The phenomenon called NTR

NTR was a man always totally in command of the situation at hand. It is well-known that his forte was the ability to remain totally incorruptible.

Neither fear nor temptation coloured his judgment.

His only weakness, if there was any, was his total devotion to the cause of the development of his state.

He did not easily trust people.

But once he did, he had total faith in the advice tendered by such persons and followed their counsel implicitly.

There was this time, for instance, when, soon after he had taken over the reins of government, I had an opportunity to apprise him about the causes of communal riots in the twin cities.

I explained to him that the two major communities were, in fact, perfectly in harmony with each other. There really was no fundamental acrimony between them.

The problem lay in the fact that a handful of goondas on either side were perpetrating violence to serve their own personal agenda and, what was worse, they were hand in glove with politicians – at least of the earlier vintage.

"Lock them up ", I told him, "and all will be well."

Being the man he was, NTR had no problem with that! He did as I said and, lo and be hold!, the cities were peaceful, free from any clashes or trouble, for all of nine years more.

No doubt, on occasion, he tended to be a mite hasty, albeit guided by the best of intentions – like, for instance, the decisions he took to abolish the hereditary posts of village officers or the creation of mandals.

There were, on the other hand, many other bold decisions, that he took and implemented, which may have been impulsive but, in the long run, proved to be in the public interest.

One such example was the abolition of the erstwhile system of auction of the rights to sell arrack and bringing about sweeping changes in the state Excise Policy

The people of the Rayalaseema region and Nellore district of Andhra Pradesh state, as well as the citizens of Chennai city, will also forever be grateful to him for the conception and execution of the Telugu Ganga Project, a modified version of the original scheme to supply drinking water to (the then) Madras City.

NTR was born and brought up in a village and belonged to family of farmers. Thus agricultural development and the welfare of the farming community always reminded at the centre of his attention.

One of the most important reforms introduced by the TDP government under his leadership was the “Single Window” scheme for the integration of all activities undertaken by the Primary Agriculture Credit Cooperatives (PACSs) at the village level.

Thus purveyal short-term (ST) agriculture credit meant for crop production, medium-term (MT) and long-term (LT) credit for investment, marketing of agriculture produce, in put distribution and consumer activities all came under one umbrella namely the PACS. Similarly ST, MT and LT activities were brought together at the district and the state level.

Simultaneously a massive exercise for bifurcation, amalgamation and reorganization of PACSs was undertaken all over the state.

I had the privilege of being the Registrar of Cooperative Societies at that time, spearheading the execution of the entire exercise.

Despite reservations expressed by the Government of India, the Reserve Bank of India and the National Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development the reform was pushed through and was, at least to begin with, a grand success.

Unfortunately the results of the programme were short lived and petered out a few years later. This was also on account the dwindling emphasis on village cooperatives at the national and state levels over time, especially after the advent of the forces of liberalization, privatization and globalization post 1991.

NTR was a graduate. A university degree was not a common qualification in those days. In addition to his fluent Telugu he had a command over the Tamil language in view of his long stay in Chennai.

Such was his desire to achieve excellence in performance, whether in reel life or real life, that he actually took lessons in Hindi from a qualified teacher in order the better to communicate with political leaders from the Hindi speaking states!

All in all, the man's great and remarkable personality had attributes that far outweighed his small failings.

He will undoubtedly be remembered as one of the greatest political leaders that strutted like a colossus across the political arena, not only in India but also perhaps the whole world.

On a lighter note, I recall the time when NTR wanted to shift away from the new building in which the General Administration department was located in the Secretariat.

He wanted to go back to the old building in which the Chief Minister's office was earlier located. That building had been, by then, declared unsafe.

Banerjee, a, colleague of mine who was serving with me in the Chief Minister's office at that time, and I, were asked to inspect the building and suggest measures to be taken to make it fit for occupation again.

As we were going round Banerjee remarked "Mohan, this building is full of cracks." "Not yet," I told him, "wait till we move in!"