YS Jagan Mohan Reddy: The Triumph of a Dynast

With her hair braided up in lavender ribbons that matched her uniform, Meghana, a Class 10 student from a government school in Bendapudi village of Andhra Pradesh, told Chief Minister YS Jaganmohan Reddy, speaking in English with an American accent, that his education schemes had brought an “average and shy” girl like her out of her shell. Jagan had taken time out to meet her and other school students like her, at his camp office in Tadepalli in May. They told him that each day their teachers asked them to narrate in English five incidents they see, and over the weekend, they interacted with fellow students in the US.

Less than three years prior to this, his government had issued an order converting all Telugu medium schools into English medium, with effect from 2020, a decision that met with legal obstacles and criticism from opposition parties, which dubbed the move as “anti-Telugu”. Jagan did not give up. He argued that the right to English medium education should not be denied to children of the poor, who cannot afford private schools, and that quality education in English would enable every student in government schools to face competition in the global job market. This was part of his vision to revamp education in state-run schools, a promise he had made during his Praja Sankalpa Yatra, covering 13 districts of the state, before he became chief minister in 2019, at the age of 47.

When Yeduguri Sandinti Jagan Mohan Reddy walked in the rain and sweltering heat, through the villages of Andhra Pradesh connecting directly with the people, one of the images that left him rattled was the state of affairs in schools he came across along the roadside. Some lacked toilets, drinking water, computers, blackboards and even the basic infrastructure. In one village, he saw an obituary of a student who committed suicide because he could not pay the school fee. He heard that girls were dropping out of school. Interacting with villagers, he found that they, too, wanted their children to study in the English medium. Around five months after his Yuvajana Sramika Rythu Congress Party (YSRCP) came to power, the state government announced the “Mana Badi—Nadu Nedu” (yesterday and today) programme to modernise state-run schools, refurbishing 10 elements of their infrastructure and providing uniforms, shoes, bags, books and English-Telugu dictionaries. In the first phase, it covered 15,715 of the 44,512 schools. It also launched the “Amma Vodi” scheme, under which Rs 15,000 through Direct Benefit Transfer (DBT) is given to mothers who send their children to school. Until May 2022, the scheme, one of his “navaratnalu (nine jewels)” welfare programme, covered 44,48,865 beneficiaries, at a cost of around Rs 13,000 crore. While inaugurating another education programme recently, Jagan said that his government, which had trebled investment in the education sector, had spent a total of Rs 52,000 crore at different levels so far.

According to an aide, who had accompanied him, every aspect of the <padyatra>, which lasted 341 days covering 2,516 villages and 134 Assembly segments, was logged. Jagan, who had faced defeat in the 2014 Assembly elections winning just 67 of the 175 seats, despite capturing 45 per cent of the vote share, just 2 per cent less than that of Chandrababu Naidu’s Telugu Desam Party (TDP), was on a mission. The son of the former chief minister and Congress leader YS Rajasekhara Reddy, Jagan had made the padyatra his quest to feel the pulse at the grassroots, to emerge as a leader in his own right.

Maddila Gurumoorthy, who was his physician during the padyatra and is now Lok Sabha MP from Tirupati, recalls that in 2017 when the yatra reached Srikalahasti, Jagan was running a high fever, bleeding from the nose and had blisters on his feet. “I told him he needed to rest for a couple of days, but he asked me for a paracetamol saying there were people waiting to meet him and continued to walk.” He and his team spent the night in tents put up on the roadside. He would wake up at 4.30AM, do his exercises, read newspapers and have fruit juice.

It is said that during the yatra, he interacted with over two crore of the state’s five crore population. Jagan was determined to erase the taint left by his arrest in 2012 over embezzlement charges, with the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) accusing him of amassing assets through illegal means using the office of his father. He also single-mindedly pursued his resolve to win the elections, striving to allay apprehensions of him being a dynast with little experience as a leader. He focused on youth, women and the elderly, who also formed a large chunk of his party’s vote base. In 2019, he led his party to victory, winning 151 of the 175 seats in the state, beating his father’s score of 185 of the 294 seats in 2004, before the bifurcation of the state. The Jagan government immediately launched several welfare schemes, most of which emerged from his experience during the padyatra, which became the bedrock of his governance. The spate of freebies, mostly for the marginalised sections, amplified his popularity overnight, but fears of getting cash-strapped lurked over the state.

Jagan took several leaves from his father’s book. YSR, a two-time chief minister who won four Lok Sabha elections from Kadapa and five Assembly polls from Pulivendula seat, had undertaken a three-month padyatra covering 1,475 km in 2003, leading his party to victory in 2004. Those who have known Jagan closely say he believes that his father’s popularity stemmed from addressing basic needs— health, education, housing and farmers’ problems. Jagan followed this agenda through the navratnalu and other schemes, some of which have been named after himself or his father. “The unique welfare schemes like YSR Cheyutha, YSR Aasara, Vahana Mitra, Matsyakhara Bharosa, Jagananna Thodu were the outcome of the understanding of problems of people during the padayatra,” says Gurumoorthy. These are schemes to help poor and marginalised women, taxi drivers, fishermen and small traders.

