He got it done

Yeduguri Sandinti Rajasekhara Reddy was a politicians politician. Perhaps as complete a politician as can be aggressive in his youth,mellow in his mature avatar as chief minister,with his share of significant achievement and controversy. The late chief minister of Andhra Pradesh,who died tragically on Wednesday,combined mass appeal with an administrative acumen that made him the first Congress CM to complete a full five-year term in Andhra and then return to power,triumphant within his party and without,with a formidable record of never personally losing an electoral contest. In sum,Reddys distinction was the thin line he astutely walked between the extremes of ivory-tower policy-making and vacuous populism. Thus YSR was seen to deliver on both economic growth and welfare,and serve as a model CM: putting an equal emphasis on industry and agriculture,stressing information and bio-technology while bequeathing to the country an eminently replication-worthy legacy in rural healthcare,largescale irrigation,housing for the poor and the tackling of the Naxalite menace. (Incidentally,the NREGS was launched at Anatapur in Andhra.) YSRs packed itinerary,with frequent flights to put his imprimatur on state projects big and small was his way of doing business.

YSR became the Congresss most powerful Andhra figure,ironically,by debunking the wishy-washy style of Congress functioning and firmly endorsing the implementation model of governing,personally keeping tabs on the performance of his MLAs and bureaucrats. On Wednesday,YSR was on his way to examine the effectiveness of state delivery mechanisms in drought-affected Rayalseema through a mass contact programme. He set the tone for this style of governance when,in 2003,he undertook the near-1500 km padayatra across the state that helped him dislodge the Telugu Desam Party from power the next year. Having rebuilt a written-off Congress in Andhra by himself,YSR delivered seats to the party high command,enjoying a latitude that usually eludes Congress regional stalwarts,even those as prominently dissident in the P.V. Narasimha Rao days as YSR who had then been passed over for CM was.

No politician evades blemish; the Andhra opposition compiled a famously thick dossier on YSR,while the NREGS implementation has been hardly perfect in its pilot state. But the flip side of a powerful political figure,who almost single-handedly runs a state as big as Andhra,is the vacuum his/ her absence creates. It is going to be very difficult for both the party and the state to fill YSRs place. But it is imperative that his work be carried on; in seeking YSRs successor,the Andhra Congress and the state administration must not fall apart. The Congress high command in New Delhi and the Union government must closely coordinate with Hyderabad through these difficult times.