There is a sense of deja vu among political observers with the Bharat Rashtra Samithi (BRS) losing the Assembly polls and the plot after ruling the newly-created State for nearly 10 years. It didn’t matter that its tallest leader K.Chandrasekhar Rao was the architect of the Telangana movement that saw the creation of the State in June 2014.
On Sunday evening, a number of IT employees took to social media to share their disappointment with the election results. Party working president K.T. Rama Rao, in his speech after the party’s defeat, acknowledged the grief among his followers and advised them to ‘accep things with equanimity’.
Two decades earlier, there was another darling of the media and IT world — N. Chandrababu Naidu who met a similar fate. He styled himself as the Chief Executive Officer of the State and hobnobbed with IT mavens and business leaders. Mr. Naidu showcased the State’s IT prowess with the HiTech City being inaugurated in 1998. Mr. Naidu inaugurated what he called SMART (simple, moral, accountable, responsible and transparent) government. He hired management consultancy firm McKinsey to create a Vision-2020 document with the stated aim of: “My Vision is to make AP the foremost State in ten years time in terms of standard of living of my people… through adoption of Information Technology in all aspects of development and governance.”
The IT policy involved CARD (Computer-aided Administration of Registration Department), TWINS (TWIN cities Network Services), FAST (Fully Automated Services of Transport department) and a host of other acronyms.
The tables were turned by Congress satrap Y.S. Rajasekhara Reddy who stormed through the Andhra Pradesh countryside smiling, glad-handing and walking the stretch of the State for 68 days till Ichhapuram in north-coastal Andhra Pradesh. The march was called ‘Jaitra Yatra’. YSR rode to power in the aftermath with his immediacy of connection with the rural masses as he highlighted drought during the peak of the summer. In the summer 2004 elections, Mr. Naidu was swept away, winning just 47 seats while the Congress which had an alliance with the Telangana Rashtra Samithi (now BRS) won 185 seats in the 294-member Assembly. The TRS, in its debut, won 26 assembly seats.
In the winter of 2022, senior Congress leader Rahul Gandhi did something similar as he walked the stretch of Telangana for his Bharat Jodo Yatra.
After both the ‘padayatras’, people didn’t appear as if they cared for the IT revolution and urban transformation showcased by the two governments separated by two decades.
A similar path had been followed by the TRS (now BRS) government. Exactly nine years earlier, the Governor gave assent to a Bill on December 3, 2014, called ‘Telangana State Industrial Project Approval and Self-Certification System (TS-iPASS) Act, 2014’. This is a single window clearance for project approval, with an automatic approval clause for projects. It has been held responsible for turning the State into an investment-friendly destination.
Like Naidu’s digitisation process, the current dispensation too has a version of Computer-aided Administration of Registration Department. It is called Dharani or Integrated Land Records Management System — a portal that was expected to give land holders clear titles. Unfortunately, there were more kinks than expected and a number of land holders had issues with its functioning about how their ownership became disputed. And the one-stop helpline for those with social media access was the ‘X’ (formerly Twitter) handle K.T. Rama Rao, the IT Minister. Nothing was mundane as he helped people during COVID-19 with transport, Remdesivir, oxygen cylinders and hospital beds. But clearly, this wasn’t enough for the people in Telangana where the urban and rural divide becomes clear about 20 km from the Outer Ring Road of Hyderabad. And that appears to have made all the difference.
