10th Chief Minister of Andhra Pradesh

Early Life:

NTR was born on 28 May 1923 in Nimmakuru, a small village in Gudivada taluk of Krishna District, which was a part of the erstwhile Madras Presidency of British India, to a farming couple Nandamuri Lakshmaiah Chowdary and Venkata Ramamma. NTR had his early education from tutor Valluru Subba Rao in his native village.

His later childhood was spent with his uncle Ramaiah in Yanamalakuduru, a small village near Vijayawada on the banks of the river Krishna, where he studied at the Gandhi Municipal School. From a young age he showed an interest in singing and developed a baritone singing voice as a young man. He was also a good painter, and had won a prize in a state-level painting competition.

NTR passed the matriculation examination in 1940 and joined the SRR and CVR College in Vijayawada for pursuing his Intermediate course.

While doing his Intermediate course, he supplemented the family income by supplying milk to hotels in Vijayawada on his bicycle, ran a small provision store and worked as a clerk. At the end of the first year of his Intermediate course, the students of the college decided to stage a play written by Viswanadha Satyanarayana, the well-known Telugu poet and writer and the head of the Telugu department of the college.

NTR played a female role in that play. NTR joined the Andhra-Christian College at Guntur for pursuing his Bachelor of Arts course in 1945.

During this time, he started performing and directing many stage plays like Chesina Paapam along with Kongara Jaggayya, Mukkamala and K. V. S. Sarma. After his graduation, NTR passed the Madras Service Commission Exam and settled down in a sub registrar’s job at Mangalagiri. He later quit this job to pursue acting.

Political career:

NTR entered politics in early 1982, following widespread reports in the media about his mulling an entry into politics.He founded the Telugu Desam Party (TDP) on 29 March 1982 in Hyderabad. His stated reason for entering politics and launching his own party was based on a historic need to rid Andhra Pradesh of the corrupt and inept Congress rule, which had governed the state since its formation in 1956 and whose High Command had changed the Chief Minister five times in five years.

At a time when the then Prime Minister of India Indira Gandhi was cracking down on state governments led by opposition parties, NTR was one of the very few leaders who stood up to Gandhi and matched her charisma.

The popularity of NTR was such among the people of Andhra Pradesh that a jittery Congress decided to hold early elections in January 1983 instead of August 1983 as scheduled. In the elections, the TDP allied with another party called Sanjaya Vichara Manch and decided to field educated candidates who had a good name in the society and were not indulging in corruption, which was an innovative political concept at the time.

NTR himself decided to contest from 2 assembly constituencies, Gudivada and Tirupati. NTR used many innovative ways of campaigning, such as being the first politician in India to use rath yatras for campaigning.

For this, he used a modified Chevrolet van which he named as Chaitanya Ratham. In this van, NTR travelled across the state of Andhra Pradesh, crisscrossing all the districts. With his son Nandamuri Harikrishna, also a film actor, driving the van, NTR notched up over 75,000 kilometres during his campaign, a distinctive sight with the van's yellow party flags and banners and NTR sitting on top of the vehicle hailing the crowds.

NTR campaigned for restoring the dignity of the Telugu people and advocated the forming a closer bond between the government and the common people, going into the elections with the slogan.

Achievements as Chief Minister of Andhra Pradesh

NTR reflected socialist and populist views in several of his policies and provided basic necessities such as home, clothes and food and subsidies on them for people below the poverty line. He was also an advocate of women's rights and worked on a bill to amend inheritance law to provide equal rights for women to inherit ancestral property, enacted in 1986.

He introduced many populist schemes such as the Midday Meal Scheme for poor children, rice at INR 2/kg, subsidised electricity and prohibiting the selling of alcohol in the state among others. He started the EAMCET (Engineering, Agricultural and Medical Common Entrance Test) which allowed students to join a professional college on merit.

He was also a champion of social justice and introduced various measures that broke the upper-caste hegemony in various areas. He passed legislations allowing private transport operators to compete with the government-owned APSRTC. He also pioneered the Telugu Ganga project with support from the Government of Tamil Nadu, which provides water from the Krishna river for drinking and irrigation purposes to Rayalaseema and Chennai.

He was a fierce advocate of Telugu pride and was instrumental in shifting the Telugu Film Industry from Madras to Hyderabad. The Telugu newspaper Eenadu wholeheartedly supported NTR and the TDP and covered most of NTR's achievements.

