Hoping against hope, I have followed TV coverage over the past 24 hours following Y.S. Rajasekhara Reddy’s (YSR) chopper disappearance early morning on Wednesday, September 2. YSR’s famed luck, however, ran out ending a life devoted to championing the poor and downtrodden.
YSR single-handedly resurrected the Congress in a state considered the stronghold of the then Chief Minister Chandrababu Naidu. In sharp contrast to the IT-savvy Naidu’s urban-centric agenda, YSR developed a people-centric agenda through a painstaking but effective grassroots campaign, most notably characterized by his 1,000-kilometre padayatra. YSR unseated Naidu in 2004 and delivered a second and even more spectacular victory less than four months ago.
Of many attributes, one that will stand out over time is YSR’s leadership capabilities. For the bulk of his career, YSR was a permanent dissident — some sort of a headache — within the Congress party — something that is hard to believe now when he leaves such a big vacuum within the party.
In the 1980s, it was his involvement with violent factionalism; in the 1990s, YSR went against P.V. Narasimha Rao to contest the CWC elections; and, it was only in this decade that he came into his element by leading the state Congress out of wilderness into power and transformed governance through an agenda focused on the farmers, women, and the poor.
It took two electoral successes for political analysts to recognize that YSR was throughout a man of independent thought with a strong bias for action rooted in his confidence of knowing the people’s pulse. That is a rare type of leadership within political parties, the Congress, in particular.
YSR would have likely approved the script that fate wrote for him: he died en route to a surprise visit with the farmers he so passionately championed. YSR, Champion of the Poor, R.I.P.
[...] Following YSR’s death, the media is replete with stories of his smile, confidence, and desire to visit people and identify ways to meet their needs. Several other tributes have talked about how hard he worked throughout his tenure. Of greater significance was his principle-based political vision, in particular his steadfast refusal to support Telengana as a separate state. We need to distinguish his statements, often driven by realpolitik and pressure from Delhi, from his actions which clearly marginalized the separatist movement. Finally, he eliminated dissidence within the Congress party, developed a new generation of young leaders, and contributed to the party’s national success in the 2009 election as I have discussed elsewhere. [...]
[...] legacy: Andhra as a lab for policy experiments This blog is a die-hard fan (see here, here, and here) of the late Y.S. Rajasekhara Reddy: he delivered both development and electoral [...]