Aparita

Toronto Star

Voters felt excluded from `Laptop politics.’ Technology policy decisive in election

APARITA BHANDARI

SPECIAL TO THE STAR

Hindsight is always 20-20. Unfortunately, Indian cyber minister Chandrababu Naidu’s Vision 2020 - of his state becoming an information-technology superpower by the year 2020 - didn’t have enough foresight.

While the Congress party’s former-economist-turned-politician Manmohan Singh swore in as India’s first Sikh prime minister last week, analysts were still debating what went wrong for Naidu.

He was acknowledged as one the next generation crop of Indian politicians, a man who was known for his laptop politics. For 10 years he was the chief minister of the south-eastern coastal state Andhra Pradesh. He brought an IT revolution to his state, turning Hyderabad, the capital, into Cyberabad.
However, Naidu’s spectacular defeat two weeks ago marked a dramatic conclusion to the Indian elections.

Losing three quarters of the seats in the assembly elections, Naidu’s Telugu Desam Party (TDP) was ousted by the Congress party. And the defeat of the TDP rocked the boat of the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) that was in power at the centre.

The TDP was the second-largest member of the coalition in the centre.

Naidu’s rout rocked another boat - the Sensex stock index in Mumbai fell by over 4 per cent the day his defeat was announced, as overseas investors sold $135 million (U.S.) of Indian stocks.
The eventual 17 per cent drop, when the NDA’s defeat became certain, was the biggest Sensex slump ever.

It’s always hard to analyze the vagaries of Indian politics. But there are two main theories floating around, explaining what went wrong for Naidu.

The popular rebellion of those untouched by the India Shining campaign in Andhra Pradesh is one explanation.

The India Shining campaign had been run by the NDA in the run-up to the elections held from April 20 to May 10. The campaign highlighted the country’s progress under the NDA rule - a booming economy, large foreign exchange reserves largely to an ever-growing IT industry.

However, the campaign didn’t address the poor population of India. In Andhra Pradesh, while Naidu was busy inviting the likes of Microsoft chairman Bill Gates to the Hyderabad, he forgot the rice farmers of his state.

Naidu’s defeat isn’t much of a surprise, says Ananya Mukherjee-Reed, a political science professor at York University.

“Andhra Pradesh is known for its IT industry, but it’s also known as the state where there were a lot of farmer suicides,” she says. “In a sense it reflects what happened in the rest of India with the India Shining campaign. It was a very narrow, urban, highly skilled middle class - which defines the IT sector - who felt the shine.

“If (Naidu) had paid attention to the degree to which the rural economy was suffering, it might’ve been different. That was a basic miscalculation.”

A completely unbalanced economic policy was largely at fault.

“In India, for the last 50 years, we have this classical theory of economic development,” explains Mukherjee-Reed.

“That if you develop a very advanced, modern corporate core, the rest of the economy in the periphery will be pulled by the core into its orbit. It’s the very famous trickle down theory.

“But the trickle down theory doesn’t work until you have very strong redistributive policies.”

The election result was the Andhra Pradesh voters’ revolt, says Mahesh Rangarajan, a political analyst and visiting professor at Cornell University.

“They blamed him for whatever went wrong,” says Rangarajan in a telephone interview from New Delhi. “The TDP was a government presiding over a largely agrarian economy, with the largest number of landless labourers in India. There was a very severe drought for the last two-three years in several parts of the state. In one district alone called Anantapur, at least 2,400 farmers committed suicide between 1997 and 2004. And that’s a conservative government estimate.

“Yes, Naidu had a Vision 2020. But it was never backed by substance. If you take IT, the software exports of Andhra Pradesh are far behind (the states of) Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, or the city of Mumbai, or the township of Noida in Uttar Pradesh.”

The direction of Naidu’s Vision 2020 was wrong, says Rangarajan. “To take advantage of information technology and modernize, a country has to have a wider base of educated people,” he says. “Of the four southern states, Andhra Pradesh continues to be the lowest in terms of life expectancy, literacy, spending on health and education.

“Take the example of China. For its economic reforms, it reformed agriculture. The Chinese farmers got more money. You don’t build a pyramid from the top down; you have to build a strong base first. Mr. Naidu, perhaps, was looking at pyramid upside down.”

Although Naidu enhanced the connectivity of his state - setting up e-bazaars and models of e-governance - he can’t foist the Malaysian model on Andhra Pradesh.

“Malaysia’s per capita income is two-three times higher than India,” says Rangarajan. “In India 47 per cent of children are malnourished. One out of three women is anemic.

In Andhra Pradesh, they have computers in schools where they don’t have electricity. The people are waiting for the electricity to come, so that they can send an e-mail to the chief minister to tell him they have no power.

