Going South [Economic & Political Weakly]

👉Going South👈

The neglect of Andhra Pradesh and the power struggle there has created trouble for Modi’s BJP.

The jostle for political power in Andhra Pradesh has worsened the Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP) standing in the state and has exposed the Narendra Modi government’s feet of clay. The Chandrababu Naidu-led Telugu Desam Party (TDP), one of the oldest and largest allies of the National Democratic Alliance (NDA), was forced to break away from the BJP when it failed to secure a Special Category Status (SCS) from its ally at the centre. For its failure to secure SCS for the state, the Naidu government now faces a significant political challenge from opposition leader Y S Jagan Mohan Reddy and film-star-turned-politician Pawan Kalyan, who supported Naidu and the BJP in the 2014 elections.

Naidu’s main challenger, Jagan Reddy, launched a padayatra in early November 2017 on the lines of similar rallies by his ­father, Y S Rajasekhara Reddy (YSR). Such mobilisation resulted in Naidu losing office in the 2004 elections, a loss from which he did not recover for a decade. The political drama playing out in Andhra Pradesh was also reflected in the developments during the recently concluded Parliament session where Jagan Reddy’s party, YSR Congress Party (YSRCP), moved the first motion of no confidence against the Modi government. This forced Naidu to follow with a similar motion against the government. Neither came up for discussion.

Naidu returned to power in 2014 after 10 years of being in the opposition, but in a bifurcated Andhra Pradesh. He has faced severe criticism for not taking up the SCS issue strongly enough, as also for his handling of land acquisition for the capital city, Amaravati, and the Polavaram irrigation project. Both projects have met with considerable resistance from civil society, and from those parting with land or losing their livelihood. Naidu could not make use of his access to the union government to see to it that the State Reorganisation Act, 2014 was implemented or that there would be sufficient finances or projects to build a new state. These failures have intensified the anti-incumbency mood against Naidu. As a result, the TDP is going into elections (in May 2019) with a serious dent in its image of being a role model for efficient administration, an image Naidu cultivated during his tenure by attracting the information technology sector to Hyderabad in the early 2000s.

With Naidu moving out of the NDA, the BJP is now seeking to make inroads in Andhra Pradesh on its own. But, considering its previous electoral performance in the state, such a proposition looks bleak. In 2014, out of 25 Parliament seats in the state, the BJP secured only two seats while the TDP won 15 and the YSRCP won eight. The BJP’s best performance so far was in combined Andhra Pradesh in 1999 when it fought the assembly and Parliament elections in alliance with TDP, winning seven Parliament seats. Never much of a political force in Andhra Pradesh, the BJP stands isolated thus far for its neglect of the expectations of its alliance partner and the people of the state. Unlike the TDP, that has a long-standing support base mainly amongst the Kammas, or the YSRCP’s base amongst the Reddys, Dalits and Christians, or Kalyan’s film fans and the Kapu community, the BJP has no committed voter base.

In its hopes to build a base for itself, the BJP is trying to tap into the Kapu community’s demands for an Other Backward Class (OBC) status. Keeping this in view, the party is looking to appoint a new president to its state unit. It hopes that key regional leaders will join its ranks, a strategy that has worked well for it in the past. The last concerted attempt to mobilise the Kapu community was by Pawan Kalyan’s elder brother and actor Chiranjeevi, who launched the Praja Rajyam Party before the 2009 elections. It fared poorly in the elections and eventually merged with the Congress in 2011. The BJP hopes to force a new direction to the political narrative in the state: moving away from the dominant narrative of Modi’s betrayal of the state to demands for quotas for a fairly large and influential community that is yet to find a strong political voice.

While the BJP struggles to find a foothold in Andhra Pradesh, its larger strategy of making space for itself in the southern states appears to be unravelling. Tamil Nadu, for instance, feels betrayed by the BJP and thinks it is favouring Karnataka in the Cauvery water dispute with an eye on the forthcoming Karnataka elections. Most southern states also fear losing out on fiscal space due to the centralising nature of the Terms of Reference (ToR) of the Fifteenth Finance Commission (XV-FC).

In the run-up to the 2019 assembly and general elections, the BJP will find it difficult to attract regional leaders to join its ranks as it did after the bifurcation of Andhra Pradesh, a time when Modi’s image was grand and the BJP was ascendant. By not yielding to its allies’ needs or to the demands of state governments, the BJP is losing political space. With strong regional political parties to contend with, its political project in Andhra Pradesh and in the other southern states appears increasingly tenuous.

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