Tale of 2 CMs

By  Suresh Dharur

Once comrades-in-arms, they are now sworn political rivals presiding over two Telugu-speaking states carrying the baggage of bitter separation. Telangana Chief Minister K Chandrasekhar Rao and his Andhra Pradesh counterpart N Chandrababu Naidu present contrasting personal styles and approach to governance. Grappling with post-bifurcation blues, including unresolved disputes over sharing of power, water, funds and staff allocation, the two leaders are facing a plethora of daunting challenges and competing with each other in the race to showcase their development models.

While KCR, as Chandrasekhar Rao is known in political circles, is struggling to transform from a rabble-rousing champion of the statehood movement to a responsible administrator, Naidu is forced to do tightrope walking, trying to strike a balance between his pro-reforms image to attract investments and political compulsions of pursuing a populist agenda.

While KCR’s aggressive, in-the-face style of functioning has earned him bouquets and brickbats in equal measure, Naidu, on the other hand, is treading cautiously, almost appearing to be on the defensive, in resolving the raging disputes between the two states.  

Both the leaders, in their early 60s, had cut their teeth in politics while working in the Telugu Desam Party founded by Naidu’s father-in-law and the matinee idol of Telugu cinema, late NT Rama Rao.

KCR was one of the close confidants of Naidu and had served in his Cabinet as well in the late 1990s, before quitting the party to revive the Telangana statehood agitation in 2001. Since then, they have turned bitter rivals and are now presiding over the destinies of the two states. Completion of six months in office can be a symbolic milestone for governments but for the newly-created Telangana and the truncated AP, it goes much beyond the symbolic value. Apart from an unspoken competition to excel in development, the two states are locked in a bitter wrangle over a wide range of issues which were left unresolved by the previous UPA government.

As it turns out, the process of separation was clumsy and hasty.