Accomplishments

Chandrababu Naidu stands out amongst the other chief ministers and merits research not only because he seems to have challenged the age old system of Indian government, but because he has accomplished so much in terms of implementing new and innovative programs in Andhra Pradesh. Naidu has introduced many programs in the field of social development. At the forefront of these programs have been ideas such as greater involvement of the masses in decision making, greater transparency in government working (through a right to information and social auditing), and an overall attempt to improve the standard of living. Coupled with all that are his more innovative and modern programs. The one that stands out amongst all these are his ambitions to set up a state-wide computer network to be called the Andhra Pradesh Value Added Network (APVAN). However, such projects, especially the latter, have not come without a fair bit of criticism from sides with vested interests and as such I will discuss them in the last part of this section.

Social Programs

Naidu has always been considered a man of vision and more importantly an ambitious man. To justify such traits, he has announced that he plans to have 100% literacy by the year 2010 and to make the state the most prosperous in terms of standards of living in India in the next ten years. Behind this ambition lies Naidu’s greatest social program, called Janamabhoomi. This program relies on having the people work with each other at the grassroots and to get them involved in the development process. India has always had a culture of a panchayat which is a group of generally five elders in the village who mediate and judge problems in the village. This system is now part of the Indian judiciary. Extending upon this, Naidu has tried to mobilize the people into working with each other in setting up organizations and committees. Some of them are credit groups (providing low-interest short-term loans), water associations, education committees, and health committees. While the government will be out to educate and organize such groups, its main role in this program will be to implement suitable policy and train the people and group them according to their skill. One major development through this program has been an attempt at making the government more transparent. Naidu hopes to have the citizens more involved in the decision making process and as such hold the government bureaucrats accountable for their actions. This means that the people would have a right to the information and be able to audit government accounts. Although this is a great plan into streamlining and improving the bureaucracy, it is obvious that it would not go down too well with the bureaucrats. In terms of the social objectives of Janamabhoomi, it has been very successful with improvements across the board, in areas such as water, sanitation, health, and also veterinary care.

Some other programs that Naidu has implemented are efforts to have complete literacy, massive health programs (immunization, family planning, malaria, etc.), and a clean and green AP program to promote environment awareness.

Computerization and Modernization

Innovative social programs are all great, but where Naidu has stood out has been his programs to implement computerization into the entire state. Of this, was his most ambitious project ever, APVAN. APVAN was to wire up the entire state into one large network (or intranet) and hook up every government office with it. This way, information could be accessed and shared across the board at a great speed. Naidu already has a similar but smaller system set up in his office where he can connect to the network and get data on things like condition of power generation and transmission, education levels, etc. He already uses this data by keeping the ministers and bureaucrats on their toes by calling them at all times of the day and questioning them based on the data. Now Naidu envisions a similar system set up across the entire state. Such a network would have multiple purposes. The first one is to give all government employees and ministers access to instant information and data. The second one is to streamline government working. This is to be achieved through a system of online government (sort of like online banking). Here, citizens would be able to print out forms, apply for licenses and permits, pay their taxes, along with having access to all the information. Further more, Naidu currently has a file-tracking system in his secretariat where he can track every minister’s files and see how long it took and what decision was taken. He hopes to make even this information public and have the citizens track the ministers’ files.

APVAN was to be built by a consortium of Singaporean companies called Singapore Network. This company was chosen because Singapore has a proven record of government networking, being the first country to be completely wired. The funding was coming from the state government and while the government was to own all the hardware of the system, APVAN was the service provider. However, such a large-scale project is not without its problems and opposition. Naidu ensured that there would not be too many technical problems and that the project would be completed on time by handing it over to private companies with experience in this sort of work. What Naidu ended up facing as a result of this decision is the opposition to government functioning being handed over to private companies, and that too non-Indian companies. People felt that Naidu was handing over government departments and agencies to the consortium of Singaporean companies (which by the way is not at all true). Coupled with this was the fear that employees would lose their jobs. I will discuss the repercussions of this opposition and the conclusion drawn from it in the next section titled Current Actions.

Naidu also has other plans along with APVAN to make Andhra Pradesh the IT capital of India. Until recently, Bangalore has been considered the Silicon Valley of India with most of the computer and software companies setting up office there. Naidu, however, planned to change all that and make Hyderabad (the capital of Andhra Pradesh) the IT center. He even went as far as coining the name Cyberabad. He has developed a center in Hyderabad called HI-TEC City. Here he has set up what he claims to be the perfect environment for an IT company. He has it completely wired up and provides all the facilities that a software development firm would need. To help it out further, he has also set up the Indian Institute of Information Technology (IIIT) in Hyderabad. To show the success of these, we can see that major software firms from India and around the world are biting the bait. Microsoft set up its first office in India in Hyderabad. The HI-TEC City (still under construction) is already over 77% booked with firms such as Novell and Oracle. Naidu has also realized that for Andhra Pradesh to become a modern and industrialized state, he must also build infrastructure. To this effect he has been busy in actively promoting heavy industries to set up in AP. He has reduced the paperwork and red-tape required for all such companies and has also given incentives in the form of tax breaks and the like. He has also reformed the power sector by breaking up the AP State Electricity Board into separate corporations for generation, transmission, and distribution.

In the next section I will discuss a number of important things. First of all, I will reiterate what the major problems Naidu has faced and what their repercussions of this have been. I will try to show that the example of Andhra Pradesh is important for the study of the Politics of Economic Reform as a whole. I will then talk about where Naidu’s projects and plans lie. Finally, I will try to explain what I feel Naidu should do to stifle the opposition and have a good chance of victory in the next elections.