Starting off as an unsure heir to his father Y.S. Rajasekhara Reddy’s legacy 10 years ago, Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister Y.S. Jagan Mohan Reddy has since transformed himself into a mass leader. He has done this by sheer tenacity, but his political rise was devoid of an ideological thread. Deeply aware of this inadequacy, which is more pronounced amid the BJP’s dominance nationally, Mr. Reddy has made an early move to fortress the wide-spectrum social coalition that accorded his YSR Congress Party a landslide victory, by appointing five deputies. The death of his father, then Chief Minister and better known as YSR, in 2009 had pushed the Congress over the cliff in the State, a downslide in fortunes that befell it nationally too. Humiliated by the Congress and jailed during its rule, Mr. Reddy continued his tireless travels across the State, finally arriving this summer at his destination, the CM’s chair. The constitution of his Council of Ministers, including Mekathoti Sucharita, a Dalit woman, as the Home Minister, and five deputies, is evidently aimed at nurturing the coalition of social groups that he singlehandedly built up through his travels. The five Deputy CMs are from the Scheduled Caste (K. Narayana Swamy), Scheduled Tribe (Pamula Pushpa Sreevani), backward caste (Pilli Subhash Chandrabose), Muslim (Amzath Basha) and Kapu (Alla Kali Krishna Srinivas) communities.
Unitary projects such as nationalism have strong homogenising tendencies that consider particular identities and their aspirations for representation irrelevant or even fissiparous. Weaker sections of society are often at the receiving end of such projects, even if they are enthusiastic subscribers. Mr. Reddy’s success in weaving together a political base that denied the BJP a foothold in Andhra Pradesh, a State where it could not win a single seat, and vanquished the Telugu Desam Party was built on a sensitive appreciation of the aspiration for representation among diverse sections of society. Mr. Reddy’s predecessor, N. Chandrababu Naidu, had two deputies, one a Kapu and one from another backward caste; that was aimed more at accommodating formidable interest groups rather than empowering the weakest. YSR had won in 2004 and 2009 with an expansive welfare agenda. Mr. Reddy believes that welfarism alone is not sufficient and representation is critical in the changed situation. YSR’s victories were the bedrock of the Congress in 2004 and 2009; Mr. Reddy’s victory signals the decimation of the party in the State. But his politics holds out some useful lessons for the Congress and other parties seeking to challenge the Hindutva juggernaut: that material betterment of the citizenry needs to be complemented with wider social coalitions.
