AP Elections 2019 - Jagan trounces Naidu

In AP, Assembly seats won: YSRCP 151, TDP 23, Janasena 1
In AP, Lok Sabha seats won: YSRCP 22, TDP 3, Janasena 0.
In AP, Popular Assembly vote share: YSRCP 49.9%, TDP 39.2% and Janasena 6.8%.

Why Chandrababu Naidu (TDP) lost and how Jagan Mohan Reddy (YSRCP) won?

• Chandrababu Naidu had promised virtually the moon but delivered little, during 2014-19. 
• Massive anti-incumbency vote caused by Chandrababu Naidu’s falling credibility and his several political missteps.
• Chandrababu Naidu’s running battle with the BJP-Modi government for the past two years and his U-turns on the critical question of getting special category status had badly dented his credibility.
• Government employees turned hostile because of the use of modern tools such as biometric attendance etc.
• Chandrababu Naidu chose to ignore the corruption and misdeeds of his party legislators who had become unpopular. They had turned into mini-Chief Ministers in their constituencies, bullying officials and extending patronage to land mafias, sand mafias and illegal liquor networks. Chandrababu Naidu refused to drop the majority of siting MLAs.
• The incomplete flyover near the Kanaka Durga temple, Vijayawada, stuck out like a sore thumb. 
• Jagan's 3648 km padayatra. “Why not give him one chance” was the common refrain. Jagan’s direct contact with the people helped him to counter Chandrababu Naidu’s powerful outreach to the media or his media management.
• Jagan outsmarted Chandrababu Naidu by keeping up sustained pressure on the government for failing to get special category status and accusing Chandrababu Naidu that he had murdered democracy by luring 24 YSRCP MLAs into the TDP’s fold.
• Jagan's campaign and his slogans such as “nenu vinna” (I heard your woes) and “nenu vunna” (I am there) resonated with the people.
• Jagan's distasteful personal remarks about Pawan Kalyan, and accusing him of becoming a puppet in Chandrababu Naidu’s hands was unwise & untimely but was lucky at Pawan Kalyan's failure to garner Kapu’s (15.2% of AP population) support with his blurred agenda and the absence of a cohesive election strategy.
• Condescending attitude. Ridiculing Jagan at every  any opportunity on “having so many criminal cases”.
• Over projecting capital Amaravati's land pooling and construction with graphics.
• Chandrababu Naidu’s claims of having pushed the state to the top in the number one position in ease of doing business etc cut no ice with voters. Their anger went much deeper as the party drew a blank in Vizianagaram or the defeat of Nara Lokesh in Mangalagiri, the core capital area?
• Jagan managed to buck the negative image created by the CBI cases against him, often cited by Naidu. Naidu conveniently forgot that Jagan came very close to capturing power in 2014 Assembly elections losing by just 1.6% vote margin. 
• Failure to forge alliance with Pawan Kalyan's Jana Sena Party and Left parties. Naidu's last minute welfare schemes failed translate into vote bank.
• People’s expectations have gone up phenomenally. Prashant Kishore sharpened Jagan's style of campaigning and strategy. 

Jagan owes credit for his victory to Prashant Kishor, who have stayed with the YSRCP for nearly two years, guiding its strategy, conducting campaigns, training the cadres, handling social media and press releases etc. YSRCP's Ummareddy Venkateswarlu candidly said: “Naidu’s downfall began the day he brought his son into politics.”

The present model of politics and elections is very expensive and is heavily dependent on unlawful methods, mafia, liquor and yet attracts many people because of power and corruption money with return to investment exceeding 1,000% p.a. for next 5 years in return for compromising ethics and morals. The campaigning is so vulgar the people of character mutes their TV sets. Naidu's failure is due to over confidence, extravaganza in spending state money, over projecting small achievements, inability to avoid fight with Modi-BJP, failure to forge alliance with JSP, Left parties, impress upon other castes to stay put with TDP, failure to garner woman votes and above all state government employees feeling uneasy in his administration and so on. He virtually committed the identical mistakes as in 2004. If at least Naidu had roped in Pawan Kalyan in alliance with TDP, TDP+ would have got about respectable 70-80 seats or even a surprise victory with 90+ seats. Fighting with all in all fronts (Jagan, Pawan, KCR, Modi etc), there is hardly any way for Chandrababu Naidu led TDP to win these  elections. Hence the TDP's defeat is not a surprise at all but crushing defeat of 23 of 175 is totally unexpected and was easily avoidable.

