Double talk, double trouble

Caught unawares and stupefied by the sudden decision of the Congress high command to divide the State, all the leaders in Andhra Pradesh who have been thriving on duplicitous politics were forced to shed their masks and come out in true colours. They are now trying to extract maximum mileage from the crisis that has gripped the State. Thanks to the CWC decision, political parties as well as individual political leaders in the State have been forced to stop their double talk and double game. They now have no other way except taking a firm stand, one side or the other. This is the net result of the rigged game of dice played recklessly for over a decade at the cost of development and welfare of the people. Even those who cry foul are responsible for this state of affairs.

Bifurcation of Andhra Pradesh seems to have been accepted by most, if not all, political parties in the State even before the Union Home Ministry started its exercise to prepare a note. What has so far happened is merely a decision taken by the Congress Working Committee (CWC) that was unanimously accepted by the coordination committee of UPA-II in less than half an hour on July 31. The decision was announced by Digvijay Singh, AICC general secretary in charge of AP affairs. It is proper insofar as the decision was taken by the Congress and other parties in the UPA coalition. The Union government is yet to decide on the specifics.

YSRCP was the first political party in the State to accept the political division by voluntarily walking out (almost) of Telangana to concentrate on Seemandhra, ironically, on the slogan of united AP. Sixteen MLAs of the YSRCP had resigned soon after CWC’s announcement and all the important leaders in Telangana had quit the party blaming it for the volte-face on a just issue. The party might come back to Telangana after the division becomes a reality and launch a campaign based on the welfare-oriented schemes introduced by the YS Rajasekhara Reddy government. Although the party is patently fighting to keep the State united, the latent intent is to use the sentiment for unity to gain mileage.

This would hopefully help the party in the forthcoming general election. The leadership of the party has been very quick on the uptake, leaving other parties gasping. The swelling crowds turning up for wayside meetings addressed as part of the Bus Campaign of Sharmila, YSR’s daughter and Jaganmohan Reddy’s sister who describes herself as her brother’s “arrow that left the bow”, are an indication of the party’s growing popularity.

Chandrababu Naidu’s rage is not without reason. The TDP supremo feels that he has been outsmarted by all other parties and ends up blaming everyone except himself for the series of setbacks. He is trying to make up for lack of sound argument with high-decibel sound bites. Anger, bitterness and frustration are sought to be camouflaged by the newly acquired smile. He has reasons to be angry, bitter and frustrated. All the drama spanning more than twelve years that was orchestrated by K Chandrasekhara Rao (KCR) in collaboration with the Congress party was aimed at unseating him and then to keeping him away from the seat of power.

He believes that the script has been written by a shrewd playwright in Delhi, the mara mari shahar. Right from appointing a committee headed by Yerran Naidu and passing of a resolution by the party politburo to having an electoral understanding in 2009 with the TRS, whose raison d etre is the statehood of Telangana; it was a straight walk into the trap laid by the Congress. The TDP chief who was praised by the media and politicians for his political craftsmanship found himself in a veritable mess from which he has not been able to wriggle out. The harder he tried, the deeper he sank in the quagmire. He looks like a great warrior who has lost his way. Telugu Jati Atmagourava Yatra is in response to the diatribe unleashed by YSRCP and the Congress leaders against him. He appears to have realized that he would lose the fight if he fails to concentrate on Seemandhra. He started off by a scathing attack on Sonia as well as YS Rajasekhara Reddy and his family.

He accused both the Congress and the YSRCP of hatching a conspiracy to divide the State and share the two parts among them. According to his theory, the Congress would concentrate on Telangana and the YSRCP would win in the residuary of Andhra Pradesh upon division. The YSRCP would support UPA-III from within or outside after the polls. The conspiracy theory sounds perfect. But dilating on this theory alone would not be enough. He has to impart some clarity to his policy on the question of bifurcation. He cannot campaign in that region without swearing by a united AP, which he did. That would mean foregoing the stakes in the other region, since this new stand would be perceived as anti-Telangana. He would be accused of shelving the two-eye policy. This amounts to accepting the political division of the State and confining himself to one half.

Kiran Kumar Reddy is not lagging behind in the war of attrition. He enjoys extraordinary media attention as a Chief Minister. Without the trouble of strenuous tours, he can get the mileage sitting coolly at his camp office in Hyderabad through calculated punch lines while talking to the media or farmers from Anantapur or the government officers at Marri Channa Reddy Institute of Human Resource Development. Kiran Reddy has the gumption to advise his ministerial colleagues to desist from putting in their papers right away and wait for a while so that they could take a collective decision. He is rumoured to be not averse to the idea of floating a new outfit, reportedly at the behest of his mentors in the party high command. Otherwise, he does not have the wherewithal or the will to launch a political party. But should circumstances demand, he appears prepared to take the lead. He has been mincing no words ever since the CWC resolved to create the 29th State.

