Rosaiah’s soft skills fail

Hyderabad, Dec. 25: It does not look like the Chief Minister, Mr K. Rosaiah’s troubles are going to be over in the new year.

His four-month-old tenure, that began on September 2, 2009, has been fraught with a series of crises none of which he has handled with any great skill.

Ever since he was made Chief Minister by the Congress central leadership following the demise of Dr Y.S. Rajasekhar Reddy in a helicopter crash, Mr Rosaiah has been grappling first with dissidence, then natural calamities, a severe financial crunch, and finally the ongoing Telangana turmoil.

Contrary to expectations, his reactions to these crises do not reflect his vast political and administrative skills in which the Congress central leadership reposed confidence at the time of his appointment. He has allowed the party high command to handle the political crisis while administration is left to officials.

His failure to take a firm stance on the revival of the Telangana struggle by the Telangana Rashtra Samiti (TRS) chief, Mr K. Chandrasekhar Rao, is at least partly to blame for the situation spiralling out of control.

The Chief Minister admitted that nothing was in his hands and except for cautioning the Centre about the repercussions of the first statement on Telangana by the Union home minister, Mr P. Chidambaram, he does not seem to have played much of a role in the decision making.

The Centre almost ignored him during the home minister’s second statement on Telangana, and back home his blow-hot, blow-cold approach towards the police also came in for criticism.

“There are different types of metals and I am of the soft metal category. I cannot change myself after all these years,” Mr Rosaiah told his Cabinet colleagues when they asked him to act tough against agitations in both Telangana and Coastal Andhra-Rayalaseema regions. Explaining the Chief Minister’s character, his principal secretary, Mr Jannat Hussain, observed: “He wants to have a cordial and smooth working relationship with everyone. He is not a person who invites problems and then tries to address them.”

Realising his own limitations — not a single minister of his choice in the Cabinet and more than 100 legislators waiting for him to be replaced by their man, Mr Y.S. Jagan Mohan Reddy, and saying so openly — the Chief Minister has preferred to maintain the status quo in the administration.

He even accommodated officials who were the choice of the Jagan camp and agreed to extend the term of the Chief Secretary, Mr P. Ramakanth Reddy, for three months.

He lived with dissidence till the party high command finally reigned in the Jagan camp. Transfers and postings of bureaucrats continued to bear what is popularly known as the “KVP mark” — YSR’s close pal and adviser Dr K.V.P. Ramachandra Rao continues to play a significant role in administrative matters, insiders say.

A month into Mr Rosaiah’s tenure, the state faced the worst ever floods as the Krishna river inundated thousands of habitations including Kurnool city. Lakhs of people were rendered homeless.

The Chief Minister stayed overnight with officials in the Secretariat on October 3 when the gushing waters reached an unprecedented 894 ft level and overflowed the Srisailam reservoir, besides threatening the safety of not only Srisailam but Nagarjunasagar and Prakasam barrage downstream. This was a rare gesture never shown by any chief minister before, but it failed to impress people in the flood hit areas, and during his tour of these areas he often lost his temper when people complained of the flood relief operations.

Though the Prime Minister, Dr Manmohan Singh, and the UPA chairperson, Ms Sonia Gandhi, assured all possible help, the Centre announced assistance of only Rs 1,000 crore against the Rs 12,000 crore sought by the state. Just half the promised amount has been released so far.

The state’s revenues have dipped to a new low, affecting development programmes and irrigation projects.

The Chief Minister chose not to increase the rice quota to the poor or increase free power supply to nine hours, despite criticism from within his government that he was deviating from YSR’s promises. The huge NTPC-BHEL project in Chittoor has also not made any progress.