RIYADH/DAMMAM/JEDDAH, 12 May 2004 — Expats from India’s Andhra Pradesh state were stunned by the size of the defeat the Chandrababu Naidu-led Telugu Desam Party suffered at the hands of Congress in their state election.
The Congress-led combine won 226 seats in the 294-member assembly. The TDP-BJP alliance managed to win only 49 seats, while other parties bagged 19.
Many expats take the landslide victory for Congress and its allies an indicator of the outcome of Lok Sabha (lower house) election, whose results are due out tomorrow. A majority say the state results are a total rejection of the “Shining India” and “Feel good” slogans of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party.
Raj Shekhar, a Warangal native working in the Eastern Province, said: “Naidu was not a people’s chief minister but of the upper and upper-middle classes. The poor became poorer during his rule.”
Ashfaq Ahmad of Hyderabad, an architect, said the state results reflected national sentiments. “It’s a vote against jingoistic vibes and for secular forces. Indians are now moving toward the path of secularism after the brief nightmare of Hindu rule,” he said.
Rehmatullah Baig, also from Hyderabad, said the results showed Naidu targeted the wrong people. “He was dubbed India’s No. 1 chief minister for his so-called IT revolution. Food, shelter, water and electricity ought to be the first priority,” he said.
Sunil Anand of Vijayawada said Naidu’s defeat was the curse of a large number of farmers from the state who committed suicide due to hunger and poverty.
Naidu’s “anti-poor” policies turned the public against him, said Muhammad Nayyar, a Jeddah travel agency executive. “TDP neglected rural areas and paid the price,” Nayyar said. But he granted that what Naidu did for urban development was “marvelous”.
The Telangana factor — which included demand for statehood — is seen by many as the decisive factor in the elections, and the blame for it rested firmly with the TDP government and the total neglect of backward regions by the party, Muhammad Irfan, an engineer in Jeddah, said.
In Riyadh, Dr. Syed Khwaja of the MOH said Naidu had been dictatorial in his public dealings. “He neglected the rural areas, creating a situation where real development did not happen. The cost of living also went up during his tenure. Development was lopsided, with only the capital city emerging economically strong.”
Public servants also turned against him, and the state was turned into a police state, he said.
Ghous Arsalan said the anti-incumbency factor also played a role in Naidu’s downfall.
Mustafa Hashim said the decade-old rule of technologically savvy Naidu came to an end when one-track growth in the IT sector failed to reach rural masses, who were hit by a series of droughts. It would be no wonder if the federal government’s “Shining India” slogan met the same fate. “It shows that the Babu IT bubble has burst,” he said.
(Javid Hassan in Riyadh, Saeed Haider in Dammam & K.S. Ramkumar in Jeddah)
