Chiranjeevi replaced NTR as the Telugu film industry’s reigning superstar, and changed it forever; and now that he’s entered politics, he might change NTR’s political legacy as well. The Telugu Desam Party, which NTR founded in 1982 and with which he swept to power bare months later, has now announced support for the bifurcation of Andhra Pradesh that is, by the standards of political discussion of that sensitive subject, quite unambiguous. Both the state’s major parties, the TDP and the Congress, faced considerable internal pressure about their Telangana policies for years — pushing them towards and away from support, towards and away from the Telangana Rashtra Samiti.
From the point of view of the next election, it is easy to see the appeal for Chandrababu Naidu and his politburo of taking this position. The TDP is obviously worried about the possibility that Chiranjeevi will make inroads into its base in coastal Andhra; and the communists, traditional allies of the TDP before Naidu allied with the NDA, had grown closer to the TRS recently. A possible win-win: Telangana would be secured, and so would the CPM. But it is actually an enormous gamble. Two key factors to track are: the disaffection in coastal Andhra that Chiranjeevi is exploiting, and, the disillusionment with the TRS that was made clear in the bye-elections that followed their legislators’ mass resignation from the assembly.
The TDP was founded as the party of Telugu pride. Its policies were populist, but its backbone was emotion. When Naidu replaced NTR, the TDP shed NTR’s instinctive grasp of populist policy-making; it replaced that emotion with clever, reformist, flexibility — but the emotional angle’s where Chiranjeevi might pose a threat. Getting behind Telangana at this point might help the TDP recapture some emotional content, but it means they won’t have even the memory of NTR’s up-tempo regionalism to call on. Naidu’s already shown incredible flexibility in the u-turn he gave his party’s image post-1995. Let’s see how the ruling Congress now responds.
