Jagan Mohan is just making Naidu a crusader with his crackdown on TDP. Only the BJP benefits from this duel
Do regional parties realise that their strengths, drawn from the grassroots and the immediacy of local contexts, are under threat in the centrist one-India narrative being peddled by the ruling BJP? For anybody who has been following States — where regional parties continue to have some presence to challenge the replica model being propagated by the establishment for seamless governance — would know how the BJP is playing them against each other. The most recent manifestation is the tug-of-war between Chandrababu Naidu’s Telugu Desam Party (TDP) and Jagan Mohan Reddy’s YSR Congress. Naidu, a political survivor who has been changing his props throughout his career to ensure his citadel in Andhra Pradesh, had clearly misplaced his bets on a grand Opposition alliance and a coalition government at the Centre. But post the Modi juggernaut, he is ruing his exit from the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA), with some even speculating that he would not hesitate to ingratiate himself to it yet again, provided it guarantees him some political legspace. It is because of this reason that TDP, like Jagan Mohan, supported the abrogation of Article 370. Now, the BJP may not want him but could effectively use him as a counterweight to Jagan Mohan, with whom it has a tacit understanding but whose winning numbers are a matter of avarice and the biggest obstacle in its own growth in the State. On his part, the Chief Minister must recall what happened when a leadership tussle post his father YSR Reddy’s death had led to a political morass that, in fact, accelerated the creation of Telangana. And that past CBI cases on disproportionate assets still hover over him to ensure he toes the Central line. If Jagan Mohan is indeed interested in creating a legacy like his father, or even that of Naidu, whom he may grudge but who gave a face to India’s IT revolution with “Cyberabad”, then he must give up avenging politics and look to solidify his political worth, one that even the BJP would find hard to topple. Already, the preventive arrests of Naidu and his son, Nara Lokesh, ahead of a rally at Guntur, have given enough grist to the beleaguered TDP chief to retrieve his political relevance. Worse, they have allowed him to project himself as a victim of egoistic personal vendetta, whose right to dissent has been throttled. If both State leaders allow the BJP to play favourites, then both stand to lose.
Already the whataboutery and settling scores have cost Andhra Pradesh and its GDP quite a bit. Undoing all of Naidu’s schemes, structures and agreements over the past 100 days has not only appeared despotic but also foolhardy, considering it has badly disturbed the investment sentiment in the State. Constructions have been left half-complete and doomed to waste, big-ticket projects are awaiting a re-tendering process or abandonment while Amaravati, which was conceived as a modernist State capital rather than Naidu’s personal fief, has been needlessly stalled. With Hyderabad going to Telangana, what is to be Andhra’s face or embody its business vision? Telangana currently has the edge by virtue of Hyderabad’s vibrant economy. And with the World Bank pulling out and absurd talk about the State having multiple capitals, nobody has any idea how to handle the flight of capital or losses so far after the abandonment of Amaravati. The World Bank would have given $300 million, the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, which was to partner with the World Bank, was to give $715 million. Jagan Mohan may claim he is straightening “irregularities” in past deals, and though some of those charges may be genuine, the cataclysmic scale of economic overhaul is certainly not washing with the voters. The bigger question is who will fund his welfarist announcements, considering he still has not been able to wangle a special status tag for Andhra. Jagan Mohan should realise that a halting economy can transform his image as a dream-catcher to political tyrant overnight. And chief ministership in the end is about deliveries, not activism, well-intended or not. Besides, Jagan Mohan himself knows that the BJP doesn’t really need his support and will only be too happy with disaffection breeding in his ranks. It has attempted to poach members of the neighbouring Telangana Rashtra Samithi (TRS) and won’t stop doing so in Andhra too. The Chief Minister needs to act with reason, not emotion or out of hurt pride.
