The KCR Coefficient

- M.S. Shanker in Hyderabad

THE Telangana assembly stands dissolved and the country’s newest state is heading for snap polls—November in all likelihood, at least six months before time. That’s chief minister K.Chandrasekhar Rao’s latest move to catch the Opposition off-guard, on the back of surveys that apparently give him the edge to retain power for a second term. The move also provides an overview for understanding the paradoxical relationship between politics and mathematics—two asynchronous disciplines that a shrewd politician can combine to find practical strategies to reach modern democracy’s primary goal, winning elections.

First the simple arithmetic: KCR is set to address 1,000 meetings in about roughly three months before the polls, averaging 11 a day. He is 64. Can he pull off such an energy-sapping assignment? Perhaps, yes. Confidence is a fierce driving force when paired with years of hardnosed political intuition and experience, and topped with a kind of smugness and hunger that trails power.