Security and Succession

The tragic death of Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister Y.S.Rajasekhara Reddy in a helicopter crash on Wednesday underscores questions relating to both security and succession. In a country that is obsessive about the security of VIPs, one cannot help wondering how secure even our VIPs are. Even in this land where we have made the so-called security of the VIP paramount to everything else, how secure is a VIP? After all, security is not a matter of just numbers or fire-power. There are many small nuts and bolts that go into the complex business of overall security in the 21st century. The very fact that the Bell 430 helicopter in which the Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister flew out on Wednesday had been parked in a hanger for a long time and it was known for frequent snags tells us a lot about how concerned officials concerned really were about the Chief Minister’s security. The air-worthiness certification of the helicopter had not been secured for two years. The small helicopter could not make night landings and did not have satellite communication facilities. To top it all, the pilot who flew the helicopter was not the regular Indian Air Force pilot who used to fly it. The Andhra Pradesh government also had a more reliable 14-seater Augusta Westland AW-139 helicopter which was not used for the Chief Minister’s trip on Wednesday. Are the rituals of security more important in our country than security itself? We have raised the issue of security for VIPs before this, and would reiterate that security for VIPs does not mean 16 escort vehicles on land and the denial of all rights to citizens when VIPs are on the move. [In this connection we hail the Gauhati High Court’s recent ruling that people cannot be made to wait at street intersections for more than three minutes because a VIP is passing through.] More than just increasing the number of security staff, it is far more important to analyse the reasons why most of our political leaders feel so insecure amid the very people who regularly elect them to power.

A chief minister of Y.S.Rajasekhara Reddy’s calibre is not easy to replace. India has not seen many chief ministers with the dynamism, competence, dedication, compassion and humanitarianism that Rajasekhara Reddy epitomized. Finding an able successor is bound to be one of the most daunting challenges for the people of Andhra Pradesh in general and the Congress in particular. The battle for succession is, therefore, bound to be keenly fought in a State that has no dearth of quality leaders. Ironically enough, the overwhelming choice of MLAs and the YSR loyalists is the late Chief Minister’s son Jagan Reddy. True, the MP is a greenhorn in politics and the Congress would prefer someone like S.Jaipal Reddy, who is a trusted Sonia Gandhi loyalist in addition to being vastly more experienced. But how is the Congress going to sideline Jagan Reddy, considering that he is the choice of the largest number Congress MLAs of the State? Cries of “dynastic rule” will cut no ice, because this political party has always insisted on dynastic rule at the Centre. Remember what happened immediately after India Gandhi’s assassination? Senior leaders like Narasimha Rao and Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee were sidelined (despite their long years of dedicated service to the party) in favour of Rajiv Gandhi, the scion of the dynasty. Did Rajiv Gandhi have much political experience? No, he was almost as much of a political greenhorn then as Jagan Reddy is now. Having set the examples on both counts, what ideological claptrap, what pragmatic compulsions are the Congress going to put forth now in order to sideline Jagan Reddy? The coming days are going to be both interesting and edifying for Indian politics. THE SENTINEL