The Telugu Desam Party leader N Chandrababu Naidu hoped against hope to see himself back in the saddle of Chief Minister of Andhra Pradesh for another term in succession by heavily banking on his growth story.
Naidu went on telling people: “It’s your responsibility to vote me back to power for your own future”. To realise his development story, he burnt the midnight oil building a world class capital in Amaravati; completing the Polavaram multipurpose dam on the Godavari river, which has been pending for several decades; creating sunrise Andhra Pradesh as an industrial hub by attracting investments from across the globe.
But at the end of the day, the voters rejected Naidu’s development plank outright, by handing his YSRCP rival YS Jagan Mohan Reddy a landslide victory.
Here are five reasons that led to Naidu’s downfall, bringing to a halt his innings as the longest serving CM in the history of Andhra Pradesh.
Skewed growth story
Naidu’s capital-centric development caused a lot of heartburn in the backward Rayalaseema and Uttarandhra regions. His uneven growth paradigm even sparked movements with signs of separatist tendencies in Rayalaseema during his current tenure. Deprivation of basic facilities, poverty and mass exodus became a common concern in the Rayalaseema and Uttarandhra regions.
Huge public funds running into thousands of crores were pumped into major irrigation dams like Polavaram in the developed coastal Andhra region. At the same time, minor and major irrigation tanks in the backward regions failing to hold water at times of rains were crying for attention.
Naidu failed to take a leaf or two from his Telangana counterpart K Chandrasekhar Rao’s book, who showed the way for a turnaround in agriculture in his state with schemes like Mission Kakatiya.
Anti-incumbency
The Naidu government’s five-year rule was riddled with allegations of corruption, nepotism and cronyism, leaving almost all sections of people disillusioned.
During his election rallies in the state, Prime Minister Narendra Modi alleged that Naidu had turned the Polavaram project into an ATM, implying delivering ill-gotten wealth through illicit means for himself and people close to him. Naidu was accused of awarding major contracts related to irrigation and construction projects to people of his own caste. The alleged bias in favour of Naidu’s community Kamma, which is considered a dominant class, in official postings triggered caste polarisation in the state. Such a divide was suicidal for a community like the Kamma, which comprises hardly 5% of the state population.
Unrest among youth
During his earlier stints as Chief Minister of undivided Andhra Pradesh, Naidu became an architect of Cyberabad in the state capital with a hub of IT industries. Thus he became a darling of the urban educated middleclass youth. Now, Cyberabad along with Hyderabad went to Telangana after the state bifurcation. Amaravati is still in the infant stage with no prospects of becoming an IT hub.
The educated youth in his successor state desperately looked up to him to create a Cyberabad-like Cyberavati in Amaravati. But to their utter disappointment, nothing of that sort transpired, for want of funds and logistic support such as an airport of international standards. And, developing the state as sunrise Andhra Pradesh too did not take off even after a series of partnership summits with high-profile investors.
Flawed caste coalition
Backward classes, which constitute around 50% of the state population, continued to be the backbone of the TDP. These sections stood with TDP as an expression of gratitude for its founder NT Rama Rao’s offer of 50% reservations in local bodies. The quota enabled their political emancipation. After taking over the reins from his mentor and father-in-law NTR, Naidu tried to appease the Madigas, a Scheduled Caste sub-sect with the incentive of categorisation.
The move failed to become a reality for want of approval from the Centre. The TDP leader then discarded the Madigas after state bifurcation and went after Malas, a major vote bank of Jagan Mohan Reddy within the SCs. He failed to win both the Malas and the Madigas at the end of the day. Naidu attempted to realise his promise of BC status for the Kapu community, but antagonised other BCs in the process. Jagan poached the TDP’s disgruntled BC vote bank with a good number of Lok Sabha and Assembly seats.
Naidu expected Jana Sena leader Pawan Kalyan to split his community voters who were hostile to the TDP rule. Thereby, he aimed to check the transfer of opposition vote to Jagan’s party and benefit from the split in the anti-government vote. But Pawan himself lost the election in his home turf of West Godavari district dominated by Kapus. It indicates the fact that the Kapus to a large extent shifted to Jagan Reddy, upsetting Naidu’s plans. Apparently the Kapus did not consider their community leader Pawan to be a serious power contender.
Trust deficit
Last but not the least, Naidu’s failure to present himself as a trustworthy leader in delivering his promises took a heavy toll on his winning prospects. His flip-flops on key issues like Special Category Status for his home state earned him derisive labels such as “U turn Babu”. Naidu was accused of deceiving farmers by not keeping his word in the true sense in implementing the farm loan waiver scheme. At his first media conference after the results, Jagan Reddy aptly described his stunning victory saying, “It is a vote for credibility”.