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The Rediff Interview/Renuka Chaudhary

'You've got to be a total idiot if you can't recognise the signs of marginalisation'

Renuka Chaudhary, the outspoken Rajya Sabha member from Andhra Pradesh and former Union health minister, has never been one to mince words. She has been in the public eye since 1984, when a visibly pregnant Chaudhary participated in a demonstration against the state government.

For the last couple of years she has been waging a very public war within the party, aimed at its leader and Andhra Chief Minister Nara Chandrababu Naidu. She had made her discomfiture with the TDP and its leader so public that when she announced her decision to leave the party and join the Congress last week, few were surprised.

Suhasini Haidar caught up with Chaudhary in Delhi, where she spoke frankly of her disenchantment with Chandrababu Naidu and the TDP, and her reasons for joining the Congress.

Let's start with the timing of your move from the TDP to the Congress. Why now?

Why not now? We've become such a bunch of cynics that we expect that people will leave their parties and cross over only when there seems to be some hope of coming to power immediately. That's why I deliberately waited, I could have announced it earlier, but I didn't. I didn't want it to be a move made in anger or bitterness either. My move to the Congress is totally unconditional.

You say you waited. How long has the rift with Chandrababu Naidu been simmering?

Two years, I would say.

What started the souring of relations?

There wasn't one single thing. It was like the breakdown of any relationship, I guess. But the last straw that ended the relationship was when my trade union people came to me and said they would like me to contest in the next election from a certain place. They came back dog-faced a few days later to say that the party high command had vetoed any proposal to field me as a candidate, as the chief minister was against it. I mean, you've got to be a total idiot if you can't recognise the signs of marginalisation.

What I feel really upset about is that I played fair, I never interfered in district politics, I never promoted factionalism, I never asked for a post. Whatever job was given to me, I did willingly.

Then why do you think they marginalised you?

You'll have to ask the chief minister [of Andhra Pradesh] that.

Your fight with Chandrababu Naidu got quite personal at one stage last year, when you were quoted as saying that he looked like a pickpocket.

No, that's not true at all. The particular show that aired this had cut and pasted a translation of what I had said in quite another context. They had actually asked me to mimic a Telugu videotape in which a man was saying this. I have since got an unqualified apology from the television company that did this.

It was a hard lesson for me to learn. The first lesson was that people actually believed that I was capable of saying something like this, and I would have to reign in my image. And the second, that I could so easily have become a victim of a set-up like that. But the damage was done. I did, however, fax a copy of the apology to the chief minister, and he realised that it was a set-up too.

You yourself admit that you have this image of just saying whatever comes to your mind, which contributes to an incident like this one...

Well, maybe some people just don't understand my vocabulary, and therein lies the trouble. I think my wit gets mistaken for malice, and that is something I have learnt to see.

There were rumours last year that you would join the BJP. Was there a choice that you had to make between the Congress and the BJP?

Oh, there were also rumours that I was joining Jayalalitha, that I was joining the Trinamul Congress, and many others. What was obvious to me was that I was leaving a regional party for a national party. Perhaps I had outgrown the TDP, maybe the TDP couldn't adjust to my larger-than-life [she winks and points to her own size] image in the national arena.

But there was no choice between the BJP and the Congress. I genuinely feel that whatever people might say, what other answer is there for this country? If I choose the BJP, I will only serve one part of my country. They are a Hindu fundamentalist party, or are at least viewed that way. I have great admiration for Vajpayeeji and Advaniji. My personal favourite is Jaswant Singh, who took me under his wing when I joined the Rajya Sabha and showed me the ropes. But they are not the BJP -- the BJP somewhere down the line is all about rabid fanaticism.

What do you think of Sonia Gandhi's handling of the political events of last month?

In the long term she will be viewed to have done the best possible thing by not forming a coalition government. I mean what was so great about forming a government? All these wonderful men who are gunning for her are doing so simply because she is a woman, and a daughter-in-law. What about Babu (Naidu)? He was a son-in-law, and nobody seems to think that was a problem. Why have people only just realised that she is a foreigner? She was good enough to be Rajiv Gandhi's wife and widow, the mother of Priyanka and Rahul Gandhi, but not good enough to be our leader, is it? She has spent more years as the daughter-in-law of India than as the daughter of Italy. In our culture these men are the first to say that when a woman marries, she is paraya dhan and belongs with her in-laws. Why don't they say it for Sonia?

The Constitution of our country was written by people who were acutely sensitive of what it meant to be ruled by a foreigner. [Yet] they didn't think it was necessary to restrict people who were born elsewhere from the highest position in the country. I am not saying this as an apple-polishing member of the Congress, but as a citizen of India.

In any case she is there because her presence is required and asked for by the Congress party. It isn't just about one person. For every one Sonia Gandhi, there are a million Congressmen at the grassroots level who will govern there. She has embraced the nation, she is a citizen of this country. At the grassroots, no one is objecting to her being a foreigner. So who are the people who object? They are people in the city, people who drink wine and cheese which is imported, people who themselves would love to live abroad. It shows, in my mind, that they are all bigots.

Do you have hope for the Women's Reservation Bill in the next Parliament, considering that all the prime movers in last month's political mess were women?

Yes definitely. If you see, Sonia Gandhi has already mooted, proposed and adopted 33 per cent reservation for women in all posts, all tickets in the party. Jayalalitha too, for all her sins, has implemented 33 per cent reservation for women in the AIADMK. And who hasn't? Mr Chandrababu Naidu, who spoke about supporting the bill in Parliament, but won't do it in his own party. He speaks of uplifting the cause of women in Andhra, but doesn't even give 3 per cent reservation to women. I think anyone who is intelligent can see that they have to implement 33 per cent or be damned in history.

What's your prognosis for the general election in September?

I think it's too early to say yet, but going by certain feedback, I think people realise the folly of voting for the smaller parties. The previous three elections have shown coalition politics as a shaky proposition. It was a good experiment, but it was let down by Chandrababu Naidu, who as convenor of the United Front, upped and left it for personal gain.

I see a polarisation of votes from the regional to the national parties. That is the will of the people. And if elections are necessary for us to get our act together, let us have them. 500-odd members of Parliament who don't want to fight elections cannot hold up a nation of 90 crores.

You have brought up Chandrababu Naidu's iniquities many times during this interview. Is this fight with him much more personal than otherwise?

No, but I do feel a personal disappointment, akin to the anxiety of a mother who has great hopes for her child, but sees him going down the wrong path. At some point, you give up.

Today he lives in a fiscal fantasy about Andhra Pradesh [she spells out f-i-s-c-a-l, so as not to be misquoted as having said something about Naidu's physical appearance]. He talks of having computers in every village of Andhra, but he can't stop its farmers from committing suicide because they have no water or electricity. On the other hand, he has hired all these public relations agencies who market his image, particularly when he goes abroad.

Why are we so impressed that he can use a computer? For god's sake, India produces its own missiles, it is a techno-savvy country, not some backward place where the chief minister of a state can't use a computer. Babu has understood the media, and what self-promotion can do for him, but unfortunately he can't transgress his own limitations.

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