Telugu Desam Party (TDP) is a great political party of significant consequence in the history of Andhra Pradesh. Started in 1983 by legendary Tollywood hero NT Rama Rao, it changed the political landscape of the state by bringing political alternatives to the voters and giving a genuine recognition to the Telugu community all over the world. Needless, to say - Telugu People along with Kannadigas, Malayalees were all madrasis until then. Apart from bringing an identity and self respect to Telugus, TDP was also responsible for bringing good governance and accountability for the political class that was disappearing by early 1980's.
This blog is going to discuss in two parts, why Telugu Desam Party is loosing it's political relevance and expediting it's long term decay by getting away from the core ideologies on which the party was founded.
TDP, when it was found fundamentally worked on the four or five broad political principles. First, identity and respect of the Telugu speaking people, second - working towards upliftment of the poor, downtrodden classes and farmers, third - giving alternative and respectable political choice to politicians and clean administration to the citizens and finally social welfare. I think, the founder of the party during his turbulent years in the office largely succeeded on all the aspects and became a popular leader in his life time for the services.
History of TDP is split into two halfs. While the first half was run on the founder ideologies, the second half slowly and clealy moved away from the founder ideologies and taken a reformist view.
During the first half of the TDP rule - Rs 2/Kg rice schemes, mid day meals, promoting the Telugu language and Telugu identity, banning the cheap liquor that was ruining the lives of the poor and working classes, reforming and maintaining Hindu Temples (specially Tirupathi Temple), bestowing political life to many unknown political entities and raising their stakes significantly, working towards bringing political alliances to counter Congress government of the day, making Hyderabad free from the periodic communal violence, bringing clean and sleek administration are by all means are historic and significant contributions of the party to the state.
The second half of the TDP rule was under the stewardship of the NT Rama Rao's son-in-law, Nara Chandrababu Naidu - who deposed the founder from the power in bloodless coup. CBN, Babu or Naidu as he is called, initially taken a view that he took over the power - just to save the party as it was under severe "threat". However, as he established himself - CBN moved away from the political ideologies of the party and became reformist Chief Minister and was branded as the best chief Minister of any state of the times with a great vision.
CBN best contribution to the state was - Hyderabad became a Technology capital and true alternative choice to Bangalore. He brought e-Governance and ensured that Technology is widely used with the government from statistics to demo's. CBN became darling for the reformists as AP became perhaps the first state in India to bring reforms in Power and Electricity. Government attracted huge investments and Naidu was able to pitch the state at Davos and World bank for investments and funds. Naidu also started some of the pet projects like Janmabhoomi and the success of those schemes was mixed. During Naidu rule, the real estate in the state reached pinncacle and made many neo-rich.
During the course of 9 year rule, Babu clearly moved away from the territories where NT Rama Rao made foundations for the party. By 2004, when N Chandra Babu Naidu was badly defeated by Congress in the state elections, he remained a darling of Technology community while he moved away from farmers, working class, state government employees who formed the biggest and influential vote bank for the party. By aligning with BJP, Naidu also lost the faith of the minority communities who were actually very favourable to TDP, as it protected their interests.
If we see the history of TDP from 1983 till 2004, the party essentially lost it's core ideologies in preference to immediate political opportunities. In 2004, when TDP lost the power - it essentially ended with identity crisis both in state and national politics. At the national level, where CBN played a powerful kingmaker in 1998-2001 period lost all his friends - by going first with third front, then with BJP, then again going back to Third front and then aiming to form a fourth front. All in all, TDP under the leadership of CBN proved to be fickle and in the course of time left out as an orphan and small regional party of no significance.
At the state level, 2004 defeat was an excellent opportunity to for TDP to reinvent itself. But - unfortunately, TDP failed to do any self introspection nor identified the fit falls in the political ideologies. Instead, it started the Opposition role with significantly reduced numbers with two fundamental mistakes.
First, it concluded that the YS Rajasekhar Reddy got the power by accident. Second, from the day one - it assumes I am good boy and Congress - you are a bad boy. What TDP failed to realise was Congress got back to power by grabbing or hijacking the very core social welfare ideologies of the Telugu Desam Party. For example, YSR promised - free power to farmers and Naidu went on questioning the state finances and the will of the Government. But YSR proved during the five years that he could deliver what he had promised. On second issue, it was a blend of ignorance and arrogance that made Babu to portray with the help of Eenadu and Andhra Jyothy that, I am good and Congress is bad. What Babu failed to understand even after five years was, Congress may be Bad, but he was not Good as he was trying to idealise himself.
.......................More in Part - II
No comments:
Post a Comment