Scam Andhra - Implosion: India's Tryst with Reality - page 258

politically, they picked on Jagan. The CBI only began to investigate his activities when he
became a serious political problem for Congress nationally, and it then put him in jail just
before the 2012 by-elections (exposing how governments manipulate the agency for polit-
ical ends). It is hard to believe that 39-year-old Jagan's jailing 30 was not intended to remove
him, as it did, from canvassing in the run-up to the elections that took place shortly after. A
leading Indian business newspaper commented: 'While Mr Reddy may certainly turn out
to be guilty, that the CBI has woken up to the strength of the case against him just as his
party is in a position to threaten the Congress politically will strike many as further proof
that India's premier investigative agency can no longer even pretend to independence'. 31
I echoed that in my blog: 'Such are the ways of politics and corruption in India that those
who stay loyal to their political chiefs and allies rarely go to prison, whereas trouble makers
suddenly find their misdeeds, that had been condoned in the past, being splashed across the
newspapers and the police knocking on their door'. 32 But the tactic misfired. Jagan was
seen as a martyr and the Congress did appallingly in the by-elections 33 - albeit after voters
had reportedly been bribed with massive amounts of cash, gold, jewellery and other gifts 34
that helped swell the turnout to an astonishingly high total of around 80 per cent. 35
Missionary in Mining Ganglands
YSR came from a tough and feudal society background in Rayalaseema, which is fre-
quently named for its 'bad lands', and his rise reflects how many of India's regional politi-
cians have grown rich and powerful from poor origins. His family mixed Christian mis-
sionary work with business in the rough mining industry and there is death and brutality
in the family's history. YSR's grandfather had converted to Christianity in the 1920s to es-
cape poverty. His father, Raja Reddy, had started as a construction contractor on mission-
ary projects and sent YSR first to missionary school and then to medical college in nearby
Karnataka. YSR then returned home and began working in a missionary hospital.
This was explained in media reports ( Economic and Political Weekly , 12 June 2004 and
The Times of India Crest edition, 11 December 2010) that criticized YSR's record before
he became chief minister, and said his political rise had been 'accompanied by more blood-
shed than that of any other politician in this state - not bloodshed for some avowed “higher
cause”, but bloodshed for the narrowest possible cause: the rise of one individual to politic-
al power and prominence'. His father had 'made a name for himself as a rough and violent
man with whom one had better not get into a quarrel'. He had 'become richer and “very
ruthless” - his name evoked considerable fear in Cuddapah', a district in Rayalaseema now
called Kadapa (and sometimes YSR Kadapa), where Jagan became the MP.