It's Back To The Future For Chandrababu Naidu

It is a tag that will continue to follow N. Chandrababu Naidu, who will once again have to don the mantle of an eternal builder with the Telugu Desam Party's resounding victory in Andhra Pradesh, a state which people say has gone back at least a decade over these past five years.

But if the task of rebuilding smacks of déjà vu for him, then it is something Naidu will enjoy to the hilt. He gained international recognition by building Hyderabad into a global IT and investment destination during his nearly nine years as the Chief Minister in the erstwhile combined state.

If he appeared to rejoice being hailed as a visionary, so did the industry and the media who needed a CM who meant business and called him the "Laptop Babu" and "Powerpoint Naidu", among a host of other fawning titles.

So much so, at a time when corporate India was still getting used to the intricacies of Microsoft Office, the slide presentation became de rigueur at the numerous investor meetings and business conferences he held. Interestingly, he used his halting command over the English language to his advantage and impressed global CEOs with his subaltern-gone-hi-tech image during these presentations to project the image of an eager, industry-friendly politician. But, Naidu was not always known to be like this. During the first encounter with him, way back in May of 1995 for a story, as the then Minister of Revenue and Finance in the NT Rama Rao cabinet, he came through every bit the staid backroom politician that he was known to be. Numbers were his forte, it appeared. But, he also had a till then less seen side to his personality—that of a consummate Machiavellian adept at manoeuvring to keep party cadres on a leash. This came to the fore very soon thereafter in a perverse way when he unseated NT Rama Rao in the now notorious 1995 August coup. Always an aggressive administrator, Naidu pushed his party colleagues and bureaucrats alike on all fronts. But he took it upon himself to build brand AP and Hyderabad, to garner what appeared to be disproportionate investments for it. With the likes of Microsoft, IBM, Dell, Deloitte, Computer Associates and Oracle among a host of others setting up shop in the city and wresting the Indian School of Business from Maharashtra, only strengthened Brand Naidu and Hyderabad. The Hi-Tech City and christening Cyberabad by including various IT zones and the fledgling Financial District became the calling cards for international investments and featured on every presentation with the Ramoji Film City.

But then, those who watched him closely knew, Naidu owed this success as much to the backroom boys in his team as to his openness to try the new, be it technology or new governance models. While a clutch of key officials came up with strategies to tap a series of trending industry themes, his policies for modernisation of administration and digitisation of governance strengthened his image as an economic reformer and proponent of IT-based economic growth. One aspect that repeatedly came through strongly was his grasp of detail and anything new. This was proved beyond doubt during a session with him at the Oberoi Towers in Mumbai, where he was to address a group of CFOs and CAs. Asked to take him through a few slides on the new International Accounting Standards (IAS), SOX and other finance-related topics he was to speak on, it was quite a revelation that he kept his audience in rapt attention for 30 plus minutes, speaking on a subject that he was briefed on just a short while back and did not even know anything about. That he will, once again play two familiar roles from his past—that of a builder and a kingmaker at the Centre, Naidu will find himself in a comfort zone. The work in the residual Andhra Pradesh was still incomplete when he demitted office in 2019 after the loss at the hustings.  In fact, the little that he was able to do was undone by his successor Jagan Mohan Reddy. Furthermore, he gets a chance to play a significant role in national politics once more. The question is, will we see the successful Naidu of the past this time round?

Chitti Pantulu is a Hyderabad-based journalist and has covered business and technology trends for the last 25 plus years. 

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