Chandrababu Naidu, former CEO of Andhra Pradesh and once a darling of the World Bank, has to pay a price to get into the Third Front.
Tell him to shed pro-reform image
NEW DELHI: Chandrababu Naidu, former CEO of Andhra Pradesh and once a darling of the World Bank, has to pay a price to get into the Third Front.
He has to shed his pro-reform, pro-US image and work hard with the comrades to take up aam admi issues.
CPI(M) and CPI leaders told Naidu on Wednesday that the Telugu Desam Party (TDP) should change its economic policies before they could think of working with him in the Third Front being revived.
No wonder Naidu has since announced a string of farmers’ rallies, the first being at Vijayawada on November 24, and an agitation for the implementation of Sachar committee and Sri Krishna Commission reports.
Naidu, who once flaunted his ties with Bill Clinton and Bill Gates, promptly assured the comrades that his party would soon come out with an “alternative” economic policy.
After his party’s electoral rout, he dumped the BJP and has since been wooing the communists.
Last year, the CPI(M) brass told Naidu that he would be under Red scanner for two years to see if he has completely abandoned his pro-US, “World Bank-dictated economic policies” and saffron links.
The Left has been a vitriolic critic of Naidu for his “pro-business, pro-US economic agenda” as the chief minister of Andhra Pradesh and for his support to the “communal” BJP between1999-2004.
Naidu, who arrived in Delhi on Monday night, had separate meetings with CPI(M) leaders Prakash Karat, Sitaram Yechury and CPI leaders AB Bardhan and D Raja on Tuesday and Wednesday to discuss the Indo-US nuclear deal and to draft a common strategy in Parliament when the issue comes up for discussion. Naidu, who, with Samajwadi Party, AGP, INLD and JVM floated the United National Progressive Alliance recently, however, took time off to discuss the prospect of reviving the Third Front with the Left leaders.
Sources said Bardhan told him not to “repeatedly talk about the Third Front” and first evolve alternative policies and programmes.
The TDP chief assured Bardhan and Raja that “the TDP is reworking its economic agenda. The party is preparing a document on economic issues”.
Naidu said as chief minister he did “everything to create wealth and deliver good governance, but the fruits of economic development did not reach the poor. I am ready to cooperate with the Left”.
Yechury also made it clear to Naidu that a cut-and-paste Third Front is not possible and that both the CPI(M) and the TDP should have a “common approach” to economic issues.
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