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Business Commentary/Dilip Thakore

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A chief minister and a chief executive called Chandrababu Naidu.

An amazing and long overdue revolution is creating loud reverberations in Indian politics. In the hitherto low-profile state of Andhra Pradesh (population 73 million) a presidential-style chief minister is rewriting the grammar and lexicon of Indian politics with economic development -- a low-priority issue for the nation's politicians for almost four decades -- as the top item on his agenda.

And the effect has been electrifying. Suddenly the state's capital Hyderabad, until recently a sleepy, dusty down better known for its mosques, minarets and cultural pearls, looms large on the computer terminals of almost all the major corporates -- in India and abroad -- as a potential investment destination.

In the process, Chandrababu Naidu,, the state's 49-year-old chief minister has dramatically emerged as India's most respected politician and a potential prime minister.

Long deprived of a frontline politician with a modicum of business literacy, corporate India and the media have been quick to recognise his potential and have showered accolades upon the hitherto obscure politician better known for the palace coup against the late cine actor turned politician N T Rama Rao (his father-in-law), and as convener of the 13-party United Front government in New Delhi.

The accolades include Naidu's election as chairman of the National Committee on Information Technology of the Confederation of Indian Industry and a high-powered panel of top industrialists selecting him the Harvard Alumni-Economic Times Businessman of the Year. The latter accolade is an even more unprecedented departure from tradition in that it is the first time a politician has been admitted into the closed fraternity of India's business community.

A computer buff armed with the most up-to-date comprehensive project-tracking MIS (management information system), Naidu is perhaps the first politician in the post-Independence India to regard himself as a professional chief executive answerable to citizens as shareholders.

Yet more important than accolades are the material endowments which businessmen in India and abroad have showered upon Andhra Pradesh hitherto regarded as a backward, under-developed state characterised by a small-scale industry, feudal agriculture, missed opportunities (through the eighties AP was a electricity surplus state) and grinding poverty.

Microsoft, the world's largest software development company, is all set to set up its first non-US software development centre in Hyderabad. The first phase of construction of the Hyderabad Information Technology & Engineering Consultancy City (more popular as the Hitec City), conceptualised as Asia's largest state-of-the-art infotech park, spread over 180 acres, has been completed.

Over 60 per cent of the space in its intelligent 10-storey building has already been sold. And a new Indian Institute of Technology apart, an Indian Institute of Information Technology (called triple-I-T or IIIT) which will churn out 5,000 computer professionals annually, is also scheduled to open its doors to students this year. Moreover, in a major coup which has caused much hand-wringing and anguish in several state capitals including Bombay, Bangalore, and Madras which were rolling out the red carpet for the project, a panel of the country's top young industrialists recently took a decision to set up the Indian School of Business promoted by several blue chip companies in association with the highly respected Wharton School of Management and the Kellogg School of Management, in Hyderabad.

It is hardly surprising that top-grade, world class educational institutions are springing up in Andhra Pradesh and Hyderabad in particular. Because industrial investment is cascading into the state. The first multi-sector infrastructure development loan ($ 500 million) to an Indian state by the World Bank was given to the AP administration last June. And there are some indications that the floundering Bangalore international airport project promoted by the Tata group with the US-based Raytheon Inc may materialise on the outskirts of Hyderabad.

Within an amazingly short period characterised by vision, business literacy and can-do determination, Naidu has reinvented chief ministership and moved to the centrestage of Indian politics as India's most respected politician.

However, it is important to bear in mind that at best Naidu is the embodiment of the ancient adage that in a desert the cactus is the king. His commitment to economic growth, the creation of employment and an infrastructure that facilitates the growth of commerce and trade is the standard agenda of all politicians with an eye on re-election in the democracies of the developed world.

Naidu's virtues shine only in comparison with the myopia, manipulative cunning, business illiteracy and destructive amorality of the overwhelming majority of the nation's politicians.

These ultimately self-destructive characteristics of the contemporary Indian politician are not unintelligent. But over the past five decades of Soviet-style socialist governance, a culture of corruption born out of self-serving discretionary controls, unaccountability and arbitrariness has seeped so deep into the administrative system that the larger issue of societal development has disappeared from the mental horizon of most politicians.

Driven by self-aggrandisement, greed and the need to augment war-chest to ensure re-election, the overwhelming majority of India's politicians seem to have forgotten that the promotion of socio-economic development in the constituencies is the best passport to power and re-election.

The importance of Naidu is that he is demonstrably righting the cock-eyed perspective of post-Independence India's ruling class.

Dilip Thakore