On July 9, 11 years after he formed the YSRCP, the party elected Jagan as its “president for a lifetime”, granting him the claim to chief ministership each time it won elections, a precedent set by M Karunanidhi, who was the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) chief for around 50 years. Amendments were made at the party plenary at Guntur to its constitution to change its name to YSR Congress Party and to give the party president the tenure of a lifetime, a move that puts an end to internal democracy in the party. At 49, Jagan has a long way to go. The opposition castigated the move, with Naidu dubbing it undemocratic. Even NTR was elected president every two years, he was quoted to have said at a roadshow.

While the party celebrated Jagan, the resignation of his mother YS Vijayamma as honorary president of the YSRCP cast a shadow on the plenary. She decided to join his sister Sharmila, who had formed the YSR Telangana Party in the neighbouring state last year, after snapping ties with YSRCP. Praising her son for braving the odds and becoming chief minister, Vijayamma said it would be unfair to her daughter if she continued to be with Jagan when he was happy. Sharmila, around a year younger to Jagan, had hit the campaign trail for YSRCP in 2012, when he was arrested on corruption charges. She went on a 3,000 km walkathon covering 14 districts, in undivided Andhra Pradesh. In the run-up to the 2019 elections, she undertook a bus yatra, campaigning against Naidu. Less than two years later, however, she quit the party citing differences with Jagan. A few months later, she floated her own party in Telangana, a state formed in 2014, and campaigned against the ruling Telangana Rashtra Samithi (TRS).

In Andhra Pradesh, Jagan’s party has been on a winning streak in local body elections, making inroads even into Chandrababu Naidu’s turf. Of the 25 wards in Kuppam, the YSRCP won 19, reducing the TDP’s share to six. Naidu has been representing the Kuppam Assembly seat since 1989, a year when Congress won the Assembly election. Like Naidu, Jagan’s political journey had also started with Congress. After YSR passed away in 2009, the year his son became an MP for the first time winning the Kadapa seat, Jagan assumed that he would inherit his father’s legacy. The Congress high command, however, not only turned down the proposal to make him chief minister but also disapproved of his going on the “odarpu yatra (condolence journey)”, a promise made by Jagan to visit the families of those who allegedly committed suicide following YSR’s untimely death in a helicopter crash. He went ahead with the yatra anyway, and quit Congress and the Lok Sabha seat in 2010. The Congress’ spurn, the arrest later on charges of corruption and the defeat at the hands of TDP had only bolstered the young and ambitious Jagan’s resolve to become chief minister. Once he achieved this goal, he began with a vengeance, targeting Naidu, his predecessor and arch-rival, scrapping several projects and contracts signed during his term, alleging corruption. The TDP-YSR Congress Party face-off is likely to get fiercer.

Sounding the poll bugle for 2024 from the Guntur plenary, Jagan gave a call for mission 175—winning all seats in the state. He flaunted his government’s welfare schemes, claiming that 95 per cent of the promises his party made in its manifesto had been fulfilled, and Rs 1.62 lakh crore has been disbursed to beneficiaries of various welfare schemes through Direct Benefit Transfer (DBT). He had turned most of the welfare schemes to DBT, eliminating the “Janmabhoomi” committees, which selected beneficiaries for government schemes under the TDP regime. As the corruption charges haunted him, he aimed at transparency in disbursing welfare schemes. His government went overboard to roll out the schemes— 32 till May, of which only seven are non-DBT, reaching 9,58,94,403 beneficiaries.

“Unlike his father, who combined welfare schemes with development, Jagan has focused on the former more than development, industry and infrastructure, which the state also needs. He has catered to the marginalised sections with populist schemes, making him popular on the ground,” says Hyderabad-based political analyst CHVM Krishna Rao.

Last year, the Centre pointed out that the revenue deficit of Andhra Pradesh during 2019-20 was substantially higher than budget estimates of Rs 1,779 crore, due to the introduction of schemes such as “Amma Vodi” and “YSR Nine Hours free supply”. Naidu has dubbed the welfare schemes as “new wine in old bottles.” TDP is accusing Jagan of ignoring the development of the state. “He has ruined the state, leading it into a debt trap. The state roads are like paddy fields. He has stalled whatever development we did,” says Kesineninani Srinivas, TDP’s Vijayawada Lok Sabha MP.

It is his populist schemes that Jagan is banking on, to return for another term in 2024. He has maintained a cordial relationship with the Modi regime, offering issue-based support, like on the presidential candidature of Draupadi Murmu. However, he has, so far, fought his political battles alone. In recent times, of the heirs of former chief ministers of big states, barring DMK’s MK Stalin in Tamil Nadu, Jagan is the only one who has managed to lead his party to victory on its own in Assembly polls. In Bihar, RJD leader Lalu Prasad’s son Tejashwi Yadav lost to the Janata Dal (United)-BJP alliance in 2020, while in Uttar Pradesh this year, Akhilesh Yadav, for whom it was the first election in which he was at the helm of Samajwadi Party, lost to BJP. “Jagan has been one of the most challenging leaders I have worked with. He is sharp and meticulous and does not go by what a strategist tells him unless he is convinced by the argument. He keeps an eye on detail and knows leaders in all 175 constituencies by name,” says political strategist and founder of P-MARQ Abbin Theepura, who was a member of Prashant Kishor’s Indian Political Action Committee (IPAC) team, which Jagan had hired to manage the 2019 campaign.

With Jagan’s anointment as lifetime president of YSR Congress, his leadership has become unquestionable within the party, an accolade, but one with lifelong accountability.

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Amita Shah