A Mixed Blessing - (Indolink.Com, 10/05/05)

-- by DasuKrishnamoorty

The pathetic electoral rout of Chandrababu Naidu’s Telugu Desam Party is a political victory for the country’s oldest party, the Congress. The people’s verdict, however, seems to be a tribute to caprice. Anti-incumbency is an expression of convenience invented by media experts groping for explanations to analyze voting behavior. It conceals more than half of the truth about the absence of life and death issues influencing the outcome of a democratic exercise. The knee-jerk reaction to the fall of a ten-year-old action-oriented government and the return of a party committed to dynastic rule fights shy of acknowledging the nature of an uninformed and emotion-swayed electorate and the role of misinformation spread by the media and opposition parties.

It is easy to dismiss Naidu’s debacle as the fallout of his accent on high technology to the neglect of pressing problems at the grassroots. In hindsight what stands out, as Naidu’s cardinal sin was his refusal to succumb to populism, and his reluctance to flaunt before the gullible electorate an unrealizableel dorado. Promises while costing the government next to nothing lubricate electoral inclinations in favor of the ruling party. It is possible Naidu has tried to call an end to such political trickery and for a change decided to rely on such a dysfunctional crutch as truth.

In contrast, the Congress squandered no opportunity to befriend a countryside nursing a sense of orphanhood. The contrast between the urbanscape and the rural scene was too severe to escape notice and exploitation. Promise of free and uninterrupted power and water to the farmer can be said to have tilted the balance in favor of the wily Congress. The voter was too impatient to ask questions about the viability of such utopia. He needed an assurance, a word of comfort of which the Congress had ample stock and supply. The only silver lining visible on the horizon is the certainty of a young Rajasekhara Reddy becoming the chief minister.

Another grave mistake of Naidu was to underestimate the emotive power of divisive movements in the country. He should have drawn lessons from the victories MarriChenna Reddy scored using Telangana as a weapon of intimidation against Indira Gandhi. Former deputy speaker ChandrasekharaRao, who is also young, revived the demand for a separate Telangana state the moment he fell out with ChandrababuNaidu who failed to correctly anticipate the mood in Telangana. On the other hand, the Congress played out its cards very deftly, now promising to strive for a separate state and now declaring special guarantees for the region. With youth on his side, ChandrasekharaRao is bound to demand his pound of flesh from the Congress.

Laloo Prasad Yadav and his wife have shown the dispensability of development issues to make electoral gains. In a very cynical way, it also shows the need to keep the electorate in the dark about what they really need and project emotional issues as necessary to get on with daily life. For nearly half a century, the Congress succeeded to isolate the minorities as its privileged preserve, selling religion as a dope and keeping social harmony permanently cleaved. For a change, Naidu wanted to swim against the tide of established political tradition of populism and has paid the price for it.

Wipro or Microsoft is not a name that resonates with the 55 million people in the countryside. Nor is the achievement of the TDP in the IT sector of any significance to the suicide-prone weavers or power-starved farmers. It is to this thirst for water and power that the Congress clung tenaciously to stage a spectacular return. It is likely that ChandrababuNaidu exaggerated the returns from his several programmes to empower women throughout the state. If the farmer has failed to gain from Naidu’s welfare programmes, his wife or sister or mother did. A woman’s gains bring greater stability to the family than a man’s earnings that evaporate before he reaches home. Have women let down Naidu and why?

It is hasty to take a negative view of what the Congress has in store for the people of the state. It has a leader who is as young as CahndrababuNaidu and who promises to continue the good work of Naidu in the IT sector. In fact, this is an area that is self-propelling and one that can prosper without state support or with the guarantee of minimum bureaucratic interference. Naidu’s successor will do well to nurse the IT constituency that has already metamorphosed the urban scene. Its benefits to the villages have not been adequately documented.

With the Congress gaining an absolute majority, people can put behind themselves fears of uncertainty and instability. This is a factor that is very crucial for development and attracting investments. The Congress is in a position to carry on without support from the TelanganaRashtraSamiti. But the need to keep that party in constant humor will tell on the wits and resources of the new government. After tasting electoral victories, ChandrasekharaRao will now work to become the chief minister of a separate state. To realize its goal, his party is not averse to ignite a civil war. This is a major political problem for the Congress.

Now the time has come for doing something about the promises Congress had made in its campaigns. Assuming that creation of other infrastructures can wait, how does the new government plan to supply power and water it had promised the farmers? How and from where does the government raise the 80 billion rupees needed to keep the promises? Sitting in the opposition, the Telugu Desam Party is bound to play Telangana and power against the new government. The Congress symbolizes people’s verdict, right or wrong. Its legitimacy is beyond question. It remains to be seen if it has the political will to add to what the previous government had done.

Naidu’s defeat is not merely a loss to the cause of development in Andhra Pradesh but a big blow to the coalition inNew Delhi. The task of the National Democratic Alliance becomes all the more difficult in scouting for new allies to make up for losses in Andhra Pradesh.

The media too have a role to play in helping the new government translate its promises. They have a tradition of imparting salience to conflict and irrationality. As a consequence the cost of development will go up. Adversary role is not a constitutional obligation. It has a history of frustrating the advance of the country and, worse, it is an imitative tradition. The media are a very crucial arm of the society entrusted with developmental responsibilities other sectors of the society undertake willingly.