India's Glocal Leader by Tejaswini Pagadala

Author:Tejaswini Pagadala
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9789387146600
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Published: 2019-11-25T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 6

Fighting the odds: Building new state from scratch

On 8 June 2014, lakhs of people gathered in a 70-acre ground of Acharya NG Ranga University in Mangalagiri, a city between Guntur and Vijayawada in a capital-less state, where the Telugu Desam Party began its public meeting. The stage was set for Nara Chandrababu Naidu to take oath at 7:27 pm as the first Chief Minister of the new Andhra Pradesh, post bifurcation.

The grand swearing-in ceremony included guests such as BJP’s veteran leaders LK Advani and Murli Manohar Joshi, Rajnath Singh, M Venkaiah Naidu, Shiromani Akali Dal’s leader Prakash Singh Badal, MDMK’s Vaiko, CMs – Vasundhara Raje Scindia, Dr Raman Singh, Manohar Parikkar, Anandiben Patel, Nagaland CM TR Jalan, Naveen Patnaik, Deptuy CM of Punjab Sukhbir Singh Badal, Shiv Sena’s Uddhav Thackarey, Ananth Kumar, Ashok Gapapathi Raju, UP’s Kalraj Mishra, Dr Harsha Vardhan, Piyush Goyal, Nirmala Sitharaman, Prakash Javdekar, Sarbandha Sonawal, PJ Kurien, Vaidyalingam (Tamil Nadu and Baby (Tamil Nadu), INLD Abhay Chautala, Siromani Akali Dal Naresh Gujaral, CPI K Narayana, Sri Sri Ravi Shankar, Jana Sena Party founder Pawan Kalyan, Bollywood actor Vivek Oberoi, and others.

As Naidu administered his oath and began his address, the crowd went berserk, cheering for him – some standing on the chairs, some waving the yellow flags frantically in joy and some, just clapping away in awe. ‘We’ve got many problems in our state. We need to develop solutions for them. I don’t think we can give lessons to anybody. I recognise the enormous difficulties. Every crisis is an opportunity. It is the time for path-finding. It is a time for achievement and challenge. I cannot do this alone. I need your support to develop and re-build Andhra Pradesh. We have too much at stake, to look back now. In this new century, we will be required to do more. Partnership and cooperation among states is not a choice. It is the only way to progress,’ he said, as the ground thundered with applause.

This was one of the most emotional speeches in his long political journey. His address to the people was carefully constructed to banish any lingering worries among the electorate, to emphasise his unwavering and unquestionable patriotism. The moment reflected how Naidu had been able to galvanise a state bitter, divided and bruised; of fractured dreams. The time of Chandrababu Naidu’s oath-taking ceremony symbolises a bitter-sweet moment for Andhra Pradesh as it marked the beginning of a challenging era for the people of Andhra Pradesh and the end of a long-pending struggle for the people of Telangana. Six days earlier, on 2 June 2014, the 29th state of India, Telangana, came into being.

Soon after taking the oath, Naidu began working out of his Jubilee Hills residence-cum-office in Hyderabad with a team of officials as a result of bifurcation. Three weeks later, he made the Lake View Guest House in Hyderabad his make-shift camp office. Amidst bitter feud between Andhra Pradesh and Telangana employees over division, Naidu visited L-Block of the Secretariat in Hyderabad where he was greeted with a garbage dump of old files, waste paper and other material strewn around.

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