Why Telangana state is actually BAD for Telangana . 29 07 2013 DIsclaimer : This is not my post. It is reproduced completely from Quora answer and is republishing with permission.:) . I almost concur with all the facts and analysis presented below. (Btw my answer is My Answer on Quora : https://quora/Andhra-Pradesh-India/What-is-your-opinion-on-proposal-to-divide-state-as-RayalaTelangana-and-Andhra ) Politics of India: What do you think about the Government’s decision for the bifurcation of Andhra Pradesh? Oh god, this will be a super-long answer. Also, people from different regions of AP have different views on this. Here is mine: Short version: I hold an opinion that happens to be very different from most people. Bifurcation of Andhra Pradesh is a very good thing for the people of Andhra and Rayalaseema. However, it is a very bad thing for the people of Telangana. I do not know how much you already know about the history of AP, but I will try to give you some background before we jump into the main part of the answer. History: The map below shows the provinces in south India post independence. The blue part was actually a part of the Madras Presidency during the British rule and the yellow parts which seem to be split by red and blue lines together constituted the Nizam state. Nizam’s kingdom was divided into 3 parts as shown and the Telugu speaking part was merged with the Telugu speaking part of the Madras Presidency to form the present day state of Andhra Pradesh. This was followed by the formation of Karnataka, Kerala, Maharashtra, Gujarat, etc. Now why did the whole thing even happen? Remember that the blue part in AP is seemandhra (Rayalaseema+ Coastal Andhra) and the yellow part is Telangana. There was a freedom fighter called Potti Sreeramulu, who felt that the Telugu people in the Madras presidency were not getting their fair share and started a satyagraha-demanding a separate state for the Telugu people. Nehru initially opposed this struggle and Potti Sriramulu died as a result of Nehru’s negligence. The Telugu people were enraged and Nehru was eventually forced to create a new Telugu state. Now, what followed was Nehru’s failed social engineering- which is the root cause of today’s problem. Remember how Patel forced the Nizam to merge his kingdom into the Indian Union? After kicking the Nizam out, Nehru did not have a good follow up plan for the backward state of Hyderabad. After a decade or so, he thought he could do some clever social engineering by giving the Telugu speakers of the Nizam’s kingdom a new language-based identity along with the people of Seemandhra. He did not care about the disparities between the people of Telangana and Seemandhra. What were the disparities? Telangana had a feudal history with Islamic rule for over hundreds of years (similar to Delhi), while Seemandhra was ruled by the British and had a long colonial past (similar to Tamil Nadu). However, Nehru did not care. His biggest fear was that the forcibly annexed state of Hyderabad might be backward forever or might someday leave the Indian Union to join Pakistan. The next step was to build a capital. People of Seemandhra proposed Kurnool as the capital for the new state. However, Nehru convinced them that Hyderabad would be a better location because it had all the infrastructure left behind by the Nizam. The modern state of Andhra Pradesh was formed and was ruled by successive Congress governments- until N T Rama Rao started the Telugu Desam Party on the basis of Telugu pride and self-rule. Now, there was also a Telangana agitation in the meanwhile, and there was also a separate Jai Andhra movement during Indira Gandhi’s prime ministership. However, the Congress party was able to suppress these movements in both the regions- simply because it was the single largest party in the state without a strong opposition. During all these years- from post-independence to the late 1980′s Andhra Pradesh (Telangana in specific) was a social-economic basket case. Then came Chandra Babu Naidu. He transformed Andhra Pradesh in to what it is today: from a basket case into a top 5 state. I won’t write much about him because most people know his achievements very well and I will leave you with a graph below- that speaks volumes. The spike in Hyderabad was during Naidu’s rule. This was how Hyderabad was transformed from a backward, lawless city in to a modern metropolis. Now, this is the real contentious issue. People of Seemandhra always felt that it was their investments and human capital that created all the wealth in and around Hyderabad, while Telangana people were free riders. They have always been very upset that many of the coastal cities like Vishakhapatnam, Vijayawada, Tirupati, etc., were neglected because all the investment was flowing in to Hyderabad for far too long. Hyderabad