Venkaiah Naidu lived up to the motto he coined: Reform, Perform, Transform

NEW DELHI: His alliterative one-liners are what set him apart. Inside the upper House as Rajya Sabha chairman where the treasury and opposition benches traded charges, and at public functions that he presided over as Vice President of India, M Venkaiah Naidu’s witty turns of phrases almost always calmed frayed tempers and put a smile on his audience’s faces.
If ‘Reform, Perform, Transform’ was the mantra he preached, in his tenure as Vice President of India, Naidu tried to live up to his own coinage, improving the productivity of the House of Elders at a time relations between the government and opposition plummeted to historic lows.
Though a blue-blooded saffronite from the very start of his political career, once in his constitutional position, the Nellore man almost always attempted a balancing act. In his last month in office, for instance, Naidu, sources close to him said, was deeply unhappy over the suspension of 23 opposition MPs in two days, after they disrupted the House demanding debate over price rise and GST but insisted that he would only revoke their suspension if they tendered an unconditional apology.
A stickler for discipline, Naidu began his political journey from the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS). He was enamoured, it is said, of the games played at the Shakhas.
With a love for sports – badminton in particular – Naidu was keen to join but harboured doubts when he was told his choice of political party might lead him to choose between two loves; politics on the one hand, and Andhra’s spicy non-vegetarian fare, on the other.
When a Sangh leader assured him he did not have to choose, nor give up either, Naidu’s fate, as it were, was sealed. Associated with the party’s student body ABVP, he became the convener of the Jayaprakash Narayan Chhatra Sangharsh Samiti in 1974.
For Naidu to journey up the hierarchy within the BJP was no mean feat. The Chavatapalem boy who once participated in anti-Hindi agitations in the Jai Andhra Movement in his home state became the face of the BJP in a state where the party had little presence.
He was noticed when he joined the Sangh’s protests against the imposition of the Emergency by the Congress in 1975 and was elected to the Andhra Pradesh assembly in 1978. Once an anti-Hindi activist, Naidu had by now broken the language barrier to speak Hindi effortlessly.
In Delhi, Naidu became a close confidant of former Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee, responsible for grooming a generation of leaders who eventually rose up the ranks within the party, and became the BJP’s national general secretary and party president twice in 2002 and 2004, respectively.
When the BJP suffered a defeat in the 2004 elections, Naidu resigned as president and gave way to BJP veteran LK Advani. He was appointed senior vice president, considered a demotion of sorts, but in 2014, Naidu was appointed Union minister in charge of the ministries of urban development and parliamentary affairs.
If there is one criticism of Naidu through the years, it is this: While he rose up the party ranks and became Vice President of India, BJP’s growth in Andhra Pradesh remained a non-starter and BJP could neither dislodge the Telugu Desam Party, nor rein in the growth of the YSR Congress to become the dominant political force in the southern state.
This, many believe, has been among the many contributing factors that robbed Naidu, still ideologically committed to the BJP, of a second term as Vice President.
As his term in office draws to a close on August 10, however, Naidu is set to get a rousing farewell from Prime Minister Narendra Modi and other leaders of the Upper House. With his emphasis on transparency and accountability, Naidu will also release, one final time, a chronicle of his tenure as the Vice President of India and Chairman of Rajya Sabha.