A Matter of Self Respect

The agitation in Seemandhra begs the question, too little, too late? A possible explanation is that the people were waiting for the politicians to oppose bifurcation of the state. When they were not forthcoming the unions and people decided to take things into their own hands. One thing seems quite clear. For whatever reason, the Seemandhra politicians lack the drive that their Telangana counterparts had. Even after the bifurcation was announced formally there was dithering in their ranks as to what to do next.

Added to this situation is a Chief Minister who, has made it quite clear where his sympathies lie. On the whole we had the pro-Telangana camp which was quite clear as to what they wanted. It is the pro-United Andhra camp that seems confused. If the Congress is to be believed both YSR Congress Party (YSRCP) and Telugu Desam Party (TDP) had supported the decision to carve out a separate Telangana earlier. There was a volte-face once the public reaction in Seemandhra became apparent. Even now Chandrababu Naidu seems more opposed to the manner in which the state was bifurcated than to the actual bifurcation itself.

The agitating government employees seem to be losing steam. What else can one expect from a salaried class which is striking without pay? They justifiedly want the politicians to take over. However at least the Congress ones seem to be waiting for the powers-that-be to reject their resignations before they proceed further. The Congress for one seems to be playing a game of attrition, where it is not doing anything hoping the agitation will die down. It has formed another committee to look into the present situation. What is this if not a delaying tactic? Where is the attempt to gather all stakeholders in one place and reach (an impossible?) consensus?

Moving to the actual topic of this post, till date I feel irritated when someone refers to me as a Madrasi. Also when I say I am a south Indian typically one of the first questions is potentially whether I am a Tamilian. It was actually because of Andhra Pradesh and the likes of Potti Sriramulu that today we have states based on languages. Nehru was not very warm to the idea as he felt it would further divide the country. The state as it is today was formed in1956. However it is said that the people of Andhra got an identity only after NT Rama Rao emerged onto the scene. Look at Andhra Pradesh today. A foreign visitor can be forgiven for thinking that the Nehru-Gandhi family was from the state. Most major institutions, buildings and schemes are named after members of this family. For instance

1. Rajiv Gandhi International Airport - Hyderabad

2. Mahatma Gandhi Bus Station - Hyderabad

3. Nehru Zoological Park - Hyderabad

4. Indira Gandhi Zoological Park -Visakhapatnam

5. Rajiv Swagruha

I myself did not know that Tanguturi Prakasam was the first Chief Minister of Andhra State and that Neelam Sanjeeva Reddy was the first Chief Minister of Andhra Pradesh (formed after Telangana was integrated). Where are institutions that bear these names? PV Narasimha Rao was a scholar and a polyglot. There is a expressway named after him in Hyderabad. 

Therefore it is not surprising to see politicians waiting for indications on what to do next from the "High Command" in a state which has forgotten its leaders and heros. What will happen next? The government is  mulling imposition of ESMA. If this is done the only possible alternative to capitulation would be for the entire government workforce to follow the path of civil disobedience and non cooperation. How many will the government arrest? However we must not forget the cost to the society and the average citizen in all of this. Care must be taken to ensure that at least hospitals and such critical institutions are not affected. One more thing. As long as the agitation is restricted to Seemandhra the government will happily sit and not do anything as the suffering would be limited to the average citizen there. When the impact spreads like it has - stoppage of water to Chennai, decreased power production affecting the entire southern grid - the government sits up and takes notice. This is when the threat of action like invoking ESMA looms. This is when the mettle of the protestors will be put to the test.

What's in a Number?

The Planning Commission (PC) recently said that a family which spends more than 32 rupees per day cannot be said to be below the poverty line. There has been a huge furore after that. The Deputy Chairman Montek Singh Ahluwalia was forced to clarify his remarks today. Unfortunately I do not think he has done a good job. He says the intention is not to understate poverty.

There is one thing which has to be realized. Let us take an example in the film Peepli Live. The government officials supply a pump but do not allot the funds to install it, nor do they get that done. The definition raises that danger. A government employee might very well tell a genuine beneficiary tomorrow that he would not get any benefits as technically he is not below the poverty line. We have been told that people above this limit will also be covered under government schemes. This begs the question - what was the intention behind giving this number in the first place? If this point has not been clarified the "clarification" given today does not hold much water.