Who is trying to bring down PM Modi?

The right-wing Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh (RSS) in India kicked off a three-day conclave in Delhi on Monday by praising the main Opposition Congress party for securing India's independence. It also clarified it did not believe in a Congress-mukt (Congress-free) India but a sarvalok-yukt (all-inclusive) India. It came as a surprise because the RSS' prime minister, Narendra Modi, has spent four years spewing venom against the Congress, its prime ministers and the family that holds the party together. Certainly, the RSS revealed its changed thinking when it invited Congress chief Rahul Gandhi to this conclave. Despite Rahul's surprise hug for Modi in Parliament, better sense prevailed and he spurned the RSS invitation (unlike former president Pranab Mukherjee, who attended an RSS function in Nagpur in June, thinking he was laying the ground for himself to head a coalition government after the 2019 election). And though the RSS is eternally tainted with the assassination of "Mahatma" MK Gandhi in 1948, it has occasionally flirted with the Congress as evidenced by the fact of dozens of RSS men named as culprits in the 1984 anti-Sikh riots.

Still it is surprising that with a majority government still in the saddle and about eight months to go before the parliamentary election, the RSS finds it necessary to extend an olive branch to the main opposition party. It cannot be, as the RSS claims, that it is a misunderstood organisation and that this exercise is meant to dispel the wrong notions surrounding it. The RSS thrives on a certain element of mystery and myth given its rigid hierarchy and organisation and its para-military nature. There is only one explanation for the RSS's current behaviour: it has read the writing on the wall that its government is on its way out. Hence it is building bridges with opposition parties, because it fears what may come once Modi is out of power.

That things are not going well for Modi is evident from various other recent developments. NDA allies like Nitish Kumar's Janata Dal (United) have started acting tough. The Bihar chief minister, who till recently was silently facing all-round opprobrium for dumping his electoral partner (the Rashtriya Janata Dal) and hitching his wagon to the BJP, is now demanding his pound of flesh before the next parliamentary election - he does not want just a handful of seats to contest and has formally inducted Prashant Kishor, the data-genius behind Modi's 2014 victory, into his party to ensure it remains the senior partner in any future electoral alliance in Bihar. Telangana chief minister K Chandrasekhar Rao has demanded an early assembly election in which he hopes to do well, and he is least bothered about Modi's pet project of a simultaneous parliamentary and assembly election. Even Ram Vilas Paswan, a dalit leader from Bihar who is reliably a political weathercock, has been talking about leaving Modi's National Democratic Alliance (NDA). The rats are obviously deserting the sinking ship.

The RSS would likely be concerned. In Delhi there is a general expectation that Modi's parliamentary tally will decrease to around 150 seats following the 2019 election, and while that would ordinarily be enough to remove a leader and replace him with someone acceptable to coalition partners (who have been silently licking their wounds of neglect the past four-plus years), the RSS also knows that removing either Modi or party chief Amit Shah will not be easy. Both these gentlemen are apparently willing to sit in opposition and let a coalition government totter about for two to two and a half years before finally collapsing under the weight of its own contradictions. Modi fashions himself after iron lady Indira Gandhi, and like her, might bide his time to return to the top post as she did in 1980, after a nearly three-year hiatus.

This does not suit the RSS, which would rather try to retain governance under a different prime minister, heading a coalition that was much like the late Atal Bihari Vajpayee's government. There are various advantages to this: to consolidate much of the hidden social work and deep changes in the education sector that the rightwing has undertaken since May 2014. Modi has been such a polarising figure that a replacement government would want to first of all undo much of the damage to institutions that he has inflicted, in the name of getting things done, where his will was supreme over any Constitutional nicety or propriety.

First things first, however: the RSS has to save its own skin. There are many political parties who would like to give the RSS cadres a thrashing of their lives. The RSS must be highly conscious of the fact that the atmosphere against it will change drastically once Modi loses power. Hence, the RSS top brass have humbly recounted Congress's contribution of independent India's history, and have extended the peace pipe to Rahul Gandhi. It is a heartening sign for Indian democracy that Rahul has showed the RSS its place - that it does not rule supreme over all Indians, but merely over a sullen part of society, whose achhe din are hopefully soon coming to an end.

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