Back in the 1930s and 40s, when Jawaharlal Nehru was the great, radiant crown prince of the Congress party and the infallible darling of the Indian masses, there was a series of scathing editorial attacks upon him, written by an anonymous writer known to the world only as "Chanakya". It was only later, much later, that the identity of Chanakya was revealed. It was no other than Nehru himself. Apparently he wrote those extremely critical editorials as a deliberate exercise to hold himself in perspective, and not to let the adulation of the people cloud his perspective. He focused sharply on all his own weaknesses, his failings, and warned of the dangers of a person like him becoming a dictator by default, if not kept in check by the people around him. May I respectfully point this out to Shri Chandrababu Naidu. Make no mistake: I am a great admirer of his. He is obviously that rare combination of visionary and implementer (and workaholic to boot). And apparently word has gone out in the international political circuit that there are only two people in India worth talking to: Vajpayee and Naidu. In the past few weeks all the major ambassadors have visited Hyderabad to pay their respects: the US ambassador, the Japanese ambassador, the French ambassador, the British high commissioner, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera. Captains of industry have been saying the most flattering things about him... to the point of almost being psychophantic. (And this includes tough cookies like Rahul Bajaj, who is not known to be anybody's chamcha). Herein, of course, lies the problem. What if all this goes to Naidu's head? What if he begins to believe in his own mythology, his own infallibility? What if it knocks his otherwise good judgement for a six? What if he becomes -- heaven forbid -- another Mahathir Mohammad? Or to put it another way -- since he sees himself as the CEO of Andhra Pradesh -- we have known lots of corporate CEOs who, after a few hugely successful initial years, began to believe in their own legends and soon did a crash-and-burn on their companies. As Arthur C Clarke said in a slightly different context, the more dominant a role you play in a field in your early years, the bigger an obstacle you become to that field in your later years. What Naidu needs to do is to turn the TDP into a little less of a one-man band. He needs to zero in on the shortlist of people out of which his successor will ultimately emerge. He needs to set up a group of high-powered confidants who can challenge him when necessary. (What about someone like Abid Hussain, for example, who is currently wastefully under-employed on the international lecture circuit?) There are a number of parallels one can see between Naidu and the earlier avatar of Mahathir Mohammad. One just hopes that the parallels don't get extended indefinitely. The erudite Anvarali Khan is also creative director, rediff.com
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