Achievements at the National Level

NTR earned a seat for the poor in Andhra Pradesh at the centre via well-thought out political decisions. NTR extended un-qualified support (cleared an MP seat and did not field a TDP candidate) to Congress leader and former Chief Minister of Andhra Pradesh P. V. Narasimha Rao resulting in the latter winning from the state and entering Parliament for the first time in his long career with a record majority. While the Congress wanted Narasimha Rao to be a powerless un-elected (Rajya Sabha member) yes-man of the Nehru-Gandhi family, NTR actively made sure Narasimha Rao had independent power. This earned Telugu people some influence even when the Congress was in power at the centre. His National Front government at the centre led by V. P. Singh was at the forefront of social justice by implementing the provisions in the Mandal Commission for providing 27% reservation for Other Backward Classes (OBC's).

Campaigning in other states

hospitalised in the USA for kidney failure and a massive stroke, NTR, who was a close friend of MGR, campaigned for his party, the All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (AIADMK), despite the fact that that party was an ally of the Congress at the time. As leader of the National Front, he campaigned extensively for the constituent parties when they faced elections, again using his Chaitanya Ratham campaigning concept.

Family

In May 1942, at the age of 20, while still pursuing his Intermediate, NTR married Basava Tarakam, the daughter of his maternal uncle. The couple had eleven children- seven sons and four daughters. The sons were (Late) Nandamuri Ramakrishna Sr., Nandamuri Jayakrishna, (Late) Nandamuri Saikrishna, Nandamuri Harikrishna, Nandamuri Mohanakrishna, Nandamuri Balakrishna and Nandamuri Ramakrishna Jr.

The daughters were Garapati Lokeswari, Daggubati Purandeswari, Nara Bhuvaneswari and Kantamaneni Uma Maheswari. His eldest son Nandamuri Ramakrishna Sr. died in 1962, soon after NTR completed shooting of the film Dakshayagnam. NTR founded the film studio Ramakrishna Studios in Nacharam in his memory. His fourth son Nandamuri Harikrishna is a child actor-turned-politician elected to the Rajya Sabha, representing the TDP. Harikrishna's sons Nandamuri Kalyan Ram and Jr. NTR are also actors in the Telugu film industry (Tollywood), with the latter being one of the top actors in the industry today. Nandamuri Balakrishna is one of the leading actors in Tollywood from the mid 1980s. He also started his career as a child artist. Balakrishna has plans to contest the 2014 assembly elections as a TDP candidate.

Nandamuri Ramakrishna Jr. is a film producer. Nandamuri Saikrishna, who was a theatre owner, died in 2004 following diabetic complications.

The other sons Jayakrishna and Mohanakrishna are noted cinematographers. Mohanakrishna's son Taraka Ratna is also a Tollywood actor. NTR's second daughter Purandeswari is the sitting MP from Visakhapatnam representing the Congress. She is also the incumbent Union Minister of State for Commerce and Industry.

She is married to Daggubati Venkateswara Rao, who is also in the Congress and is distantly related to film producer D. Ramanaidu. His third daughter Bhuvaneswari is married to Nara Chandrababu Naidu. Basava Tarakam died of cancer in 1985. In her memory, NTR established the Basavatarakam Indo-American Cancer Hospital in Hyderabad in 1986.

In 1993, at the age of 70, NTR married again, this time to Lakshmi Parvathi, a Telugu writer. He became the stepfather to Lakshmi Parvathi's son from her first marriage, Koteshwara Prasad, as a result of the marriage.

She was the author of his 2-volume biography, which was published after his death. However she was never accepted as a family member by NTR's family members, who kept a distance from her after NTR's death.

Discipline

NTR was a highly disciplined and punctual person. He would get up every morning at 2:30 am to do Yoga, physical exercise and worship God. By 5 am, he would be ready for shooting. He would always arrive on the film sets one hour in advance of the stipulated time. He never stumbled or stammered in front of the camera as he used to take all the dialogues by heart when he was doing a particular film.

He used to practice hard on the shores of Marina Beach at Madras, to retain his bass and echoic voice for excellent dialogue delivery and base modulations.He insisted on giving and showing respect to all members of the film crew.

He would always stand whenever the producer walked into the sets, even if the producer was many years younger to him, thus setting a good precedent to his younger co-stars. He shunned drinking both on- and off-screen. However, he did use to smoke two cigars a day early in his career, but later got rid of that habit.

Death

NTR died of a massive heart attack in the early hours of 18 January 1996 at his residence in Hyderabad,just a few months after he was ousted from power. At the time of his death he was 72 years old.

Though he had been a heart patient, his death was nonetheless sudden, as just the day before his death he had been in good health and had even declared that he would contest the upcoming Lok Sabha elections as a NTR Telugu Desam Party candidate.

He was cremated by his eldest surviving son, Nandamuri Jayakrishna. However, his ashes were immersed at Srirangapatna by his second wife Lakshmi Parvathi only eight years later, in 2004, after Chandrababu Naidu was ousted from power in the assembly elections in Andhra Pradesh held that year.