It is a mindset that any authoritarian leader detests. And one that N. Chandrababu Naidu has seldom had to contend with in his nearly seven years as the Telugu Desam Party supremo. But last week, he was faced with a rare show of dissent. It happened during the tdp's biennial two-week-long membership enrolment programme that ended on December 8. The drive is the first stage in a six-month-long process of holding a series of party organisational elections.

Headweight: Naidu's martinet style has piqued bureaucrats

Squabbles and infighting dog most political parties that permit even a semblance of internal democracy. Naidu, who presides over the party with an iron fist, has so far managed to contain dissidence. So the source of the first rumblings took him by surprise: his only brother Ramamurthy Naidu, who offered to complete the enrolment campaign in his elder brother's old constituency-Chandragiri in Chittoor district-in a day. The tactful Naidu rejected the plan and instead asked Employment Generation Minister B. Gopalakrishna Reddy and other district party leaders to do the work.

After failing to win a seat in the 1999 assembly polls, Ramamurthy was in political hibernation, managing his businesses. And that's the way big brother would have preferred it as his re-entry into politics at this stage would have had an adverse impact on the tdp's fortunes, offering political rivals a sensational talking point of a sibling gang-up. Ramamurthy, however, didn't see it that way. Last week he took on his elder brother, declaring that "Chandrababu Naidu is not prepared to accept the reality in his own district". The sibling rivalry holds grim prospects for the tdp since the Congress is expected to actively begin wooing Ramamurthy. After all Chandragiri is the place where Chandrababu Naidu cut his political teeth as a young Congress activist.

There are inner party protests elsewhere too. Former minister J. Lakshmi Padmavathi is livid that the party chose B. Brahmananda Reddy, her rival in the Parchur constituency, to manage the membership campaign. When Padmavathi threatened to quit the Legislative Assembly, Naidu ticked her off reminding her that as a first-term legislator she ought to be grateful that she was even made a minister. That prompted a dramatic turnaround, with Padmavathi declaring her loyalty to the party.

Naidu sees these as minor hiccups and does not expect the enrolment drive to suffer in any way. By the time it is over, the tdp's cadres may well swell by over 50 lakh ordinary members and 13 lakh active members. No specific norms have been set for inducting members. "The three guiding principles in the membership enrolment and the party polls are to ensure membership to all those who want to join, social justice to all sections and internal democracy," says U. Venkateswarlu, MP and the party's state elections convener. Membership isn't an expensive proposition either: ordinary members pay Rs 5 while it costs Rs 30 to enrol as an active member.

"Politics today lacks credibility and the overall standards, values and efficiency are poor," says the chief minister who hopes to salvage the situation by inducting freshers into the party. He has appealed to intellectuals, leaders of ngos and apolitical persons to join the tdp. He has already roped in the likes of former cbi director K. Vijayarama Rao.

The game plan evidently is to keep everyone-particularly hardboiled politicos-on their toes in the run-up to the next assembly polls in 2004. In a significant shift in strategy, Naidu has also asked the campaigners to focus on the disadvantaged groups, including women and minorities.The party plans to compile a comprehensive data bank of members and enlarge its current photo library of eight lakh active members. All active members will be issued photo identity cards.

TACTICAL MOVE: Naidu hopes to spruce up the party's image by inducting more women

Naidu is building the party in much the same way that a corporate honcho would lay down strategy and goals for his enterprise. Legislators, for example, must necessarily keep mobile phones so that he can get in touch with them at short notice. The exception: 26 MLAs whose constituencies do not have cell phone coverage. Key activists have been told that if they do not achieve their targets during the enrolment drive and the follow-up party conventions, they will be issued three memos and then shown the door.

While Naidu the party chief is leaving nothing to chance to prepare the tdp for the next elections, Naidu the chief minister is less confident. For all promises of e-governance, his government's performance borders on the sluggish. The state's gross domestic product growth for the first half of this financial year has dropped to 5.37 per cent which is less than the national average of 5.8 per cent while the state's huge debts, despite liberal doles from the Centre, are becoming unmanageable. "Worse is on the cards if enough is not done to shore up the farm economy," warns Leader of the Opposition in the state Assembly Y.S. Rajasekhar Reddy of the Congress.

Added to this is the waning interest of the bureaucracy in development work. Civil servants crib about his "martinet style" which they say is proving counter-productive. "He talks about e-governance but has reduced the chief secretary and the dgp to rubber stamps," says a senior bureaucrat. At party meetings or in the long video-conference sessions with district officials Naidu hogs the limelight with long speeches peppered with management jargon that impress only first time listeners.

Another weighing issue is the incumbency factor. The tdp has to marshal all it can to counter the verbal barrage of the Opposition. Even its electoral ally, the bjp, is unhappy with some of Naidu's policies and programmes. Reasons why the man who managed to pull off a coup in the previous assembly polls is working hard to do an encore two years from now.