Author: Aditya Sinha
Publication: The New Indian Express
Date: September 5, 2009
URL: http://expressbuzz.com/edition/print.aspx?artid=eboC6hzS8I8=
At the outset an apology to readers, but it
has been very nauseating to see Congress legislators and workers demand that
the late chief minister of Andhra Pradesh, Y S R Reddy, be succeeded by his
wheeler-dealer son Y S Jagan Mohan Reddy. It was nauseating to see them make
the demand for Jagan's accession even before his father's body was brought
from the chopper crash site to Hyderabad. It was more nauseating than the
continuous eulogies of YSR for having been a mass leader, which he was, without
any mention of his darker side. It was more disrespectful to the departed
leader than any mention of his ruthlessness or his financial acuity. No wonder
Congress president Sonia Gandhi was looking teary-eyed.
One person who would certainly be rooting
for Jagan to be the next chief minister would be one B Ramalinga Raju, the
former chairman of Satyam Computers who is now an occupant of Hyderabad's
Chanchalguda jail. Raju has been accused of fraud, forgery, cheating and insider
trading. His scandal broke when he admitted that Rs 7,000 crore had disappeared
from the company and subsequently surrendered to the police. Investigators
found that the money had disappeared not because the accounts had been inflated,
but because it had been siphoned off. Opposition leader N Chandrababu Naidu,
on the floor of the Andhra Assembly, charged Raju with giving the money to
14 of Jagan's companies for laundering.
That's not all. Jagan's dad had given Raju
50 acres of land in Vishakhapatnam at throwaway prices, ostensibly so that
a world-class IT company like Satyam could set up a SEZ. Jagan and Raju's
shenanigans caused a controversy and tagged the late chief minister with the
reputation of making money through SEZs (but which chief minister does not
suffer this disrepute?). And of course, Jagan's companies were doing business
with the Raju-founded Maytas (Satyam spelled backwards), which was awarded
the Rs 12,000 crore Hyderabad Metro project much to the dismay of Delhi Metro
chief E Sreedharan (that deal is off).
This is not to say that Jagan is Raju's lackey.
After all, Jagan is a businessman in his own right. He started the Sakshi
media empire which is now said to be worth Rs 3,500 crore, and his Sandur
power company recently invested in another Telugu TV channel. He's so keen
a businessman that he had been based in Bangalore for most of his adult life,
showing no interest in politics till about three years ago, and having little
knowledge of his father's native Rayalaseema, much less of the sprawling Andhra
Pradesh. His entry to the Lok Sabha this year is his maiden venture in the
world of parliamentary democracy.
Yet, you may argue, there are other wheeler-dealer
sons and daughters who are neck-deep in politics. You need only peek around
to find one company by the name of Kalaignar & Sons Pvt Ltd. Here, no
one even bothers with the façade of business; and the state, affluent
like Andhra, appears to have enough to go around. The only consolation is
that once the patriarch departs from the scene, the sons will be at each other's
throats, much like the Ambani brothers. As is bound to happen in the Ambanis'
case, fratricide will destroy the empire that the patriarch assiduously built.
Those opposed to Jagan's becoming the chief
minister may point to the hard work his father put in to reach the pinnacle
of state politics. As the eulogies state, YSR was a mass leader, his padayatra
through the state while in opposition endeared him to the people, he promised
free power and irrigation projects to his people (capitalising on their disillusionment
with Naidu), and he ensured that corruption did not touch NREGA and the agrarian
poor (money was pilfered elsewhere). How can Jagan be as massive a mass leader
until he takes a long walk through the dusty and dry (and "naxal-infested")
countryside? He cannot become an ideal chief minister, as the prime minister
described YSR, until he gets an idea of life outside of the big city.
Jagan would also have to prove whether he
can measure up to YSR the visionary, as Sonia described him. YSR was certainly
visionary in that he could see just how much money the Congress would need
to contest the Lok Sabha elections this year, and not just in Andhra alone,
but across the entire nation. The affluence of Andhra allowed him to be a
visionary; the only states to come close to AP in wealth are Tamil Nadu and
Maharashtra (another reason why the Congress wants to revive itself in these
states). Sonia knows that trying to get campaign funds from the gentlemen
who dominate each of these other two states would be like drawing water from
stone. The question for her would then be whether Jagan can match his father's
vision.
YSR was also visionary because he managed
to give Sonia a valuable 33 MPs in this Parliament not so much because he
was a mass leader but because he got Chiranjeevi to divide the anti-incumbency
vote. This was a Congress strategy employed in places like Tamil Nadu (with
Vijaykanth) and in Maharashtra (with Raj Thackeray). You somehow get the feeling
that it will take Jagan several years to have an instinct for such canny strategy
(and his father probably intended him to have a decade's worth of apprenticeship).
Additionally, in Sonia's eyes YSR certainly
looked more visionary than the other Congress chief ministers. Ashok Gehlot
in Rajasthan, for instance, resembles an aging Tintin. Ashok Chavan in Maharashtra
is so Vanilla that even Delhi's Sheila Dixit looks more macho. And Assam chief
minister Tarun Gogoi looks a bit like Michael Jackson between surgeries. (Incidentally,
Michael Jackson's burial was also on Friday). It is doubtful if Jagan can,
like his father, stand head and shoulders above these other Congress chief
ministers.
Lastly, Jagan does not have the ruthlessness
of YSR. You are invited to peruse a June 12, 2004, article by K Balagopal
in Economic and Political Weekly, titled "Andhra Pradesh: Beyond Media
Images". It contains a couple of ghastly incidents including that of
Ahmedullah, a polling officer who was dragged out of a voting booth in Raychoti
town and murdered, during 1989 polling for the Cuddapah Lok Sabha constituency.
YSR has obviously not trained his son the
way his own father, the reputedly fierce Raja Reddy, trained him. Without
ruthlessness or mass leadership, uneasy lies the head that wears a crown.
The Congress's problem in Andhra Pradesh is that the other candidates are
mind-bogglingly uninspiring. Therefore the nauseous spectacle of Congressmen
begging for Jagan even before his father has had a decent burial. And you
have to figure that at some point, Chandrababu Naidu will try to split the
Congress. Things don't bode well for the house that YSR built.
- The Author Aditya Sinha is the Editor-in-Chief
of 'The New Indian Express' and is based in Chennai
