Sometimes political leaders do the right thing for the wrong reasons. This is true with a vengeance of the decision of India’s ruling United Progressive Alliance, led by the Congress, to carve a new state of Telangana out of Andhra Pradesh, with Hyderabad as its capital. The Congress did this for a crassly self-serving reason: to avert a rout in the Lok Sabha elections in Andhra Pradesh, where it won 33 of 42 seats in 2009.
The Congress’s prospect was gloomy both in Telangana – where it had earlier joined hands with the separatist Telanagana Rashtra Samiti – and in Coastal Andhra and Rayalaseema, the two other regions, often clubbed into Seemandhra, where public sentiment doesn’t favour a new state.
In Seemandhra, an anti-Telangana party – YSR Congress led by Jaganmohan Reddy – is a formidable force. In Telangana, the Congress lost support because it dragged its feet after P Chidambaram, the then home minister, thoughtlessly announced Telangana’s creation in 2009.
But after the recent announcement, the Congress stands to gain. First, it can at minimum win some seats in Coastal Andhra, but probably not in Rayalaseema, Jaganmohan’s citadel. Optimistically, it might even reach mutual accommodation with him by cynically manipulating corruption charges. Second, the Congress, with the TRS, can win most of Telangana’s 17 Lok Sabha seats. And third, it can marginalise the Bharatiya Janata Party in Telangana – the only region where it has a (small) presence.
If the Congress has been devious on Telangana, the BJP too follows opportunistic double standard. The BJP is generally unitarist, but supports smaller states when expedient – eg Uttarakhand, and now Vidarbha in Maharashtra, where it is dependent on the Shiv Sena. That Marathi-chauvinist party virulently opposes statehood for Vidarbha.
The case for Telangana’s statehood is unassailable. Before Independence, Telangana belonged to the Nizam’s Hyderabad state, while Seemandhra was part of the British-ruled Madras Presidency. The two had different systems of administration and education, with respectively Urdu and English as the medium of instruction.
In newly formed Andhra Pradesh, people with knowledge of English had a head-start in securing government jobs. Thus, Telangana with two-fifths of Andhra’s population, only accounts for 20 percent of government employees, and less than five percent of departmental heads.
The British invested a great deal in irrigation in the coastal region, creating a prosperous class of landowners. Telangana saw nothing comparable and remained backward and poor – despite being the main source of Coastal Andhra’s irrigation.
Telangana accounts for over two-thirds of the catchment areas of Rivers Krishna and Godavari. But it gets only 18 percent of the benefits of irrigation canals, while Coastal Andhra corners 74 percent. Telangana also accounts for 45 percent of AP’s forests and most of its coal deposits. But much of the power generated from its collieries is exported.
Coastal Andhra is industrially more developed, and much richer, than the other two regions. It’s also Andhra Pradesh’s rice bowl. Telangana has very little industry, barring in Hyderabad and its surroundings. Most of its agriculture is rain-fed, with low crop yields. Rayalaseema is a case apart. Largely arid or semiarid, it is Andhra’s most backward region.
Telangana is markedly different from Coastal Andhra and Rayalaseema in culture, ethnic-religious composition and food habits. Unlike the Sanskritised Telugu prevalent in Seemandhra, the Telangana people speak a different language, which is strongly influenced by Dakkhani Urdu, Marathi and Kannada, besides Telugu.
Telangana has a distinct political history going back to the great agrarian revolt of the 1940s under the Communist Party’s leadership. This movement first threw up the demand for a Telangana state, which has since been repeatedly expressed in various agitations.
The Telangana people believe they are victims of ‘cultural subjugation’ and ‘invasion’ of their land by outsiders. They are looked down upon in Seemandhra’s dominant culture, and often mocked at in mainstream television serials. Right or wrong, perceptions matter.
Another source of popular discontent in Telangana is the region’s economic domination by aggressive entrepreneurs from Coastal Andhra. They control much of its industry and trade, and bought up prime property vacated by the Muslim elite which fled Hyderabad for Pakistan and the west. These entrepreneurs have used political influence – especially since liberalisation began in 1991 – to corner lucrative national-level contracts in infrastructure construction.
The businessmen of Coastal Andhra own and run some of India’s flashy new airports, chemical and pharmaceutical factories, media and film companies, and a host of other firms. They have made heavy investments in and around Hyderabad, and are loath to lose control over that city. Their opposition to statehood for Telangana is primarily rooted in this.
To placate these interests, the UPA has promised to retain Hyderabad as the joint capital of Telangana and Seemandhra for 10 years. But logically, Hyderabad should be Telangana’s capital. It culturally belongs to Telangana and lies bang in its centre. Unlike, say, Chandigarh, which is shared between Punjab and Haryana, Hyderabad is not at the boundary of two states.
The 10-year interval will merely prolong the inevitable divorce. Worse, it will open up the dangerous possibility that coastal businessmen with enormous money power will exploit discontent among Seemandhra politicians and foment violence to sabotage Hyderabad’s separation.
A more honest way to deal with the issue would be to offer Seemandhra a package which safeguards its businessmen’s legitimate investments in Hyderabad, and funds the construction of a new capital and other institutions needed by their new state – such that Hyderabad’s separation occurs rapidly through a consensual, transparent, impeccably clean, and peaceful process.
The UPA must stop playing partisan politics by selectively using the statehood issue. It must acknowledge that several regions and sub-regions in India have well-founded aspirations to a separate identity and statehood regardless of language. The time has come to move beyond linguistic states towards smaller units, which are usually better-governed.
The issue would be best resolved by a second States Reorganisation Commission (SRC), which takes a holistic view of various dimensions of statehood and evolves balanced criteria. Among these are: representation for ethnic-linguistic and cultural minority groups; a state’s viability as a unit conducive to social development, in particular welfare of underprivileged sub-regions and strata; and equitable division of physical infrastructure, civil servants and judicial institutions etc.
Representation is crucial. In a vast country like India, groups elsewhere considered large enough to become entire nations go unrepresented in the legislature, executive or judiciary. For instance, India’s nomadic tribes form four percent of the population, or 50 million people – bigger than all but four western European countries. But they are typically represented by just one or two MPs. This holds true for ethnic-cultural minorities in many states.
Policymakers must not fear an India of 40, even 60 states, each with an average of 20-30 million people. Today’s nation-states have an average of 35 million people – under 16 million if the world’s 10 most-populous countries are excluded. Nations with sub-million populations are perfectly viable.
India’s fear of small states derives from memories of Partition and the paranoid view that it will break up under ‘too many’ states. This has deterred India even from creating different time-zones corresponding to longitudinal differences, which can save daylight. It’s time to shed such fears and bite the SRC bullet. India won’t crumble under a few more Telanganas, Vidarbhas or Gorkhalands.
The writer, a former newspaper editor, is a researcher and rights activist based in Delhi.
Email: prafulbidwai1@yahoo.co.in
Keywords: Political science , Political issues , Political leaders , Political history , Government-Pakistan , Judiciary , Population , Elections , Politicians , Jaganmohan Reddy , Andhra Pradesh , Uttarakhand , Maharashtra , BJP , UPA , SRC , MPs