Andhra Pradesh: The dangers in Vijayawada being the state capital

N Chandrababu Naidu

Vijayawada will be the new capital of Andhra Pradesh. Chief minister N Chandrababu Naidu has conveniently ignored the Centre-appointed Sivaramakrishnan committee report while naming the city on the banks of the Krishna river in his haste to get things moving in his state. The report gives three options for a capital city which are well worth considering.

Mr Naidu has, however, agreed to the committee’s suggestion to decentralise power. His political opponents have raised the fact that Mr Naidu chose Vijayawada as it has a powerful Kamma presence — a community that has traditionally backed the Telugu Desam Party (TDP). That notwithstanding, Mr Naidu’s choice also seems to have miffed the people of the Rayalaseema region, with reports that even ministers from the region were unhappy with the choice. It is now up to the CM to ensure that the people of Rayalaseema do not feel alienated and that the new capital will also help in culturally unifying the whole state.

One of the major criticisms against choosing Vijayawada was the lack of government land. Right from the time of the bifurcation, following speculation, the Vijayawada-Guntur corridor saw a real estate boom and now the government will have to buy land at a premium. The Sivaramakrishnan committee report suggests that only a quarter of the estimated `4.5 lakh crore required for the new state capital will come from the Centre.

The state will have to raise the remaining amount and in such a scenario purchasing private land at exorbitant prices will put pressure on the state exchequer. Another area of concern, which was also raised in the report, was that large areas of fertile agricultural land in and around the Vijayawada-Guntur delta region will have to be acquired. This will impact the food security of the state and will likely displace a large number of farmers. This is cause for concern in a state where about 52% of the total workforce is employed in agriculture and related services. The environmental impact real estate expansion will have on the Krishna river and its adjoining area cannot be ignored. This gains significance in view of reports that the CM is keen to have key government offices near Amaravati, a historical town situated on the river bank.

Mr Naidu, like his Telangana counterpart K Chandrashekar Rao, has a golden opportunity to build a model state and not just a capital. In his previous tenure as CM of undivided Andhra Pradesh Mr Naidu focused extensively on building urban assets — he was instrumental in transforming Hyderabad into an IT hub in the country — but was criticised for ignoring development in the rural areas. He must not repeat this mistake with Vijayawada.

Is there a NaMo wave south of the Vindhyas?

Till now the BJP has not been able to make considerable gains south of the Vindhyas, except in Karnataka. In 2009, from the four southern states of Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Tamil Nadu and Kerala, which together have 129 Lok Sabha seats, the BJP won only 19 seats, all from Karnataka. The BJP-led NDA marked its presence in 1999 in other southern states through regional parties like the DMK in Tamil Nadu and the TDP in Andhra Pradesh. The South has been a blind spot for the party for quite some time but this time round, the BJP is focusing extensively on these states and hopes to do much better. BJP president Rajnath Singh has said that the party’s performance in Tamil Nadu will surprise poll pundits and some senior leaders even claim that the BJP will win 50 seats from the South alone. Many top BJP leaders, including its prime ministerial candidate, Narendra Modi, and senior leaders like LK Advani have toured the South to boost the party’s electoral prospects.

In Karnataka, the return of BS Yeddyurappa and B Sriramulu to the BJP fold is a shot in the arm for the party, which lost the 2013 assembly election to the Congress. The BJP hopes to win more than half of the 28 Lok Sabha seats in the state. In Tamil Nadu, where the BJP has got into an alliance with five regional parties, the saffron party might upset the poll equation. The AIADMK, with which, it is likely to enter into a post-poll alliance, is expected to win a majority of the 39 seats in the state. However, the BJP may eat into the AIADMK’s upper caste vote share and this will help the DMK. In Kerala, the BJP has an outside chance of winning in Thiruvananthapuram and Kasargod. In Andhra Pradesh, the BJP has pinned its hopes on N Chandrababu Naidu’s TDP. There is anger against the Congress for its mishandling of the bifurcation of the state and that might help the BJP-TDP alliance.
The BJP has big expectations from these four states. There is a ‘Modi Wave’ in the South, where many people are aware of the Gujarat chief minister and his development agenda. This might increase the BJP’s vote share but it is to be seen if this will result in an increase in the number of seats the party will win. However, for a party that has not seen an active presence in the South, this is in itself an achievement.

