed with any seriousness, the Congress government can hardly hope for a better 2012, writes K Naresh Kumar from Hyderabad

   The battle lines are drawn. The warring parties too are identified. The only thing nobody knows or does not want to speculate is the likely outcome. And as far as issues go, there are too many on the plate for anyone who is a politician worth one's salt in Andhra Pradesh, arguably the most turbulent state in the south as of now, politically and socially.

   The Congress has three problems - the on-and-off Telangana tangle which has once again gone into a limbo, the internecine warfare between the current chief minister, N Kiran Kumar Reddy, and the PCC president, Botcha Satyanarayana, and the looming threat of the erstwhile chief minister, N Chandrababu Naidu, posing a stiff challenge in various regions of the state.

   First, the Telangana issue. The 'gift' on Sonia Gandhi’s birthday - December 9,2009 - is the date many of the Congress politicians would rather like to forget as it reminds them of the announcement of the Union Home Minister, P Chidambaram, who had declared that ‘the process of creating a separate state has been set into motion’.

   Having survived the December noconfidence motion of the combined opposition led by Chandrababu Naidu, Y S Jaganmohan Reddy and the Telangana Rashtra Samiti (TRS), the Congress saw its chief minister take on Telugu Desam leader Naidu in a slanging match which brought no glory to the assembly proceedings.

    Then there was the tame surrender of the TRS, allowing its 41- day peoples’ movement to peter out by end October, much to the glee of the Congress. It left the pro- Telangana regional media fuming, with one acerbic editor calling Sonia Gandhi the ‘goongi gudiya’ of modern times, a throwback to the term that her mother-in-law Indira Gandhi had earned during her early days in politics.

Y S Jaganmohan Reddy

The way Chiranjeevi, the film hero, crumbled and merged his barely two year old party- Praja Rajyam- with the Congress was what the doctor ordered for their party’s revival in the coastal corridor of the state. The tacit tie-up between the two Kapu community leaders – the matinee idol and the current PCC president, Botcha Satyanarayana – and their rivalry with the current chief minister has taken the fight all the way to Delhi. With around 16 MLAs awaiting disqualification for having defied the party whip during the no-confidence motion last month, the tug-of-war is bound to get intense. The chief minister loyalists intend giving him a better chance of having his men as replacements to the ones who are likely to make an exit. The by-elections would be keenly contested as and when they are held.

   The party which still swears by Gandhian ways, as seen in the padyatra culture to connect with the masses, when it suits them, saw to its horror that its latest bête noire Y S Jaganmohan Reddy and old rival N Chandrababu Naidu coolly pulling off similar stunts. The son of the exchief minister continued with his Odarpu yatra to meet with the grieving family members of the ones who committed suicide unable to bear his father’s death.

The Telugu Desam party too had kicked off with a walkathon with their leader taking up the farmers’ plight to highlight the indifference of the Congress government in providing them their agro-based requirements which had made a few districts in the state see a ‘crop holiday’ during the last sowing season. Though there were derisive comments about the new love Naidu professed for the farming community who had summarily rejected his IT and hit-tech initiatives twice over in 2004 and 2009 elections, the response he was getting was not to be ignored. The Telangana region – which sees him as the betrayer of the separate state cause - however is still hostile to Naidu. Slippers were hurled at him to inhibit his free movement in the region.

Sonia Gandhi

The Telugu Desam Party too had kicked off with a walkathon with their leader taking up the farmers’ plight to highlight the indifference of the Congress government in providing them their agrobased requirements which had made a few districts in the state see a ‘crop holiday’ during the last sowing season.

P Chidambaram

The Congress may still be interested in seeing who beats whom in the battle between the YSR family led by the mother-son duo and Chandrababu Naidu. On the other hand, the Congress and the TDP both want the duo of Jaganmohan and TRS leader K Chandrasekhara Rao out of the way and hence have a tacit understanding.    The incumbent chief minister completed a year in power in November and has been seen to be actively pushing people-oriented programmes especially with regard to employment generation and providing citizen benefits like the Aadhaar card and increasing egovernance to reach out to the common man. He is, however, still seen as a greenhorn who is yet  to master

the spoken Telugu language to suit the public address mode. His relative ignorance of Dakhani (the language spoken in Hyderabad, a quaint mix of Hindi, Telugu and Urdu) has caused considerable mirth among the locals.

   With so many issues like power cuts and water scarcity yet to be addressed with any seriousness, the Congress government can hardly hope for a better New Year – 2012.