“IT is great. But we have to recognize its limitations. NASSCOM (the IT and software industry watchdog) says that by 2008 we will have 800,000 people employed by IT. By 2008, we will also have 669 million people not in IT. Now 1 million might be the pride of India, but they’re a very small part of India.”

The flip side of explaining Naidu’s defeat in the elections has nothing to do with IT. It was a strong coalition against the TDP and the rising expectations of the voters that proved to be Naidu’s nemesis, says political analyst Sanjaya Baru.

“I’ve travelled through Andhra Pradesh and you can’t say that the rural people are any worse off than they were five years ago,” says Baru.

“You can’t exaggerate (the suicide villages). The suicides were committed by farmers who had heavily borrowed and couldn’t pay back their loans. India is a free market economy, and agriculture is a free market sector. People make investment decisions and burn their fingers. Just because a group of farmers found themselves bankrupt, that’s not evidence of widespread rural unhappiness.

“Naidu had effective programs for women, children, health and building roads. The problem was that his image focused on IT. And maybe he didn’t do enough in terms of what people expected of him, but you can’t suggest that he hasn’t done anything at all.”

Trying to understand what happened in Andhra Pradesh in terms of IT is a flawed approach, adds Baru.

“I don’t think one should build too many theories in terms of IT in Indian politics,” he says. “Indian politics have lots of factors - caste coalitions, water, which becomes a major issue during summer elections. This obsession of what happened in Andhra Pradesh in terms of IT is utterly politically ill-informed journalism.”

However, both parties of the analytical spectrum do agree that IT will continue to be an integral part of policy making in India.

“The Congress has committed itself to offer a Naidu plus and not Naidu minus,” says Baru. “That is, the good work done in IT, in bio-tech, in institution building, in urban development, plus focus on areas he had neglected like irrigation, agricultural credit and rural infrastructure. It’ll be business as usual. With a more balanced economic policy.”

There’s no reason for the Congress to backtrack, agrees Mukherjee-Reed.

“It’s in nobody’s interest to turn back,” she says. “The hysteria about what will happen to the economic reforms, and IT is a bit overdone. In terms of IT, India has established a global presence. “So it’s in no one’s interest to harm that. And remember that the rural population may be able to turn the vote, but in terms of day to day policy making, it’s the corporate IT sector that can call up the (chief minister) at will.

Toronto Star, [05/10/2004]

His name is Naidu and he lives grafted to an IBM laptop. He promises farmers wireless, Web. Will they vote for him?

APARITA BHANDARI

SPECIAL TO THE STAR

Hyderabad, India — It takes a little more than 30 minutes to arrive at the HITEC City. The autorickshaw driver knows the place well, speeding along the meandering roads, past Hyderabad’s old city, posh enclaves, to finally arrive at Asia’s largest software technology park built on the outskirts of the main city.

The tall Cyber Towers shimmer in the sun. Cyber Towers is the first phase of HITEC City, 5 million square feet of office space designed to serve as a one-stop-shop for the needs for India’s growing IT industry. Cyber Gateway, the second phase is also at full occupancy, and the third phase Cyber Pearl has approximately 60 per cent occupancy. There’s also a residential township adjacent to the office space, which has been beautified with landscaped gardens and natural rock sculptures.

Standing at the reception area of Cyber Towers, you notice the names on the mailboxes - Microsoft, Oracle, Toshiba, GE Capital, HSBC. Clients at Cyber Gateway include Dell Computer India, Microsoft, Oracle, Bose and ING Vysya Ltd.

It’s no wonder then that the city has been monikered Cyberabad. Behind the technological revolution in the city, and the state of Andhra Pradesh is one man - Chandrababu Naidu.
They also call him India’s cyber minister.

At 54, Naidu is one of the country’s youngest chief ministers. He represents a new breed of politicians in India, with new fangled ideas such as positing himself as the CEO of Andhra Pradesh Inc. His IBM Thinkpad has become synonymous with his persona. He’s managed to have the likes of Microsoft Corp. chairman Bill Gates and former U.S. President Bill Clinton endorse Hyderabad as a sound investment destination.

However, Naidu’s reign over the south-eastern coastal state of Andhra Pradesh isn’t without its problems. While the state surges ahead in terms of IT revolution, trying to make Andhra Pradesh one big wireless network, the farmers whose livelihoods depend on paddy fields have often been ignored.

In the current Indian elections, Naidu’s fate may just depend on the “suicide villages.” It was a term coined for villages in Andhra Pradesh where farmers drank pesticide after crops failed following drought. India is in the midst of national elections, which conclude today, and some predictions indicate Naidu may lose.

Naidu came into office in 1995. His father-in-law, the late N. T. Rama Rao, was a movie star turned politician.

In power through the 1980’s into the early 1990’s, Rao’s style of politics was based more on his stardom and populist measures rather than sound economic policies.

