No room for mistrust with Andhra Pradesh.
By Rajiv Theodore
NEW DELHI: The formation of Telengana, India’s 29th state and the swearing–in of its Chief Minister, Chandrashekhar Rao, is also a moment to ponder of the decades of pain, struggle and the suffering that also led to loss of lives – conservative estimates put it at 1,000.
The new state has been carved out of Andhra Pradesh. It came about after nearly a five-decade struggle that intensified in 2009 when the agitation spearheaded by Telangana Rashtra Samithi, headed by Rao, brought the struggle on the national agenda.
Rao’s fast of 10 days triggered huge rallies of support and the agitation gained strength. In response, the government in December 2009 announced the sanctioning of statehood but backtracked as violent protests erupted in the two other regions of the state- coastal Andhra Pradesh and Rayalseema.
Right from the beginning, pro-Telangana activists had always felt they were justified in asking for separation as a right, from cultural aspects of food, clothing style, outlook and accent, to socio-economic aspects it had been different from the rest of the state. And the most important factor for dissent had been a feeling of being exploited.
As of today, it remains to be seen how clean is the break which should cause minimal inconvenience for citizens of either side. Seemandhra is a term sometimes used to refer to the combined regions of Rayalaseema and Coastal Andhra in Andhra Pradesh. The term came into wide use during the Telangana movement, as a way to refer to the parts of Andhra Pradesh that would remain after the separation of Telengana. Seemandhra corresponds to the area of Andhra State which existed in between 1953 and 1956, and was merged with the Telangana region to form current state of Andhra Pradesh in 1956. On July 30th, 2013, the ruling Congress Party announced its intention to carve Telangana out of Andhra Pradesh as the 29th state of India. Hyderabad will be the common capital of Telangana and Seemandhra for 10 years.
It may be recalled that the demand for a separate identity for Telangana is virtually as old as the state of Andhra Pradesh, which came into existence in November 1956 through the States Reorganization Act.
Classified as a semi-arid region with a predominantly hot and dry climate, Telangana is not amongst the most fertile regions of the country. But it does have its share of natural resources and notably contains 20 per cent of the country’s coal deposits. Among other natural resources are mica and bauxite along with some limestone reserves. But given the lack of development, Telangana has served as a fertile ground for the Maoist insurgency to take root. A clutch of leaders of the Naxalite movement belong to this region. Slain Maoist Kishanji, who was No.3 in the rebels’ hierarchy, hailed from Karimnagar district.
Now, with the inclusion of Hyderabad as its shared capital, Telangana would find itself in control of one of the primary centers of India’s tech story too. Issues like allocation of employees, management of water resources and sharing of power should be settled smoothly while keeping the interests of the people in mind.
Both Rao and N. Chandrababu Naidu, the Chief Minister of Andhra Pradesh, who would also be sworn-in soon, should concentrate now on developing each state through mutual consent and leave no room for any hint of dissent. Building bridges would be the answer for a bettertomorrow and eschew a legacy of mistrust and violence.