by the end of 2005 was like a huge black hole that gobbled up all the foreign direct investment in the state. The Seemandhra people were also worried about the sharing of Krishna and Godavari river waters with Telangana (besides Maharashtra and Karnataka). Meanwhile, a man named KCR tried to advance his political career by bringing back the separate Telangana movement and starting his own party. His initial argument was that people from Seemandhra have stolen all the fruits of development from the people of Telangana. Later an expert panel called the Sri Krishna commission set up by the central government proved his argument wrong. Here is the link to their report: pib.nic.in/archieve/others/2011/jan/d2011010502.pdf. Now that his argument was proved wrong, KCR picked up another cause: Self-respect of the Telangana people. This is where things get very sensitive. There are three major regional dialects of Telugu- each spoken by the people of Telangana, Coastal Andhra and Rayalaseema. People of Telangana always felt that their dialect was being considered inferior by the speakers of the other dialects. Also, the mass media (like Telugu movies and Television) have always used the Coastal Andhra dialect. So, KCR successfully found a new reason to exploit to his political gain. He claimed that the Telangana culture and dialect were being considered inferior by the people of seemandhra and the only way the Telangana people could get back their self-respect is by demanding a separate state. He started a fast-unto-death- which really scared the hell out of Sonia Gandhi and Chidambaram in 2009 (Remember the Potti Sriramulu incident?). So they caved in and announced in December 2009 that they are willing to form a separate state of Telangana. Now the story moves to New Delhi. This is the election year and Sonia is worried that the Congress might be decimated in AP during the 2014 elections. Since 2009, the Congress party did not do anything about separate Telangana- until the last month when they finally woke up to the election reality. The state of AP sends a strong contingent (~35) of Congress MPs to Lok Sabha. She is worried that she would lose to KCR in the Telangana region; Jagan Reddy or Chandra Babu Naidu in the Seemandhra region. So she has instead decided to divide and rule the state. She believes that- if they can form the state of Telangana before 2014, they would at least get 17-18 MPs from the newly formed state. However, she is clueless about Seemandhra. Here comes Mr. Owaisi. Remember this hate-monger from Hyderabad? This guy has collaborated with the Kashmiri Congress leader Ghulam Nabi Azad- to work out a plan to socially re-engineer Andhra Pradesh all over again. They have created a plan that would split the four districts of Rayalaseema into two- one half would be merged with Telangana and the other half would be merged with Seemandhra. They want to rename the new Telangana state as the ‘Hyderabad state’- just like the Nizam times! This will be a very dangerous thing for India in the long run. The idea here is to create a huge Muslim minority, which would ensure that the congress party has a secure vote base and political future in the new state. Take a look at the social composition of Andhra Pradesh. Now why would Telangana lose out and how would Seemandhra gain from the division? 1. Telangana would fall prey to the vote-bank and socialist economic policies of the Congress party due to the presence of a large number of minorities, and backward classes. Note that the Muslims in Telangana are Urdu speaking, whereas the Muslims from Seemandhra are Telugu speaking and are very well assimilated into the society. Look at the social mix from the 6th bar in the graph above- Telangana would have a huge minority population- which is like Congress party’s dream come true. However, the opposite of this would happen in the state of Seemandhra- as it would have less than 5% Muslim population. Refer to the last bar in the graph above. 2. Compare the percentage of high-castes in Telangana vs Seemandhra, i.e 6th Bar Vs the last bar in the graph above. The high castes from Seemandhra were the entrepreneurial classes who have been creating a lot of wealth over the last few decades (including Hyderabad). Think GMR, GVK, LANCO, Dr. Reddy’s, Satyam, several media conglomerates, and the whole of Tollywood, etc. Telangana would lose out on these capitalist classes and their entrepreneurial spirits. This will impact their economy over the long run. On the other hand, Seemandhra would have a huge scope for these entrepreneurial classes- close to 31% of the population- to grow. 3. The elites in Telangana have always been mostly feudal- but never very entrepreneurial and these are the elites the state of Telangana would be left with. This is indicated in the graph below which shows how inequality in Telangana actually increased over the last decade due to landnessness and feudalism despite the economic boom in that area. Note the steep decrease in inequality in the Andhra region. 