By Soroor Ahmed, TwoCircles.net,
Till recently regional satraps had been asserting and sometimes breaking out to float new parties. Now it is the turn of their close kin to rebel after their death. They think that it is their birth right to succeed after the demise of the parent.
With no ‘strong’ Indira Gandhi type leader in the Centre the Congress party is witnessing the rise of regional leaders. But then this phenomenon is not confined to Andhra Pradesh, where Jagan Mohan Reddy revolted as he wanted to become the chief minister because of the ‘work’ done by his father Y S Rajshekhar Reddy as the chief minister of the state for over five years.
Today’s regional satraps are not like Sharad Pawar and Mamata Banerjee––or those at the time when Indira Gandhi came to power in 1966. Their names are being floated for the post of the Prime Minister too. The argument is simple. If H D Deve Gowda of Janata Dal can become the Prime Minister of the country for about 11 months why can not the name of Narendra Modi, Mayawati and now even Nitish Kumar be thrown up by the media. What if they are not able to win their own seat if they contest from outside their home state?
The ‘rise’ of regional power centres is causing a lot of heart burn not just outside the party, but within too. Take the example of the BJP. Sushma Swaraj’s statement on the limitation of Narendra Modi, and his being a Gujarat-based leader, made during the Bihar election campaign is a pointer to the fact that many in the BJP do not appreciate his stature.
If the Congress and the BJP are besieged with this challenge they are, to some extent, themselves to blame. True the BJP is facing the crisis of sort as after Atal Bihari Vajpayee and Lal Krishna Advani they do not have any leader of national reckoning. So they let Narendra Modi become too big for his boots.
But there is another factor, which is playing very important role in the making of regional powerful leaders, be it of Congress, BJP or any other party. Unlike in 20th century today any chief minister can, with the effective handling of media, thousands of crores of centrally-sponsored schemes, better social engineering––an euphemism for caste politics––and lack of strong leader in the Centre, easily emerge strong.
What is strange is that in the absence of the powerful Centre it is the state governments which are making the best use of the centrally-sponsored schemes. Chief ministers after chief ministers are winning elections by just properly managing the centrally-funded schemes and better control of the Press. Be it the Expressway projects, the Pradhan Mantri Gramin Sadak Yojana, Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan, National Rural Health Mission, sanitation and drinking water schemes, Dalit, Tribal and Minority scholarships, all are the centrally-funded populist programmes, in which the state has hardly any role to play. Yet in the absence of powerful Centre it is the state leaders who are capitalizing on it and becoming powerful.
Now even their siblings are becoming stronger and cashing in on the ‘work’ done by the father, or even mother. In the past six decades no chief minister, how good and efficient he or she may be, has carved out so much political space for himself or herself as late Y S R Reddy could in just over five years. This is not just because he was talented, but also because he got the opportunity to prove his worth as there was nobody to cut him to size.
Ever since its creation in 1956 Andhra Pradesh had 10 Reddys as the chief minister. They had ruled for over 25 years, but the son of none could pose so much challenge before the central leadership of the party as Jagan Mohan, who became member of Parliament just four months before the death of his chief minister father in a helicopter crash.
During the era of towering central figures the wings of regional satraps were kept clipped. Even when Devraj Urs, the then Karnataka chief minister, tried to become smarter Indira Gandhi managed to cut him to size. That too when Indira Gandhi was out of power in late 1970s. Devraj’s contribution to the development of Karnataka is certainly much more than Y S R Reddy’s for Andhra Pradesh, yet he died as a broken and rejected man in 1982.
Today in this era of emergence of regional leaders while Congress High Command is shaking in its shoes before taking any action against this young lad Jagan Mohan, the BJP central leadership is unable to force its own B S Yeddyurappa in Karnataka to resign though he and his ministers are facing several serious charges of corruption, scam and rape. Even the iron man of the BJP, former deputy Prime Minister, Lal Krishna Advani, has melted before Yeddy and Reddys––this time of Karnataka.