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Jan. 30, 2003. 01:00 AM He turned around a failed state HAROON SIDDIQUI HYDERABAD—In India, good governance is often measured by the steady supply of drinking water and electricity. Not too long ago, citizens here got neither when they needed it most, in 45-Celsius summers. They kept candles and kerosene lamps. The poor dug up wells and drew water by rope and pail. The better-off drilled bore wells, powering them by gas-run generators. Pollution went up, water tables went down. Into this chaos stepped a young premier, Chandrababu Naidu. But not before a grand political soap opera. He got there by toppling his thespian father-in-law, N.T. Rama Rao. N.T.R., as he was called, was more ubiquitous than Ronald Reagan. He had made more than 300 movies, many Hindu mythology epics. Translating his popularity to politics, he got elected premier of the state, Andhra Pradesh, India's fifth largest. Then the widower married a young singer. She had ambitions of her own. She got the aging hero busy in nighttime religious rituals in saffron clothes. And she controlled access to him. In 1995, his son and son-in-law rallied enough legislators to pass a vote of non-confidence. Naidu, a former minister of technology, was a disciplined workaholic. He got up at 4 a.m., did yoga and reached for his laptop to fire off early morning E-mails to his officials. Soon he was performing miracles. Supplies of water and electicity got steadier. Garbage got picked up. The streets were cleaner. That was only the beginning. Naidu had a vision of transforming this agricultural state of 76 million, 6.6 million of whom live in this capital city. He promised to eradicate poverty, illiteracy and corruption by 2020. He would ride the information technology boom to prosperity. But the IT revolution was already well underway in Bangalore, 650 kilometres south. No matter. Naidu cornered Bill Gates at the residence of the U.S. ambassador in New Delhi and asked for 10 minutes. Forty minutes of a power point presentation later, the Microsoft chairman had agreed to open an office here. Oracle, IBM, Motorola, GE Capital, Nortel and others followed. On another trip to Delhi, Naidu wooed James Wolfensohn, governor of the World Bank. "He said Andhra Pradesh was not his priority," Naidu recalled in an interview. "But I briefed him what all we wanted to do. So he came." Multi-billion dollar loans followed, along with the prescribed pro-market reforms. Naidu privatized services, laid off thousands and slashed subsidies, especially on rice and electricity. Yet he got re-elected, proving that "good governance can be good politics." His regional party contested federal elections and won enough seats to play kingmaker. It propped up the Hindu nationalist minority government of Prime Minister Atal B. Vajpayee but, being secular, did not join it. The move proved fateful. Naidu is untainted by the expanding federal fundamentalist stain, while winning kudos for keeping inter-communal harmony in his domain. But he has tapped into federal coffers almost at will. He has won the freedom to deal directly with foreign governments, signing bilateral deals with Singapore and Malaysia. He is wiring all 20,000 local governments. Citizens can get birth and death certificates, pay property taxes and utility bills and apply for micro-loans, all at the "single window" service, manned by clerks who must "serve with a smile." Naidu duplicated his Cyber Towers and HiTec City with a Genome Valley to grow the state's $1.6 billion bio-tech industry. He set up a Pharma City to increase the state's pharmaceutical exports of $350 million a year, a chunk of it to Canada. A regular at the Davos World Economic Forum, he courted the corporate elite to his "partnership summits" here. One this month attracted 1,500 people from 23 countries, including a Canadian contingent headed by David Kilgour, minister of state for Asia Pacific. Earlier, Natural Resources Minister Herb Dhaliwal was here exploring deals in the energy sector. The GNP has been rising at between 6 and 7 per cent a year, and literacy rates in double digits. Goldman Sacks rates Andhra as the most successful state in attracting foreign investment. The architect of the Andhra miracle is not charismatic. But the 52-year-old Naidu has an earthy directness that appeals to the public. He disciplines or fires bureaucrats on the spot during his surprise inspections. The week I was here, he suspended one whose figures didn't jibe with his laptop data. He gave two others 48 hours to move to the village they worked in, rather than commute to it, after villagers complained that the officials were not readily available. "The poor used to be afraid to speak out," says Naidu. "I've changed that." More grandly, he has changed the culture of governance, by growing the economy rather than reallocating static resources. And he has pioneered a revolutionary rebalancing of the highly centralized Indian federalism. Both have had a liberating effect never seen in these parts before. ------------------------- Haroon Siddiqui is The Star's editorial page editor emeritus. His column appears Thursday and Sunday. He can be reached at [EMAIL PROTECTED] ______________________________________________________________________ Post your free ad now! http://personals.yahoo.ca
