Dominant caste and territory in South India (Kammas) By Dalel Benbabaali - 21Facts: Role of CBN in TELANGANA FORMATION 1. Kammas property is concentrated in the agriculturally rich Krishna and Godavari deltas, where land is fertile and irrigated. 2. Kammas form only 5% of the population of Andhra Pradesh, but more than 20% in the Krishna delta where they own 80% of the agricultural land. 3. When the Telugu Desam Party won the elections in Andhra Pradesh, the Kamma control over State power helped them consolidate their influence. 4. Bifurcation of Andhra Pradesh has been done, Kammas’ interests are likely to be harmed, at least in Telangana. Before trying to examine whether the creation of Telangana will lead to a decline of Kamma dominance, I’d like to go back to the history of this community to trace both their spatial and social trajectories. 5. It is only in the 1980s that the number of Kamma settlers in Hyderabad increased significantly. According to some Kamma informants, they felt encouraged to migrate to the capital-city after the Telugu Desam Party came to power in 1983. 6. From 1995 to 2004, under the regime of the Chandrababu Naidu, NTR’s son-in-law, economic reforms and the disengagement of the State accelerated this phenomenon. TDP Chief Minister Naidu became the darling of the corporate media and of the World Bank which granted him a loan for the development of his. It was the first time that an international institution like the World Bank gave a loan to a subnational entity. 7. Naidu made Hyderabad a showcase for his neoliberal policies. He focused on urban infrastructure and global growth sectors like Information Technology. 8. He decided to develop HITEC City in the western periphery of Hyderabad, near the residential areas of Jubilee Hills and Kukatpally, where most of the Kamma settlers live. This led to a tremendous appreciation of their properties(I also got fruits of it I purchased 2BHK flat for 6.75Lakhs within three months it raised 25lakhs. For my 6lakhs I got 4times profit just imagine how much they profited with intentionally invested). 9. Kamma businessmen who benefitted from political patronage and privileged access to information for real estate speculation could make a lot of profit by investing in those areas. 10. Chandrababu Naidu was accused of corruption, nepotism and casteism since his development choices clearly benefitted to his own Kamma community. In 1999, a post-electoral survey showed that 87% of Kamma voters re-elected him for a second mandate. 11. Kammas started enjoying new attributes of dominance, not based on landownership alone, but on control over the media, culture and politics. After seizing State power, they were able to impose on the rest of society the neoliberal ideology which served their capitalist interests best. This led to a unbalanced type of development which increased social and spatial inequalities, by affecting poor farmers and rural areas most. Between 1997 and 2004, more than 3000 farmers committed suicide in Andhra Pradesh, especially in the less developed. 12. The land around Vijayawada in the Krishna delta has appreciated tremendously since the formation of the Telangana State because of the speculation on the future status of Vijayawada as a possible capital-city for Andhra. Even Kammas living abroad are sending remittances back to India for their families to buy more land in the Krishna delta, as a purely speculative investment. 13. After the Congress party came back to power in the 2004 State elections. The formation of Telangana might harm their economic interests in Hyderabad, but if Vijayawada becomes the new capital of Andhra, they might very well repatriate their investments and make them thrive there as well. Kammas may also capture State power in the new Andhra State. 14. I have conducted fieldwork in all these places, to compare the nature and level of Kamma dominance depending on the territory they live in and how much control they have over it. My methodology was mostly qualitative, based on interviews and ethnographic studies, but I have also used a questionnaire to do a survey among a sample of 200 Kamma households, one hundred in a village of the Krishna delta, called Godavarru, and another hundred in a suburb of Hyderabad, known as Kukatpally, so that I could make a quantitative analysis and compare the socio-economic profile of Kammas both in rural and urban areas. 15. Even in rural areas, 20% of Kamma households had a family member abroad sending remittances that improved their economic status. The educational level of Kammas in Hyderabad was obviously higher than in the surveyed village, but in rural areas too, Kammas invest a lot in their children education so that they can move out of agriculture to enter urban professions. Most live in nuclear families and have no more than two children to avoid the division of property. Endogamy is strictly respected with a very few exceptions. 16. In Vijayawada, Kammas form a class of bourgeois neo-rich who acquired their wealth in a short time by doing all kinds of businesses, including illegal activities. 17. Kammas funding hospitals and educational institutions through their trusts, whereas in Vijaywada, both health and education are a business only aimed at making profits, owned by very aggressive Kamma entrepreneurs. 18. In Telangana, they were attracted by the Sriram Sagar project in Nizamabad district, and in Karnataka, they went for the Tungabhadra project in Raichur and Bellary districts. Kamma farmers claim that they brought development to those areas by « teaching » rice cultivation to the locals, but their arrival was perceived as a form of internal colonisation, especially in Telangana, where the best lands were acquired by the settlers. 19. Telangana people as unable to develop their own lands, and for presenting Telangana culture in a negative light, as backward. This controversy over the book shows that the regionalist sentiment which led to the creation of a separate Telangana is not only about economic domination by Andhras, but also about cultural domination. For example, many people resent the fact that the Telugu film industry, which is controlled by Kammas, makes fun of the Telangana dialects, which are generally spoken in the movies by the villain, under- class or criminals characters. 20. To conclude, Caste dominance can take many different forms: its nature and degree vary according to the territory observed, whether it is a rural or urban area, whether it is a small town or a big city, whether the dominant caste is originally from the place or migrated there. If the concept of dominant caste is still relevant in today’s India, one has to take into account new attributes of dominance which are not related only to landownership, but also to culture and ideology via the control of the media, the entertainment industry and State power. 21. This is why I found the concept of hegemony (domination) very useful for my study of the Kamma caste, but it is important to bear in mind that- « No hegemony can be so pervasive (too much domination) as to eliminate all ground for contestation or resistance ». -Dalel Benbabbali On November 7th 2013 She presented her papers in Princeton University London School of Economics and Political Science For Telugu https://youtube/watch?v=qdvIKKRSZoE For English https://youtube/watch?v=_vBvExh7-QY Source: kammasworld.blogsopt.in/2014/02/dominant-caste-and-territory-in-south.html
Posted on: Mon, 14 Jul 2014 14:45:28 +0000
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