Acharya wrote:SwamyG wrote:
Again the point, is accusing BJP (or say even INC) of flip-flopping or using circumstances to their advantage could be made by aam junta at street level and opposing political parties for their gain.
Actually things are simple. If the people have voted for a perticular party then they own the representatives and they can formate the policies for their state. In this case it is the INC.
If BJP gets the vote then it will have the voice of the people and their aspirations. Unfortunaltely BJP did not get the votes
The question is why is Kosta and the T region people not working with the party itself to come to some understanding
Let us examine the naivety of this question by applying this logic to entire India. Why don’t the people of India work with the ruling Government and come to an understanding and solve all their problems. It is that simple. Why do the people bicker about 2G scams, adarsh scams, maoist problems, mining problems, terrorist problems, north east problems, CWG problems.
The current leadership of the party will also change once they see the writing on the wall. Right?
Now jokes apart, seriously the genesis of the problem started when INC, in 2004, desperate to beat seemingly unbeatable Chandra Babu Naidu and after running out of all ideas, brought in separate state issue to beat TDP at least in the Telangana area. It was like one of many stones they thrown at, hoping one of them would hit the target. But from their heart and soul, INC never wanted to give separate state. It was pure political opportunism (which some BJP cheer leaders on this board very eloquently argue to be acceptable) and a monumental blunder.
TDP/BJP went into 2004 elections on unified state and didn’t give much importance to separate state idea and went along with ‘India is shining’ slogan. However, lot of things happened in the prior 4 years. There was unprecedented drought in AP where many farmers committed suicide, mostly in Telangana and Rayalaseema regions. The image of suicide farmers didn’t go well with Chief minister carrying laptop, doing power point presentations and show casing IT city in Hyderabad. While CBN was glowing in the limelight and blushing with meetings with like of Bill Clinton and Bill Gates, the state congress leader YS Raja Sekhar Reddy reached out to people the old fashioned way and uprooted TDP foundations brick by brick. But nobody knew the extent of damage and even Congress, unaware of the transformation, kept pouring as many promises as they could think, including separate state for T. They cut an alliance with small young party, TRS, whose leader is known for his vitriolic tongue, with sharp attacks against andhra and rayalaseema people.
The results were shocking. Even Congress couldn’t believe their success as literally they swept TDP. TDP won mere 56 seats in an assembly of 294 seats plunging them to do deep soul searching. The first reaction was to cut their ties with BJP who lost at the national level.
Having realized that they would have won the elections even without separate state plank, Congress started distancing themselves from separate state agenda. In the meantime, the baby they delivered, the separate state movement, was growing rapidly to adulthood. They tried to contain it with Telangana development slogan under strong political leadership of YSR. However, the political leadership of Congress in telangana was very weak and even YSR never allowed it to grow. They always depended on others to make them winnable.
In the meantime, Telengana development forum, initially led by NRIs from telangana, was created. They created set of reports, videos showing how andhra people are plundering Telangana and mass communicated through internet. I don’t think there is any organization in india or elsewhere used the internet tool this effectively. Things deteriorated very fast in the 5 core districts of Telangana. From then onwards, if a crow crows or dog barks in Telangana, a question was raised why the crow was not singing or the dog was not talking and accused it to be an act of conspiracy by andhrites. For instance there was a shooting of nexalites in Karimnagar dist by AP police, the headlines in TDF was andhra police fired against Telangana freedom fighters. Sound bites like andhra cheaters, andhra rulers became household punch lines and sadly nobody from andhra side, neither the intellectuals nor politicians countered. By now every intellectual in Telangana can eloquently talk about 300,000 state government jobs lost , when in reality there were not even 300,000 state jobs in Telangana. Everybody can throw these numbers as facts but the initial source is same, a set of reports and tables created by the T evangelist, hard core maoist sympathiser, Prof Jayashankar.
In 2009, YSR went to elections on Telengana development plank without completely ruling out separate state. Seeing growing movement of separate state, desperate to beat seemingly unbeatable YSR, now it is the turn of the other parties to use separate state slogan. Now TDP, BJP, CPI all plunged into separate state movement. Even the new party of Chiranjeevi left their position on separate state ambiguous.
Once again, YSR won the elections, although very narrowly, mostly thanks to the lack luster leadership of Chandra Babu Naidu and the triangular fight between INC, TDP and PRP (praja rajyam party of Chiranjeevi). All the parties that supported separate state lost the elections. TRS won mere 10 seats out of the 50+ seats they contested. It proved, that after all, common man wants development, and they don’t care about separate state. It also proved while emotional issues like separate state have very short shelf life, the day to day issues of food, clothes and house are perpetual. The unceremonious alliance between TDP and TRS ended.