Naidu doesn't think that Modi will hamper TDP's chance this time

The return of Telugu Desam Party (TDP) leader Chandrababu Naidu to the BJP-led NDA alliance, a decade after partying ways, does not come as a surprise. Recent opinion polls have suggested that if the TDP were to return to the NDA it would boost the chances of the alliance both in Telangana and Seemandhra. The confidence exuberated by leaders of both the BJP and the TDP on Sunday, when the tie-up was announced, reflected this. However, many would say that this deal will not be a game changer in the two would-be states. The BJP will be contesting 13 Lok Sabha seats and 62 assembly seats from undivided Andhra Pradesh, though the final plan is yet to be chalked out.
Mr Naidu is no longer the ‘hi-tech’, reformer chief minister he once was. The 1999 Time ‘South Asian of the Year’, who had the United States president and the British PM as guests to witness the IT revolution in Hyderabad, has been out of power for a decade and a lot has changed during this time. The Congress, which routed the TDP in 2004, may be a pale shadow of what it was, but other parties have moved into that political space. The K Chandrashekar Rao-led TRS and the Jaganmohan Reddy-led YSR Congress have gained where the two national parties and the TDP have lost. The alliance has also seen discontent within the TDP and in the state BJP unit — TDP members staged a protest outside Mr Naidu’s house and the BJP’s Telangana and Seemandhra unit chiefs were not present during the Sunday announcement. Mr Naidu, in an interview in November 2004, might have blamed the TDP’s poll debacle in the state on its alliance with the BJP — he even attributed the communal riots in Gujarat to have negatively impacted the TDP’s chances — but today political necessities have forced him to sing a different tune.
The TDP-BJP alliance is symbiotic in many ways: It gives the BJP an important ally in the southern state and the TDP a presence at the Centre, if an NDA government comes to power.

Telangana-Seemandhra divide stalls Parliament

The second day of the last session of the present Lok Sabha saw a ruckus in Parliament over the bifurcation of Andhra Pradesh — into Telangana and Seemandhra. Scenes of MPs walking into the well of the House, shouting slogans and stalling its proceedings have now become par for the course, they were a constant feature in the previous sessions as well. Congress leader and Andhra Pradesh chief minister N  Kiran Kumar Reddy sat in protest against the Centre’s bifurcation move in Delhi and met President Pranab Mukherjee on Wednesday to request him to stop it. If this was not embarrassing enough, some Congress MPs even gave a notice of no-confidence against the prime minister. The political atmosphere has been so badly vitiated  that the Union Cabinet’s review on the proposal will not be of much help to the Congress. If the party were to drop the issue at this juncture, it would show the central leadership in poor light and would further antagonise the Seemandhra region. However, the political dividends of pressing ahead with the bifurcation are minimal, especially after the Andhra Pradesh assembly rejected the Centre’s bifurcation Bill.

Jaganmohan Reddy

For a party that has been in power in Andhra Pradesh since 2004, the Congress has shown an alarming lack of skill in addressing the Telangana issue. This last-minute enthusiasm suggests that the party is more interested in the poll arithmetic than the welfare of the people from both the regions. If the party thought that the bifurcation would improve its chances of winning the 25 Lok Sabha seats in the Seemandhra region, the protests from the region and its MPs have cast doubts on that. The Congress’ dilly-dallying has given a new lease of life to K Chandrashekar Rao’s Telangana Rashtra Samithi. The Congress also underestimated the support base of YSR Congress (YSRC) chief Jaganmohan Reddy. In 2009, Andhra Pradesh, by voting in 33 of the 42 MPs, played a crucial role in the giving the requisite numbers to the Congress-led UPA to form the government at the Centre. With the YSRC, the TRS and Chandrababu Naidu’s TDP gaining momentum, and the revolt within the state Congress unit, the party’s prospects in the assembly and general elections don’t look too bright at the moment.
If the discussion on the bifurcation of Andhra Pradesh has reached this state, the blame is squarely on the Congress’ poor political management. Gone are the days when Delhi would decide and the states would nod in approval. The Congress has sown the wind by ignoring the sentiments of the people of Andhra Pradesh, and it is now reaping the whirlwind of discontent and protest.