The argument in fact seems self defeating. Mr. Ahluwalia says that this is the poverty line. That also does not make sense. Are we trying to artificially reduce our poverty figures and move up in international rankings? Does the government want to artificially reduce poverty and claim victory against it when it is hard pressed for some positive news amidst the pandemonium in the country today? I am not more learned than the members of the Planning Commission or the National Advisory Council (NAC), but common sense would suggest that to solve a problem you have to first identify it. To remove poverty we have to identify the factors and symptoms properly before recommending solutions. If this first step itself is skipped, it would seem as if we were trying to wish away poverty. This is dangerous in a country such as ours.

Moving on, I am left wondering as to why the government is not imposing ESMA in Hyderabad. The city has been suffering for about three weeks now. The government has not resolved the issue till now. If it is unable to do that it should at least try to get things back to normalcy. There might be multiple reasons for this. The same party is in power as at the centre. Further the Congress has not been the epitome of tolerance as suggested by the Ramdev and Anna Hazare episodes. It probably also anticipates a further deterioration in law and order. However this kind of logic was given to the Supreme Court once. The court then had asked the state government to quit if it could not maintain law and order as this was its duty. Only time will tell how things will develop now onwards.

WTF are they thinking?

Pardon me for the language on a public forum. I cannot but say this as I see the things that are unfolding in Andhra Pradesh right now. Who does KCR think he is? Does he even have enough seats in either the Assembly or the Parliament to claim to be a representative of the Telangana people? I have heard a report which says that ancestrally he himself is from the Vijayanagaram district (coastal AP or the so-called Andhra).

Who the hell are these people to hold an entire state to ransom? Do they realize the toll the current situation is taking on the health and image of the state? The state road transport corporation was apparently just limping back to good health when this tragedy struck. Had it been a private company by now probably quite a few people would have lost their jobs. Fortunately or unfortunately this is not happening. I wonder what will happen if the RTC does stop paying salaries because of the current situation. Will there be public pressure on the RTC or on the protestors to give up their stand and let life return to normal?

It is easy to stoke the emotions of students. I am one, I can probably be depended upon to know this. Do they realize what they are doing? Every year in Osmania University, by this time the exams are over and some students are also placed. This time, the exams have been postponed twice already, and no company has yet come to recruit - it would be probably need to be stupid if it wanted to come. An NDTV reported asked a student about this. His reply was that there are jobs, but these are being occupied by people from outside. Does he realize the stupidity of what he is saying? If a person is not free to move around in his own state and in his own country, can the country said to be really free?

Telangana 'leaders' are saying that people from the other parts of Andhra Pradesh need not fear if Telanaga is formed. That however, does not seem to be the case. There are already demands for people to 'go back'. How can one expect a family that has settled there to simply pack up and move? Do they realize the kind of nonsense that they are talking?

There was some Congress guy who interacted with the media after talking to Sonia Gandhi. He expressed confidence that she would take the 'right' decision. If she decides that there will be no Telangana, will this person still be willing to take it lying down? There are calls for an indefinite bandh if the state is not formed soon. Did not the Supreme Court or some other court prohibit bandhs? Is the government wearing bangles and sitting in a corner (no offence to the fairer sex)?

For thebandh tomorrow 165 trains have been cancelled. One can only hope some sense prevails soon and that things return to normal.

Is Andhra Burning?

"Is Paris burning?" was a question Hitler had put to his chief of staff Alfred Jodl. He wanted Paris to be destroyed before it fell into the hands of the Allied Forces. Today the title of the post can be a question put to each other by anxious Telugus all over the world.

I am an Andhraite and I am fiercely proud of it. One very if not the most irritating questions that can be put to me is whether or not I am a Tamilian when I say I am a south Indian. And when I say Andhra I do not mean the coastal part that is referred to by that name by some people of Telangana and Rayalaseema. Instead I refer to a united Andhra Pradesh. I am from the city of Visakhapatnam. But I have also stayed in Hyderabad and to me, the city and region of Telangana is as much a part of the state of Andhra Pradesh as any other part of it.

Potti Sriramulu was a freedom fighter and Gandhian who gave up his life so that Andhra Pradesh could be formed. He went on a fast for the formation of a state for the Telugus, separate from the Madras Presidency that was in existence at the time of independence.

