God had decided to place under a terrible rain shadow

Shekhar Gupta has two quite interesting article on new India and old election. In the first article he writes: 

“Chandrababu Naidu was once the darling of reformers, of free-market economists, the Indian and foreign media and of course the larger, liberal intellectual class. All of which, he now tells us over a multi-course and fiery coastal Andhra meal, were the reasons why he lost power. “I got so obsessed with praise from all of you, that I lost contact with people,” he says. And then goes on to explain with the sort of candour and articulateness you wouldn’t expect from an Indian politician, particularly a regional, third-front type: “I became a nationalist, a statesman, and got obsessed with that image. I forgot my villages, the voters, and I will never make that mistake again. Five years out of power have been terrible. I have really suffered and struggled.” He then unveils his modified “reform” thinking. Pro-market reforms, he says, must continue, but you can’t wait for trickle-down as “I did the last time.” Reform will create wealth, he says, but the state must distribute it immediately. His solution, however, is more immediate than you would have imagined: he carries an ATM machine with him and tells voters how he will give cards to all the poor so, once a month, all they need to do is push the card into the machine, and Rs 2,000 will come out, and this is how. At a fairly energetic campaign meeting in the heart of Nellore that has at least a dozen OB vans (all from local, Telugu channels; most of them owned by politicians) in attendance, he gets a response when he explains his cash transfer scheme. As he would, at least initially, from reform economists who have been asking for just this in place of the usual government schemes for years. Except he wants this to be in addition to all the rest, including NREGA. And from where will he get the money to finance these? Naidu has some ideas that come straight from hell. 

Chiranjeevi, whom we catch up with in Palakollu, his parents-in-law’s town, not far from coastal Rajahmundhry and one of the two constituencies he is contesting from. He invites us to dinner at one of his friends’ (a film producer) plush home but turns up himself only well past midnight, fresh and on-the-go as if another day’s work was just about to begin. He is too simple and uncomplicated to be a politician yet. Born Konidela Shiva Shankara Vara Prasad to a police constable, he says he changed his name to Chiranjeevi after a dream. Then, having spent more than two decades thrashing the baddies and inevitably destroying all evil, he has now jumped into politics, with pretty much the same intention. But he acknowledges real politics is not like the movies and the victory of “good” over “evil” is not pre-ordained. He admits he has not been able to build a real organisation, is not sure if his politics is anything like the Robin Hood socialism that many of his movies portrayed, but between Chandrababu Naidu and Rajasekhar Reddy he seems to know who is the greater “evil”, even if he won’t say so in so many words.”  

The second part is here.