I think it was a massive upsurge of farmer anger against Chandrababu Naidu… I
wouldn’t paint this verdict as an anti-reforms verdict. But I would say that this is
a wake-up call for governments that are carried away by the reforms propaganda,
by the hype of reforms. That there is need for balancing the economics of
reforms and the politics of reforms. To go out and communicate to people what
these reforms are all about. And ultimately start beginning to make a difference
to people’s lives which was not happening in Andhra…
The irony is that Naidu did expend considerable strategic effort to balance the
“politics of reform,” but he was constrained by an intense tradition of competitive
populism that he failed to repudiate. For all his reformist rhetoric, Naidu did not
radically alter the discourse of the state’s role in economic development, as he claimed to
want to do. While AP’s failure in fiscal and economic terms to live up to the goals of its
reform program can be attributed to a devastating three-year drought, the seeds of the
political failure lie earlier, in Naidu’s inability—or refusal—to reject the rules of the
game handed down by his party’s patriarch.
The Congress Party and allies chose YSR to succeed Naidu as chief minister. His first
act, minutes after his swearing-in, was to sign an order granting free power to farmers per the
party’s central campaign pledge. The new chief minister was emphatic that he considered his
mandate to be relief to the rural sector. He said he would abide by the conditions of whatever
loans Naidu’s government had already negotiated with the Bank, and said that in the future he too
would consider borrowing from the Bank—so long as it did not impose any policy conditions. In
August 2004, the Bank announced that it was considering cutting off adjustment loans to state
governments that provided free power to farmers.
42
With Naidu, its “leading reformer,” relegated
to the opposition bench, the Bank appeared to be considering breaking off its love affair with
Andhra Pradesh.
19
Convention