National

The Prime Constituency

Though Narasimha Rao has not done an Amethi here, his campaign team is confident of victory

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The Prime Constituency
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MINUTES out of Kurnool, you peel off National Highway 18 which runs like an unfrayed ribbon all the way to the Indian Ocean, and take the road to the prime ministerial boondocks. The road is excellent as roads in premier constituencies should be, but the countryside is sere. Thorn and scrub, and uncultivated tracts, and the bald pates of rocks thrusting through the ground. This land needs water, and by the time you reach the squalor of Nandyal town, you are convinced that if this constituency did not possess a prime minister, it could sorely do with one.

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But the one Nandyal has is not even coming visiting. Narasimha Rao won this seat by a record 5.8 lakh votes in November 1991 in one of those unholy romps that are orchestrated for powerful leaders needing electoral legitimacy. No wonder his campaign managers think that even after allowing for considerable erosion in his vote he can still saunter home. At the undistinguished ITC guesthouse, ringed with an assortment of vehicles including a Montego, the Congress stormtroopers appear confident, if desultory. Stocky, stubbled Mastan Reddy says: "There's no need for Rao to come here. It's a cakewalk, he'll win by three lakh votes." 

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Inside, Rajeshwara Rao, the Prime Minister's nephew and his Rommel at Nandyal, is even more categoric. In a room wafted with incense, freshly bathed, clad in spotless dhoti and vest, sitting cross-legged on the floor, looking like the softly sinister-voiced mafia don of Hindi films, he says: "I've asked him not to come—he'll only disrupt our programme." In the background, a man stepping out of his towel into a pair of trousers, ratifies: "We will waste three days organising a rally. And what about Seshan's rules, how will we explain the expenses of a public meeting?"

For an activist of the Rayalseema region this is an embarrassing display of conscience and propriety. This parched area—where dismal irrigation destroys peasant enterprise—is best known for an unlikely cottage industry: bomb-making. Politics here has long operated with a feudal elan, with strongmen commanding 'factions', that is captive vote banks. Violence is routine; people exercise democracy with caution. The deputy speaker of the state assembly, N. Farook, who has been the MLA from Nandyal three times running, declares with a sad shake of his head that "Rayalseema is worse than Bihar. These elections people have been forced to be a little careful, otherwise there's not even a lower cadre worker who will be seen without a gun." A member of no faction himself he, quaintly, says this outside the door of the room where Chief Minister Chandrababu Naidu confers with B.V. Nagi Reddy, his candidate and the Prime Minister's chief rival. A young man, Nagi Reddy has been given the ticket because he is a major faction leader, and a feared ganglord who also happens to be the sitting MLA from neighbouring Allagadda, part of Nandyal constituency.

On the evening of April 23, with the dust rising in clouds and dusk falling fast, the ruling TDP pulled out the stops for Nagi Reddy in Nandyal. It whipped up a huge rally where a crowd, partly mobilised, of more than 25,000 people crammed a building-hemmed maidan breathless. In a fairly electric atmosphere—literally, with neon bicycles strung up all over—folk balladeers sang the sins of Lakshmi Parvathi and Narasimha Rao as they waited for the leaders to arrive. Rhetorically, they questioned NTR's death, the trunks that were whisked out of his house between 3 and 5 am on

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that fateful morning, Parvathi's dubious ties with the Congress, and the Congress' bottomless baggage of scandals. The chief attraction at this point was a dwarf dressed like a Roman gladiator marching stationary to the songs with vigorous swings of his arms. Later when the high-powered cabal would arrive atop a truck—and nearly get decapitated by low-slung wires strung across the entrance—the focus would again be on glamour, with filmstar Raj Kumar and NTR's son Hari Krishna getting the best crowd response.

That Chandrababu Naidu desperately wants this seat—Rao's head as sweet consolation for the other reverses he's bound to suffer—was clear from both the participation and the tenor of the rally.

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Apart from banking on film and folk, both particularly powerful aphrodisiacs in Andhra politics, he was also accessing the rationalities of the CPI(M) with Sitaram Yechury hailing Nagi Reddy as "the Raj Narain of the South who would humble Rao", even as red banners waved among the saffron of the TDP. In fact, at one point, the uncharismatic, finely composed Chandrababu, with the air more of an efficient bureaucrat than a rabble-rousing politician, lost it enough to declare intemperately: "You defeat the Congress, and back Nagi Reddy, and I promise I will make Nandyal a district within 24 hours." Inevitably, moments later he withdrew his madly populist wager on being warned by others that he was violating the election code, but by then his hunger for Nandyal stood revealed.

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THE man entrusted with assuaging this hunger, however, has his task cut out. Nagi Reddy speaks most unimpressively, but apparently carries a big gun. When questioned on his reputation for violence and rigging, he is coy and abashed. Modestly he says he will win "because the people want me". "But there are large-scale fears that you will rig the polls," I ask. "How do you think Rao won by five lakh votes last time?" he says with a gentle smile. There is an unconcealed murmur in Nandyal that the ruling TDP will attempt large-scale rigging. Except for those who are responsible for maintaining public postures, other TDP activists admit that Narasimha Rao has a clear advantage. On the quiet, a party observer from adjoining Kurnool tells me that the party "plans to rig at least one lakh votes, otherwise Rao will win".

Followers of B. Seshasayana Reddy—the other major faction warlord in the fray, last time Narasimha Rao's campaign manager and now a TDP-Lakshmi Parvathi candidate—also confirm that Rao will win, though with a reduced margin. Why then, you ask Rajeshwara Rao, has the Prime Minister shown the jitters by contesting from Berhampore too? Newsmen have it that Rajeshwara's stock reply used to be that "everyone needs a stepney, to be on the safe side". But now he says: "The man who is going to be the prime minister needs to make sure. Politics here is of the faction type, and violence can cause a problem." In other words, some candidate's death could result in a countermanding; or, rigging could subvert even the Prime Minister. In the final analysis, even the Muslim vote, about 17 per cent, may prove an enigma. Mansur Ahmed, speaking for one block of tailors, said: "We will not vote for the Congress. Rao is against the Muslims. " Chandrababu's TDP is exploiting this, and the party's speeches ring with references to the Babri Masjid.

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Curiously, people wrestle over the larger issues rather than the local. Rao has not done an Amethi; to the casual eye there has been no face-lift. At Nandyal sludge flows through dug-up streets; and the countryside, mostly in the form of fecal plots, invades the town at every breach. There are more slap-dash khokas than proper shops, and pigs snuffle around them nosing offal. Yet few attack him for this neglect. Even his detractors admit that the drinking water supply has improved as have irrigation facilities, and the main achievement of his tenure has been the switch to broad gauge rail tracks which lays the foundation for future industrial investment.

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Rajeshwara Rao, of course, tries to reel off many more accomplishments, asserting that Rs 2,000 crore has been spent in Nandyal constituency in the last five years, including the setting up of several important technical institutions. We see one of them on our way out of Nandyal: Rajiv Gandhi Memorial College of Engineering and Technology, announces the board. Surrounding it over a large acreage are unlinked white cement pillars, standing like forlorn sentinels in the pouring summer sun. They guard a complete barrenness, broken only by the board.

Somehow it seems a kind of metaphor for the elections.

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