NEW DELHI: The World Bank never tires of holding up Andhra Pradesh as a showpiece among Indian states for economic liberalization, but to many, last week’s attempt by Maoist radicals to assassinate its chief minister reflects resentment against measures that have increased the rich-poor gap.

“The attack was not so much against (chief minister) Chandrababu Naidu personally as to the style of governance in Andhra Pradesh, where protests against rising poverty and social oppression are not properly addressed but treated as law and order issues,” said D Raja, political analyst and leader of the moderate Communist Party of India (CPI).

Naidu was travelling to the popular Hindu shrine of Tirupati on Oct 1 when his heavily armoured, bulletproof car encountered five claymore mines that were set off by members of the banned People’s War Group (PWG). He escaped with a broken shoulder blade.

Raja told IPS that while the assassination attempt on Naidu by the PWG — which has close links with other Maoist groups in several Indian states and in neighbouring Nepal — could in no way be justified, there was need for a second look at the direction reforms had taken in the southern state of Andhra Pradesh.

Naidu, called the ‘laptop chief minister’ for his zeal in mobilizing funds for his state through snap Powerpoint presentations across world capitals, has also been accused by his critics of running up a state debt worth $16 billion.

Although the money has been earmarked for expanded programmes in education, health and rural development, critics say that it has been used as largesse that has kept his regional party, the Telugu Desam Party (TDP), in power for close to 10 years now.

World Bank documents released this year describe Andhra Pradesh as one of the largest and poorest states in India. It has an 80 million population that approaches the size of the Philippines, the 13th most populous country in the world.

The bank noted that “even as its high-tech industries develop rapidly, Andhra Pradesh’s overall literacy rate remains a modest 44 per cent and one-third of the population lives in poverty”.

In the assessment, Jayati Ghosh, one of India’s leading economists, said: “There may actually be a case for a progressive deterioration of in the lot of the poor and a decline in the public services through the decade that Naidu has been in power.”

Ghosh was particularly critical of the massive debt that Naidu has built up, some of it through populist programmes, and said he may even have condemned future state governments to a debt trap. Borrowings are already being made to pay interest on the earlier loans.

The most visible among Naidu’s reforms have been those in the power sector, once monopolized by the state-run utility, the Andhra Pradesh State Electricity Board (APSEB). His zeal in privatizing this has impressed the World Bank, but brought on his government the wrath of consumers who suddenly found themselves paying ever higher tariffs.

When new power tariffs, including a 60 percent increase for rural consumers and a 100 per cent hike for urban households, were announced in 2000, there were widespread street protests that led to police firings.

The agitation forced the government to reveal in the state assembly that in return for a billion dollar loan from the World Bank spread over seven years, the Andhra Pradesh government had committed its people to bearing a 15 per cent increase in tariffs every year.

But Naidu claimed in the state assembly that through his re-election in 1999, he had received the people’s mandate for the reforms and that the police firings were necessary because they were being instigated by ‘extremist elements’.

Commented a World Bank case study: “The reform of the power sector, in any country, presents particular challenges because of the number of groups directly affected.”

But the same study also noted that given the low literacy rates in Andhra Pradesh, particularly in rural areas, “additional steps (beyond explanatory documents and films) were clearly necessary simply to inform key audiences, let alone obtain their active participation”.

The case study also noted that Naidu’s government could have tried to reduce power losses through theft, “including prosecution of key offenders before calling on users of power to pay higher tariffs”.

Naidu’s other attempts to usher in reforms in the corruption-ridden irrigation sector seemed to have been hijacked by local economic and political elites, at the cost of poor farmers it was meant to have helped.—Dawn/The InterPress News Service.