Nehru felt that the consolidation of an independent India was more important and he refused to accept the initial requests for the formation of a separate state. Even as Sriramulu's health was deteriorating he steadfastly refused to accept the demand for a new state. Finally after a long fast Sriramulu passed away and then all hell broke loose. A lot of public property was destroyed and quite a few people were killed in police firing. This was the background against which the state of Andhra was formed in 1953 much like India which had its independence marred by communal bloodshed. Later on Hyderabad was liberated from the Nizam's rule and thus in 1956 the present day Andhra Pradesh was formed.

Andhra Pradesh is divided into three broad regions - Telangana (north), Rayalaseema(south) and Kosta (coastal part). There has been some anger in the Telangana region that the region has been unfairly exploited and that people from otside the region have been coming in and taking away the jobs of the locals.

Now we come to the person at the centre of the whole issue, K Chandrasekhara Rao or KCR. He was part of the Telugu Desam Party or TDP, which was founded by N T Rama Rao. NTR is credited with giving the Andhraites a separate identity away from the Madrasi tag that is attached to all south Indians. KCR was part of the first government set up by Chandrababu Naidu. He was not given a ministerial berth in the second government, which was formed in 1999, but was made the Deputy Speaker. In 2001 he quit the party and set up the Telangana Rashtra Samiti (TRS). So I now ask the question, where was Telangana when KCR was part of
the government?

There seemed to have been a broad consensus during the recent Andhra assembly and parliamentary elections about the formation of Telangana. The TRS performed quite badly and the Congress won pretty impressively. The late Chief Minister YSR was against the formation of a separate state. He in fact made a statement that was widely condemned saying that if the TDP-TRS combine came to power people from one part of the state would need a visa to visit another. Yet he was a person that was against the bifurcation of the state for whatever reasons he had. Today had he been present the situation might have been different.

So in my personal opinion the real reason behind the demand for a separate state is suspect. I have heard that if Telangana is formed it will not be KCR but his nephew or someone who will stand for the Chief Minister's post. But then, have we not heard about the concept of the power behind the throne? Also, how many times have puppet CMs not been put in place? The argument is that the region cannot develop as long as it is 'under' Andhra Pradesh and that it is being exploited. I am surprised by the student agitation to be honest. But is bifurcation the answer to all ills? Are there no other means to develop the region? Politicians generally go for solutions that pay immediate political dividends and may genuine interests be damned. Stoking student passions and demanding a separate state is an easy answer. Today there have been protests in Maharashtra about 'outsiders' encroaching on the jobs of the 'locals'. In AP these so-called outsiders are not even from outside the state. If the Maharashtra argument is stupid, the AP argument is beyond stupidity.

The Congress does not want to be seen as a party opposed to the formation of Telangana. In addition to this, fearing a law and order situtation the government has given in to KCR's demand, at least to an extent. If I remember right the Supreme Court had commented on a particular state government's inability to maintain law and order, saying that it was its responsibility and if it could not do so, it could very well resign. But the fact of the matter, do we have leaders who have such spunk in them today?

As I write this, 136 MLAs have resigned from the state legislature and protests have been going on in Rayalaseema and Kosta against the division of the state. The city of Hyderabad is another bone of contention. The argument to make it a UT or a joint capital does not exactly make sense as it is not practical to govern a state from a capital that is quite a distance from the state's border (which is what will happen if AP is bifurcated). The pro-Telangana camp is adamant that Hyderabad has to be part of Telangana. The brand equity of Hyderabad as a safe investment destination might actually come under a cloud now.Now the Congress is caught on two fronts. It cannot reject the demand outright. On the other hand its own MLAs are resigning in protest of the decision.

I personally do not want the division of a state that was meant to provide a separate identity for the Telugus for purely political reasons. The government can declare a special package for the region if it is indeed true that the region has been neglected. What is needed right now is effective leadership and a genuine concern to address the issues facing the region if not the state.
There was an article I once read which mentioned how the Andhraites were experts at dividing themselves into groups. In the US there two separate Telugu associations were formed - Telugu Association of North America (TANA) and American Telugu Association (ATA). The Telugus went all that distance away from their homeland and still found ways to divide themselves. I can but pray the state stays united peacefully and that better sense prevails among all sections of the society.