Fasting for allies: How Jagan, Naidu are using Telangana

Listening to former Andhra Pradesh chief minister Chandrababu Naidu in Delhi on Monday, one couldn’t help but remember 2004. It was a few months since he fortuitously escaped a Peoples War Group bid on his life, in a landmine blast. The CM’s former colleague K Chandrashekhar Rao was ratcheting up the call for Telangana once again, a few years and some electoral successes after he had set up the Telangana Rashtra Samiti. The TRS would contest the next poll in alliance with the Congress. Naidu himself had a comfortable hold over Andhra Pradesh, having christened himself the CEO of the state, endearing himself to some sections with his dynamism, his wooing of World Bank funds and foreign investment, and his vision of Andhra Pradesh as a model for other states to follow. The intra-party murmurings since he unseated his father-in-law had also died down. In fact, with his radical ideas on the role of government as facilitator instead of provider, his gumption to suggest a better balance between welfare schemes and reforms, he was almost statesman-like. Not to mention the comfortable relationship he shared with the NDA at the Centre. [caption id=“attachment_1158841” align=“alignleft” width=“380”] Reddy or Naidu?[/caption] An early election must’ve seemed like one in the bag. As things turned out, the sympathy wave he expected was not even a ripple. The Congress was at its wily best, tying up seat adjustments with once-bitter rivals and telling the vast number of voters untouched by the Cyberabad dreams that Naidu was no more than a stooge of the World Bank. Unluckily for him, Assembly elections had to be held simultaneously with the NDA’s attempt to return to power on its India Shining campaign. And the TDP, for the most part, was history. Nearly a decade later, Andhra Pradesh is not the model state its once-CEO had dreamt of. The tussle for top honours on investments and industry is now between Gujarat and Maharashtra. The new model state, Narendra Modi would like us to believe, is his. It is aspirant statesman Modi who invites diplomats and shares the stage with the chief of a global energy giant who has just made large investments in India. “Nobody of my stature has fasted in Delhi before,” Naidu told reporters at a press conference in the capital where he seemed tired and devoid of fresh ideas, picking a grating and repetitive petulance instead. It was a sad throwback to the pre-2004 years. Truth is, depleted in Andhra Pradesh, Naidu had no hope of gathering numbers to match the large troops of YSR supporters who streamed into the vicinity of Jagan’s Banjara Hills home to support their hero’s son. Naidu could hardly have organised a parallel fast with a fraction of the turnout. A fast in Delhi was the only politically expedient thing to do. For the same reasons, though Naidu has been an ally of the BJP and the NDA in the past, he will now doubtless have to earn any possible alliance with Narendra Modi. There are no holy cows in the Modi juggernaut, nobody is untouchable, so Jaganmohan Reddy’s vying for the affections of the BJP’s prime ministerial candidate will simply weigh against Naidu’s modest attempt at a barb on Sonia Gandhi’s origin with an Italian word thrown in, immobilismo or principally opposed to progress, “so the Congress understands”. It’s silly season, they say, as elections are around the corner. So nobody believes any of this is anything more than political posturing. The BJP, and Modi himself in his now-famous “open letter” to Hyderabadis, has embraced the convenient stand that they remain committed to statehood for Telangana, but in a way that it’s a win-win situation for all stakeholders. Just what is that win-win has been left unexplained to the people who will face sharpened inter-state water distribution conflicts, revenue crunches and more. Despite that stand, both men fasting 1,200 km apart are hoping to score political brownie points with the BJP, Jaganmohan reddy more ambiguously so, what with his need to keep all options open. So, here it is. The 70-day shutdown of government services in Seemandhra, the agitations and the picketing, these are ancillary right now. As the Telangana threads get more tangled, you can’t help but agree with the protesting Congress chief minister of Andhra Pradesh – this was hasty, politically expedient, but neither more nor less expedient than two indefinite hunger strikes.