As a result, Andhra Pradesh was nearly bankrupt when Naidu wrested power from his father-in-law, becoming the head of the Telugu Desam Party (TDP) founded by Rao.

Once in power, Naidu embarked Andhra Pradesh on several ambitious rural development schemes. The initiatives include Janmabhoomi - a grassroots level program encouraging his constituents to set up local committees and organizations such as a credit group committee (to provide low interest and short term loans), education and water committees.

After receiving training, these self-help groups function as a local administration network dealing with issues such as women and child welfare, population control, literacy and agriculture.

Naidu’s primary interest, however, was to convert his state into a technological superpower.
It used to be that Bangalore, in the adjoining state of Karnataka, was known as the Indian Silicon Valley. By attracting the likes of Bill Gates - Microsoft opened its first research centre outside of the United States in Hyderabad - Naidu has ensured that Hyderabad is a rival to that claim.

Vision 2020 is Naidu’s plan to make Andhra Pradesh an Asian Tiger by the year 2020. Obviously influenced by similar policies in Malaysia and Singapore, Vision 2020’s manifesto includes a detailed portion on information technology.

According to the PDF document available at www.aponline.gov.in “by 2020, Andhra Pradesh will have achieved one of the highest levels of IT literacy in the world.

“IT applications will have changed the day-to-day lives of people; IT will deliver services and information to the people’s doorsteps and be used in every aspect of their lives. The state will have a well-endowed information technology industry, spanning the areas of hardware, software and human resources.”

The technological invasion has already been established in Naidu’s own office.

The Andhra Pradesh secretariat, the apex administration body of the state government, has deployed a product called SmartGov. Developed by Tata Consultancy Services, one of India’s leading IT companies, SmartGov “automates the functions of the executive (government body) at all administrative levels.”

Naidu’s routine of getting up at 6:00 a.m. to log on to his laptop is legendary by now. He uses his Chief Minister’s Integrated Information System (CMIS) to get updates on everything from the water levels to daily crime reports and airline schedules. Naidu conducts videoconferences with cabinet ministers and the administrative officers of the 23 districts.

E-governance is another catchword in Andhra Pradesh. Take the e-seva citizen service. With 44 e-seva service centres, and 400 counters, the one-stop shop offers more than 60 services from paying electricity bills, licensing renewals to issuance of birth and death certificates.

The IT department in a government office used to be considered a punishment posting, says Praveen Prakash, director of the e-governance project at the Andhra Pradesh secretariat.

“But (chief minister’s) ideas of e-governance have made my job very interesting,” he says. “We looked at two models of e-governance - Australia and Singapore. And we’re trying to offer all government-to-consumer services in one place, in real time. We’re the first state in the country to so. It’s a challenging job.”

Similar paeans of Naidu’s vision can be heard from different officials. The former secretary of the IT department Ajay Sawhney talks about “the chief minister being the primary driver for the silent revolution.”

“We already had some projects underway before (Naidu) was elected in 1995,” says Sawhney. “But the pace picked up when he came in the picture. The e-seva counters have become as ubiquitous as McDonalds. In the villages, we’re implementing the Rural Services Delivery Points.

“Hyderabad’s strength is in our human resources. India accounts for a quarter of the IT professional in the US. Andhra Pradesh accounts for 25-30 per cent of the IT professionals there.”

Just so that the digital divide doesn’t alienate the rural population of Andhra Pradesh, initiatives to offer villagers low-cost computers that can double up as TVs and DVD players are being looked into. Prototypes are being tested, and plans are being drawn up to make Andhra Pradesh a connected state, say department officials.

However, for the rural half of the 75 million population state, information technology isn’t the immediate priority.

While various information technology projects have been given sops such as 25 per cent power discounts, investment subsidy, rebate in cost of land as well as expediting of infrastructure such as roads, little has been done for the common Joe on the street.

Andhra Pradesh, which is primarily a rice producing state, has faced droughts in the recent past. Already burdened by loans, poor farmers have committed suicides. As reported in a local news portal, 2,000 farmers from the town of Anantpur alone have killed themselves by swallowing pesticide since 1997.

Even in Hyderabad, the limited reach of information technology’s Midas touch is evident.
An autorickshaw driver who only gives his name as Ashok is all praise for the chief minister and his vision for Andhra Pradesh.

“Look at Hyderabad,” he says, driving through the newer, shinier parts of the city, dripping with affluence. “It’s like any other big city - Delhi, Bombay.”

His own house, however, is nothing more than one bedroom in a small shantytown neighbourhood adjacent to a rich suburb. Ashok, his wife who works as a seamstress, and two children live in the one room.

“This is how we live,” he says. “But we are poor people. I didn’t study beyond high school. My kids, they will go to a good university. They will learn computers. They will be rich.”