Will ‘Pappu’ Nara Lokesh take a leaf out of Rahul Gandhi’s book?

What do Rahul Gandhi and Nara Lokesh in Andhra Pradesh have in common? Yes, they are both dynasts, but their families represent different schools of political thought. The bigger thing they have been in common is the epithet, “Pappu,” which means childish in Hindi as well as Telugu. As Rahul’s Bharat Jodo Yatra criss-crossed through Andhra Pradesh a few days ago, the shared epithet brought Nara Lokesh under the spotlight as well.

While Rahul graduated from Harvard University, Lokesh obtained his MBA from Stanford University. But the scions of Gandhi and Nara families, respectively, have become the choicest targets for the social media factories of political rivals and earned the epithet for “lacking fire in their bellies.”

Rahul’s image makeover

Rahul, through his gruelling walkathon, is apparently doing his best for an image makeover. Out of his palatial residence on New Delhi’s Tughlaq Road on his 150-day Bharat Jodo Yatra, renouncing all comforts, Rahul is out to prove his rivals wrong. In this endeavour, he has been touching serious issues by interacting with people of varying social and economic backgrounds at the ground level.

Also read: Why Naidu thinks it is a good idea to join forces with Pawan Kalyan

N Tulasi Reddy, working president of the Andhra Pradesh Congress Committee, walked with Rahul for 22 km in the state. He told The Federal, “The Bharat Jodo Yatra in Andhra has helped Rahul Ji assume a different avatar, as a promising leader, by seeking to address serious issues with full commitment. These issues concern the state’s bifurcation, such as special category status, privatisation of a steel plant at Visakhapatnam, the capital in Amaravati, and the Polavaram project.”

Parachute politics

The Bharat Jodo Yatra seemingly provides an opportunity for Lokesh to take a leaf out of Rahul’s book to undo the negative image associated with him. Like Rahul, Lokesh has been parachuted into TDP politics as a son of its leader, N Chandrababu Naidu.

Until he stepped into the legislative council, Lokesh remained a backroom boy, looking after the party’s frontal organisations and welfare of party workers.

But in a short time, he rose to become member of the party’s politburo, the highest decision-making body, a member of the legislative council, and a Cabinet minister with three plum portfolios of Panchayat Raj, Rural Development, and IT in the Naidu government till 2019.

But Lokesh has had to bear the “Pappu” tag ever since he lost the first-ever direct election he faced—in Mangalagiri, in 2019.

Lokesh still a backroom boy

Though he has made serious attempts to give himself an image makeover with the help of a Bengaluru-based image consultant, Lokesh is yet to come out of his shell completely. He engaged a language expert from Potti Sriramulu Telugu University in Hyderabad to improve his communication skills in Telugu. But he still fumbles for the right words. his public addresses in Telugu are interrupted quite often with pauses, and he finds it hard to hide his immature looks.

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Lokesh is working to change his physical appearance as well. He has lost weight drastically, replaced his clean-shaven look with a short beard, and prefers shoes to slippers. Yet, he has a long way to go to acquire a self-made leader’s image as his father acquired in his four-decade-long political career.

Nara scion may hit road soon

An insider close to Lokesh, wishing to remain anonymous, wished that his young leader would emulate Rahul by undertaking a padayatra. Lokesh is said to be planning a march from Kuppam (his father’s Assembly seat) to Srikakulam sometime in January next year. Though it has not been officially announced yet, it will reportedly be along the lines of Naidu’s “vastunna meekosam” march. Lokesh has confined himself to short-distance road shows so far.

More than three years after his defeat at Mangalagiri, Lokesh is seemingly reluctant to shed his role as a strategist in the party for an aggressive street fighter like rival YS Jaganmohan Reddy, leader of the YSR Congress Party and Chief Minister of Andhra Pradesh.

The 38-year-old leader has tasked himself with backroom activities such as surveys, heading the social media wing of the party (I-TDP), and scanning the profiles of potential ticket aspirants for the upcoming elections.

Defying age, Naidu, at 72, is seen on the streets in a combative mode. But his young son remains indoors most of the time. It is time for a role reversal, says Sandeep Inampudi, who teaches Public Administration at the Central University of Karnataka in Gulbarga.

Changing political culture

With the advent of the Jagan Reddy regime, marked by personal attacks on political rivals and smear campaigns, Andhra Pradesh saw a change in the game of politics, its rules, grammar, and nuances. Naidu might be a good administrator while in power. But with his modest and sober appearance, Naidu is unlikely to fit in the present-day politics to take on Jagan, Inampudi told The Federal.

Also read: For 2024 AP poll, Jagan looking to project father YSR as trump card

A leader like Pawan Kalyan may be the right fit, and Lokesh needs to emulate the actor in his fight against Jagan, Inampudi added.

K Viyanna Rao, former Vice-Chancellor of Nagarjuna University, feels mere padayatras, devoid of alternative politics, will hardly pay any dividends to leaders undertaking them. Rao, in a conversation with The Federal, said he failed to see such an alternative agenda in either Naidu or his son Lokesh. All they are making are wild allegations. After all, the Jagan government is on a spree of distributing freebies to people at the expense of development. The Opposition is failing to come up with an alternative agenda, he pointed out.

How Jagan undid his “jailu pakshi” image

In Andhra politics, especially since the early 2000s, padayatras have become a powerful medium to strike inter-personal rapport with people on the ground. Jagan’s father YS Rajasekhar Reddy, as the leader of Opposition from the Congress in undivided Andhra Pradesh, succeeded in transforming his image as a “perennial dissident” in his party to a powerful mass leader with a 60-day walkathon, covering 1,600 km through the state, in the scorching summer of 2003.

Later, Jagan followed in YSR’s footsteps with his 3648 km padayatra, with weekly two-day breaks enabling him to attend court cases in connection with economic offences in which he is the main accused. Jagan undertook the padayatra 16 months after his release from jail, and it helped him undo the image of “jailu pakshi” (jailbird or prisoner) as labelled by his rivals. It helped Jagan turn adversaries into positives, as his yatra nullified all negative images, pointed out an analyst, Raka Sudhakar.

Whether Lokesh will undertake a massive mass-contact programme like Jagan and Rahul to come out from his father’s shadow is a big question that lingers in the minds of his party workers and admirers. Only time will tell if he will, or can.