Having prepared his party in advance for what may be a crucial election for him, Chandrababu Naidu has won the preliminary round in the state.

By Amarnath K. Menon

Information is power. Few chief ministers know this better than N. Chandrababu Naidu. Fewer still use it as skilfully as he does. So, while his adversaries were excitedly discussing President K.R. Narayanan's order dissolving the Lok Sabha, Naidu, like an efficient computer operator, had already pressed the right key to put his Telugu Desam Party (TDP) in election mode.

Having anticipated the mid-term elections much before the I.K. Gujral Government fell, Naidu has planned well. As a crucial first step, the TDP chief pre-empted the customary checks that the Election Commission puts on vote-catching schemes at election time. Naidu has caught his opponents off their guard and they are naturally angry. "Gimmick Garu is at it again," complains state BJP President Bandaru Dattatreya. "His populist measures are politically immoral and expose his fear of facing the electorate." The discomfort of his opponents has only added to Naidu's optimism, and his foresight may well help TDP candidates to win laurels. Since October, he has been announcing sops that include:

• Appointment of a pay revision commission for the 10 lakh state Government employees and payment of the second instalment of dearness allowance, involving an additional expense of Rs 210 crore.
  
• Construction of four lakh houses for the poor in l998.
  
• Provision of power connection for 50,000 pump-sets.
  
• Compensation by February to owners of 5,614 shops, 13,971 bunks and 16,763 houses whose properties were affected by a recent road-widening programme in different districts.
  
• Raising of the number of families eligible for drought pensions from 1.5 lakh to three lakh.
  
• Sanctioning of Rs 5 lakh each for medical camps in every district and Rs 500 for veterinary camps in each gram panchayat.

And, shrewdly enough, Naidu put on hold the plan to distribute new ration cards; the measure involves cutting back on a number of bogus cards which, if undertaken at this juncture, could alienate voters who are already sore with him for raising the price of rice available through the public-distribution system from Rs 2 to Rs 3.50 a kg.

The TDP chief's primary aim is to wrest the 22 seats held by the Congress and improve on his party's tally of 17 in the dissolved Lok Sabha. To achieve this goal, Naidu has devised a multi-channel, information-based strategy to shortlist candidates. The process began in October when he despatched observers to gather information on the relative strengths and weaknesses of major political parties and ascertain election issues in all 42 constituencies. As the reports started trickling in, Naidu got his three party general secretaries, Lal Jan Basha, C. Ramachandraiah and Manik Reddy, to fire the first propaganda shot with the claim that the TDP would win up to 35 seats. Left unsaid was the fact that the party cannot contest in more than 36 constituencies as it has conceded five to its electoral allies -- two each to the CPI and CPI(M) and one to the Janata Dal -- and a loss to the local Majilis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen is almost a certainty in Hyderabad.

By the time the dissolution of the Lok Sabha was announced, Naidu was ready to hold the second round of information-gathering meetings and systematically review the battle formation, constituency by constituency. Armed with data on issues close to the people's hearts in each constituency and caste and communal equations there, Naidu listened to aspiring candidates.

It was then that Naidu came to the conclusion that victory for the TDP would not come easy. There was the anti-incumbency factor, for instance. So he considered another move: re-induction of heavyweights who could pull off surprise electoral wins. He roped in former minister K.E. Krishnamurthy, who left the party in the days of N.T. Rama Rao, to take on Congress stalwart K. Vijayabhaskara Reddy in Kurnool. Another influential politician rejoining the TDP is former MLA Karnam Balaramakrishnamurthy.

"I work for 16 hours a day, visit every part of the state and have got over Rs 5,000 crore as loan from the World Bank. I have been so busy that I do not even know how my son Lokesh is faring in school," claimed Naidu in a meeting with party workers. He wanted the cadres to similarly "lay off their families". "We cannot afford to lose a single seat as it will affect the development of the state," he said, while pointing out weaknesses in individual assembly segments and the need for local groups to sink their differences. Putting painstaking efforts into micro-analysis to solve constituency-level squabbles has had its rewards; the party is galvanised and Naidu hopes it will help the TDP to corner a large share of the votes.

Besides, sensing the subjective nature of the assessments of his ministry and party work undertaken by colleagues, Naidu decided to rely more on the findings of the privately commissioned half-yearly surveys on the public perception of his Government's performance. Similarly, he will pore over routine police intelligence reports to decide on the candidates in order to back, what a senior party leader calls "winning horses". One has already been identified: Rajya Sabha member Jayaprada, who not only hopes to win the Rajahmundry seat but also become a minister if the United Front (UF) comes to power again.

Such meticulous preparation notwithstanding, Naidu is leaving little to chance. Beginning December 22, about three lakh party cadres will be put through their paces as the TDP's foot soldiers at two-day training camps. Their brief will be to inform voters in the state about what the ruling party has done for the development of the state. Among other things, they will tell the electorate that the UF, of which their chief minister was the convener, was forced to relinquish power in Delhi "because of the greed of the Congress for office". They will also distribute information booklets on these issues, prepared in advance of their being put down as election expenses of the candidates.

While the preparations are characteristic of Naidu's organisational skill and centralised authority, the electioneering in the state itself may not be as smooth. There are ominous signs for anti-TDP forces in the ruling party's military-like scheme to train five workers to oversee polling-day exigencies at each of the 200-odd booths in each of the 294 assembly constituencies. "Any chief needs a trained army to fight and win a big battle, and these are our preparations," says Basha. And this is where the rub lies. A highly motivated army like this will fight a pitched battle with the Congress and the TDP led by Laxmi Parvati, or any other party for that matter, to win at all costs -- even resort to rigging and violence. Eventually, therefore, Naidu could end up winning the battle but losing the war.

INDIA VOTES

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