Guns and roses

I first met YS Rajasekhara Reddy way back in 1978 at a reception for Congress MLA’s at Greenlands, the official residence of the then chief minister M Channa Reddy.

The newly formed Congress (I) had made a quite spectacular electoral debut and YSR was one of the new crop of young MLAs who swept into office. It was 1978, a testing year for Indira Gandhi who was not only being hounded in Delhi by a vindictive Shah Commission egged and prodded along by an even more vindictive prime minister and home minister but also being opposed by the Congress government in AP headed by J Vengal Rao.

Many  top Congress leaders from AP such as V Hanumantha Rao, S Jaipal Reddy and K Rosiah were bitterly opposed to Mrs G and her new party. But she was put on the comeback trail thanks to young and dynamic leaders like YSR and Chandrababu Naidu. 

But even before I was formally introduced to YSR, I had heard much about him. The previous year he was involved in a shooting incident within the State Secretariat premises. YSR belonged to Cuddapah and like many from the badlands of Rayalaseema his family was in the thick of the faction wars that are a hallmark of the region. The men out to kill him belonged to the faction headed by the Perla family.

But what distinguished YSR was that though he was surprised, he was quick to whip out his revolver and shoot back to injure one of the assailants. The feud did not end there. In May 1998 YSR’s father, YS Raja Reddy, was killed in a gory bomb attack near hometown of Pulivendla in Cuddapah district. The very next day one of the main suspects, Perla Uma Maheshwara Reddy, who incidentally was avenging his father’s death, was hacked to death right in his home. YSR was the leader of the Congress Legislative Party.

The Perla family had by now became the backbone of the Telugu Desam Party. With YSR in the Congress (I) a purely factional fight was by now a no-holds barred political war. In the 10 years since Raja Reddy was killed the TDP puts its losses at nearly 530 killed and the Congress at about 70.

The legend of the Tiger of Cuddapah has its moorings in these bloody clan wars. YSR was indeed a doughty fighter and few dared cross his path. But he was an inspirational leader. His charisma made him a powerful leader. The Congress (I) had few like him in its long history. He was self-assured, immensely courageous and a far cry from the servile courtiers who flourish in our national parties.

When Rajiv Gandhi, soon after his famous Bombay speech when he castigated the “power brokers”, refused to meet with him at New Delhi despite repeated requests from YSR who was now the Andhra Pradesh Congress Committee president, YSR just let it be known that he would be quite willing to quit the party rather than stomach humiliation.

Rajiv met him the very next day. It has also been said that when Sonia Gandhi was contemplating unhorsing him from the post of CM because of complaints from business houses chaffing at the huge rents that YSR imposed for doing business in AP, he once again let it be known that he would then have to form a party of his own. She let him be because YSR bucking all odds gave the Congress (I) more seats than in 2004 when it won 29 Lok Sabha seats. It was the AP tally of the Congress (I) in 2004 that propelled it to power. YSR never let the party forget that.

In 2004 when I had just completed a detailed study of the hollowness of the TDP’s claims of growth and how it actually had fallen behind the other southern states in all indices, YSR with great alacrity had several thousand copies printed and distributed. This was despite the fact that in my columns I had vigorously attacked his populist politics.

Later that year I got a call from his office that he wanted my study, ‘The Looming Crisis in India’s Agriculture’ to be put up on his personal website. I would like to believe that this study too would have influenced his views on the acute need to step up public investment in irrigation.

YSR’s great popularity among the rural population owed largely to his government’s thrust in favour of agriculture. The importance of this is something which the bosses in New Delhi have not yet realised. To YSR, India still lived in its villages and this India was neglected by the policies influenced by the fat cat lobbies such as the CII and FICCI.

I was in Moscow last week where a vigorous controversy is now raging because of a plaque in Moscow’s Kazanskaya eulogising Stalin’s role in defending Russia against the Nazis. Many in Russia feel that it would be churlish to deny Stalin his place in history.

Likewise I too feel that YSR must find his place in history. No CM before him, or possibly after, will ever be able to do as much good or even bad as he had  for none will be as larger than life as he was. Good men without steel in their hearts seldom fare well as leaders. The legend of the Tiger of Cuddapah will flourish.

The writer is commentator on political affairs