Good or bad YSR was very decisive leader. The most important thing about leadership is to make people walk on one path. If they fail to do this, it doesn’t matter how novel their ideas are. In that respect YSR was a great leader and it shows even now when novice leader like his son draws enormous support from people, although everybody knows he amassed massive wealth under his fathers rule. YSR knows the pulse of the people and I can tell very confidently that had he been alive, there would not have been this discussion today.
After YSR death, Rosiah, a very indecisive leader, who never won any popular election, was made a rubber stamp CM of AP. KCR saw the small opening and realized that it is now or never situation. A sequence of natural calamities also weakened the govt further and the telangana supporters marched forward. Until now KCR, for the fear of losing control of the movement, never made students partners in his agenda. In a desperate move, for the first time KCR took the movement to the students, particularly Osmania university. In fact when KCR took indefinite fast, his intention was to do the fast for 2-3 days. After 3rd day he called off the fast, under the false premise of Govt responding to his demand. Instantly, the images of KCR sipping lemon juice enraged the students of Osmania university, and they started gathering around the hospital shouting slogans against him. Fearing that it went out of control, KCR changed his stance, accused doctors forcing him to drink the juice and continued the fast for another 8 days, until the ill conceived December 9th statement from Mr Chidambaram.
KCR fast might have revived separate state movement a bit but not much to take it very seriously until PC made that announcement. Even the hardened fanatics of separate state movement couldn’t believe the haste it was announced. Suddenly, everybody who never cared about separate T, became a big evangelist of T.
But what really transpired in INC was the filthy dynasty politics. INC never respects or promotes any individual leader and servility to rajmata is the ultimate requirement for any leader. When 150 MLAs across the region signed an affidavit supporting Jagan, not consulting the high command, it was an ultimate insult to rajamata and raised an alarm that he could become an independent leader. That shaked up INC high command. For 2 to 3 months they tried to split the 150 members across Telangana and Andhra without any success. Day by day Jagan’s influence is growing and Rosiah is floundering. Even a young leader, Konda Surekha, from telanagna, resigned her cabinet position accusing INC high command of mis treatment of Mr Jagan. It send shock waves to INC high command. They ran out of ideas and time was running out. Finally they fell back to their time tested brahmastra, separate state.
Separate state was always a non starter. How can a region with most developed capital city can ask for separate state? This is like Bombay and the surrounding districts asking for separate state accusing Vidarbha? Can Chennai and North Tamilnadu become separate state, leaving the region south of kavery? Jarkhand, Chatishgarh, Uttarkand are the states formed away from capital cities. If Vidarbha, Andhra, Rayalaseema, South Tamilnadu , North West karnataka or North telanagna, away from most developed areas, ask for separate state, it makes sense, but not the other way. Otherwise it is called stealing. This is preposterous.
In any case, the december 9th announcement, created spontaneous outburst across andhra and rayalaseema areas. To their utter shock, except cabinet ministers, all MLAs across the two regions mass resigned. How andhra and rayalaseema politicians used the separate state slogan when they didn’t really mean it, came out in open. This is definitely betrayal of people of Andhra/Rayalaseema, especially Telangana. They played this double game so long and when T people accuse andhra leaders, it is completely justified.
For INC there was no other option other than rolling back the Dec 9th announcement. Whether it was genuine attempt to understand whether T was backward or make the truth known to everybody and find a solution, they appointed the Sri Krishna Committee to study the problem and suggest the Govt the most desirable solution. All major political parties agreed to cooperate with the commission.
There are no better and well qualified experts in the country than these 5 individuals, experts in their won fields both academically and administratively. Justice Skrikrishna is known for his no nonsense approach in dealing with issue like this, including investigation of 1992 Bombay riots.
The SKC panel collected more than 100,000 petitions and reports, toured extensively all the 23 districts, had more than 2000 meetings. After a span of 11 months, they compiled a very dispassionate report covering all aspects of AP and came up with 6 options, of which the central govt is considering only the last three options.
The options may be inconclusive and require political will to implement them, but their findings on variety of issues leading to the final proposals are very conclusive. There is absolutely no systematic discrimination, subjugation against Telangana and there is no favoritism towards Andhra and Rayalaseema. In fact they concluded that it is Rayalaseema that is most backward. They also concluded the disparity between rich and poor is narrowest in andhra and widest in Telangana. Similarly the disparity between upper caste and lower caste is much wider in Telangana. In no uncertain terms, they cautioned the imminent explosion of maoism exploiting these differences, if these disparities are not checked very quickly.
Their first recommendation is not to split the state and to alleviate the disparities by having a regional development council for Telanagna and perhaps for other backward regions. I hope the INC acts on this very fast (don’t wait for what Jagan is doing) and implement either the most recommended option (regional council) or the next best options, either separation into two states or two states and one UT.