4. Hyderabad would no longer be the cash cow. The first wave of wealth creation in Hyderabad is over and this can be inferred from all the economic indicators. This is the worst time to separate this city from its capitalists and entrepreneurs. The opposite is true for Vishakapatnam and Vijayawada. They are yet to begin their first wave of economic growth. Look at the disparity in FDI between Coastal Andhra vs Telangana (excluding Hyderabad) from the graph below. Seemandhra is already competing pretty well with Hyderabad in attracting investments. 5. Seemandhra would be a power-surplus state while Telangana would be a power deficit state. Unlike Seemandhra, Telangana consumes a lot more power than it produces. Seemandhra would have an infrastructure surplus, while Telangana would become a landlocked state by losing out on major ports, coastline, golden quadrilateral and major railway freight corridors (see the figure below). It would also lose its share of revenues from the KG gas basin. 6. 7. The Telangana movement was very successful because of the involvement of the students. KCR has promised government jobs to all these people. Now the real question is how would he create all those government jobs? On the other hand, a great amount of job creation would happen in Seemandhra because they would need brand new infrastructure and need to build their new capital. 8. Identity politics and the loss of cultural capital all over again. The division is not only being made on the premise of under-development but also on the basis of self-respect and Culture. How would the people of Telangana reconcile with their identity issues once the division is over? Is there a real leader who could make this process smooth and rebuild their identity? What kind of Telugu would be taught in Telangana schools? Would you eliminate Andhra poets from your reading list? How would the Telangana people be able to assert their rights over the Telugu language and its 4000 years of literature, when most of it was produced by Seemandhra people? Will the Telangana media immediately switch to the Telangana dialect? Will there be Telangana movies? If yes, would they be disrespected and ridiculed? Will the new Seemandhra state successfully hijack the Telugu identity once and for all? Will Seemandhra emerge as a strong language based state like TN? All these questions have no concrete answers, but my prediction is that Telangana will be in a state of deep identity crisis for a long time to come and this will be their biggest handicap. After all, 4000 years of identity cannot be divided as easily as a piece of land. This is similar to what happened during India-Pakistan partition. The Seemandhra region might lose out on water-sharing etc., but the merits clearly outweigh the demerits. Besides, they would still have the access to the private sector jobs in Hyderabad. Now how would all this affect the nation? 1. The Pandora’s box of state division would be opened once again. There will be demands for Vidharbha, Tulu Nadu, Saurashtra, Gorkha land, Bodo Land, Purvanchal and many others. 2. Economic barriers between the newly formed states of Telangana and Seemandhra would impact the market forces and the overall trade in the region. 3. Communal forces would increase in Hyderabad and the Maoist activity would grow manifold in the forest areas of Telangana. There is no concrete proof for this but this has been the trend in the states like Chattisgarh- which actually shares the Maoist affected forest area with Telangana. 4. This is clearly a case of the congress party exploiting sub-regionalism in order to reap political benefits from it. Its pure social engineering at work. This is nothing but a mockery of the Indian democracy. What is being reported in the national media is a very superficial analysis of what is really happening. They make it seem like the division is Telangana’s gain, while it is actually Seemandhra’s. Here is why- Imagine a state where one half of it was like Gujarat and the other half was like Chattisgarh, and assume they were forced to coexist. That was exactly how Andhra Pradesh operated, thanks to Nehru’s disastrous social engineering. Now that Telangana has voluntarily chosen to break away, the Seemandhra region will be unchained, and the people there will finally be able to unleash their true potential. If things go through as most of us expect, you have another Gujarat in the making.This is how I look at it. Sources: All the graphs were taken from the Sri Krishna committee
Posted on: Thu, 01 Aug 2013 07:39:13 +0000
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