He looks as confident as ever, though at times he has been in a belligerent mood throwing to the wind all caution that is expected of an incumbent Chief Minister. All the Congress leaders in Seemandhra are ready to jump on his bandwagon should he launch a new party to fight the mother party and the other opposition parties, YSRCP in particular. Sonia Gandhi might seek the support of YSRCP to continue in power as the last resort, but left to herself she would be loath to do that. Since her party is in a bad shape in that region; for the time being she may not mind promoting a surrogate party if it delivers seats for her. Who is a better bet to lead such an outfit than a person who has been losing no opportunity to declare that he is a staunch supporter of united AP risking the strident criticism that he is acting as a chief minister of Seemandhra.

Though this theory of a new party being floated by the Congressmen in Seemandhra (its name is bandied about as ‘Samaikya Indira Congress’) at the instance of the party high command looks farfetched, nothing can be ruled out in the complex game of one-upmanship. But if the people consider the new party as a temporary phenomenon that would merge with the Congress after the elections, they would not look at it. It has to be extremely critical of the Congress party and its supreme leader Sonia Gandhi and the putative prime minister material Rahul Gandhi. The new party has to compete with the YSRCP and the TDP in condemning the Congress party and the UPA government. Kiran Reddy, in fact, accepted bifurcation per se, but he is trying to make the best of the situation to emerge as the undisputed leader of Seemandhra people.

Since the stakes are moderate for the YSRCP in Telangana, YS Jaganmohan Reddy could direct his MLAs to quit in protest against the CWC decision without loss of time. It is different with Naidu who has a strong base with a retinue of senior leaders and loyal, broad-based cadre. Once the State is divided, TDP, in the present form, cannot ask for votes in Telangana in the wake of the stand taken by Naidu in favour of united AP. Like the Congress party in Seemandhra, the TDP in Telangana will have to think of an alternative outfit.

All the TDP leaders in Telangana cannot migrate to some other party. The party has MLAs or the candidates who lost election in almost every constituency in Telangana. If the TDP leaders in Telangana, for their own political survival, form a political party, it should not be seen as even remotely connected to Naidu or his TDP since its leader has participated in a highly partisan campaign. It will have to be headed by a Telangana leader and its election campaign will have to be based on Telangana rhetoric without any reference to Naidu or his contribution to the growth of Hyderabad and Andhra Pradesh. Moreover, leaders of the new party will have to flay Naidu for joining the chorus of united AP, leaving in the lurch his colleagues on the other side of the divide. He has to be faulted for burying the two-eye theory.

What is likely to happen in effect is that leaders who have been chiefs of their parties at the State level till now will have to surrender half of the territory to the leaders in Telangana. Naidu may not be approved as leader of a Telangana party, though it may have been formed by his own colleagues from the region. Same would be the case with Jaganmohan Reddy or Kiran Kumar Reddy or Botcha Satyanarayana. Regional parties cannot have their sway in States other than their own. They can be only state level parties. For instance, Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) was a force to reckon with in Punjab even before it came to power in Uttar Pradesh. But once it got into power, it lost the base in Punjab. It could not make any forays in other states despite some serious efforts put in by its leader Mayawati. She opened her branch in AP also.

It came a cropper. Samajwadi Party (SP) had to be confined to UP although Mulayam and his son Akhilesh have ambition to unite the Yadav community all over the country and make inroads into other States. It has marginal presence in Maharashtra and West Bengal. Its mainstay remains only UP. Sharad Pawar, with all his power, could not take Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) beyond Maharashtra. He could not carry Sangma, former Speaker of Lok Sabha, with him for long. Even the Janata Dal is surviving only as splinter groups with each group confining to one State. For instance, JD(U) is limited to Bihar, JD (S) to Karnataka and Biju Janata Dal (BJD) to Odisha. It cannot be called a national party since its president Sharad Yadav has no control over either Deve Gowda or Navin Patnaik.

Same analogy holds good for the TDP and YSRCP. The present chiefs of these two parties will be confined to Seemandhra region, while their extensions in Telangana will have home-grown leaders. The Congress and the BJP, beside the Left parties, will have no problem since they are national parties and their leaders have acceptance in all the regions. The CWC decision has come as a death knell for the two principal regional parties in AP.