Party holds key to who takes India’s 29th state.
By Rajiv Theodore
NEW DELHI: There are clearly two sides to the Telengana explosion. On the face of it, India has finally got a new state, its 29th, despite high-drama played out in the final frontier of democracy —the parliament. Let us see the first one first.
The formation of the state (some more formalities are still needed) is the beginning of an end to decades of agitation when it began in 1956, when Telengana was amalgamated into Andhra to form South India’s largest state. Andhra and Rayalseema themselves were separated from Madras, (the present Tamil region) in 1953.
At that time the resentment was on a totally reverse issue; the cobbling together was highly resented and protests and suicides rang the air then as the two regions were culturally and linguistically different. Fast forward to the 21st century and today when both the houses of the Parliament okayed the formation of the new state (through means which needs a separate platform to discuss) protests still ring and violence is also expected. Telengana is mineral rich and many Andhra residents have bought prime property in Telengana and the joint capital Hyderabad.
Telengana has an envious past, ruled by the mighty Satavahana, and later the Qutub Shahi’s and the famous Nizams boasted of Hyderabad as their capital. Unrest and movements sprang up at once and both the entities wanted to part ways when they were stitched together in the 50s.
The second is the manner in which the whole issue was taken up in the Parliament on Tuesday that makes us wonder if we are still living in a democracy, the largest one by many standards. It was astounding the way the bill went through the Lok Sabha. The matter was over in just a couple of seconds and the people involved, the Andhra Pradesh MPs in the parliament did not know what hit them.
The biggest parties in the fray for the elections due in just two months just steam-rolled over everyone to pass the bill, in fact by many standards they came together strengthening the age-old dictum that politics makes strange bed-fellows. To make matters worse the Lok Sabha TV channel was blanked out during that period putting all doubts of transparency in democracy that too in parliament, back to the back-burner. Not to speak of the pepper spray being used by a legislator and another allegedly flashed a knife in the unprecedented mayhem that ensued in the house after the bill was passed. Some of the lawmakers were even hospitalized in the scuffle.
No verbal transactions or voices of dissent were allowed in the house which was teeming with marshals reminiscent of a bizarre autocratic game being played out in the precincts of the building and a huge posse of cops surrounding the building from outside.
The two power crazy parties have arithmetic to their bulldozing as they are keeping a hawkish vigil on who could lure the Telangana Rashtra Samiti (TRS) when the new state would go to the polls simultaneously with the general elections. The Congress if hoping of a merger with TRS as the party would in all probability win the assembly elections.
The Congress which is today at an all-time low as far as morale is concerned is on the verge of a big fall but has a chance in Telangana with its 17 Lok Sabha and 119 Assembly seats. The Congress is expected to be wiped out in the Andhra and Rayalseema region.
In the past the Congress, TDP, CPI and YSR Congress — have tried their best to derive political mileage in successive elections through open alliances with the TRS which was floated by K Chandrasekhara Rao, who quit the TDP after being denied a ministry by Chandrababu Naidu. The TRS then had revived the largely peasant anti-feudal movement with a dash of student uprising in it.
As of now, Andhra Chief Minister Kiran Kumar Reddy stepped down in protest against the hasty way the move to create the new state was executed. He also resigned from the Congress party stating ‘’injustice’’ to Andhra which constitutes of the coastal regions and Rayalseema areas.
Telengana has been created for all practical and political purposes, except that it needs to pass the Rajya Sabha muster and the BJP’s demand to usher in a series of amendments to the Bill. But the way it was done has endangered the concept of democracy in India. It means that the power is still in the hands of a select few and not yet with the people, even after the country struggled to free itself from imperial rule in 1947.
(Rajiv Theodore is India Bureau Chief, The American Bazaar.)
To contact the author, email to editor@americanbazaaronline.com