AN upheaval of the kind that tore the economic and political fabric of Andhra Pradesh between 1969 and 1972 has engulfed the State once again and on the same issue of dividing the State, though under completely different circumstances.
The crisis this time was brought about by cynical and short-sighted manoeuvring by the Congress leadership when it unilaterally decided, and later announced on December 9, that the process of forming a separate state of Telangana would be initiated by introducing a resolution in the Andhra Pradesh Assembly.
Soon after Union Home Minister P. Chidambaram made his midnight announcement after a meeting of the Congress core committee, an exclusive body presided over by All India Congress Committee president Sonia Gandhi, there was an open revolt by Congressmen from the coastal Andhra and Rayalaseema regions of the State. Nearly one half of the 156 Congress Members of the Legislative Assembly resigned.
Telugu Desam Party (TDP) and Praja Rajyam MLAs from these two regions also submitted their letters of resignation to Assembly Speaker N. Kiran Kumar Reddy, defying their respective leaderships and giving short shrift to the well-demarcated lines of their parties. After two days of political turmoil, as many as 130 MLAs 76 of the Congress, 40 of the TDP and 14 of the Praja Rajyam had resigned. This created a constitutional crisis as nearly 44 per cent of the 294-member Assembly was unwilling to be part of the legislature unless its demand for retaining the integrity of the State was accepted. The Assembly has 123 MLAs from coastal Andhra, 119 from Telangana and 52 from Rayalaseema.
Indias fifth largest State, in terms of area as well as population, Andhra Pradesh comprises 23 districts 10 in Telangana, a semi-arid region that remained under the despotic rule of the Nizam of Hyderabad for some time even after Independence; nine in Andhra along the States 1,000-km coastline; and four in the Rayalaseema region, which were known as Ceded (to the English East India Company) districts.
Farmers in coastal Andhra, a region watered by the Godavari and Krishna rivers and benefiting from the comprehensive irrigation system developed in their deltas by the legendary British engineer Sir Arthur Cotton, prospered. Telangana, on the other hand, suffered under the Nizams rule. It is also a region of scanty rainfall, and accessing water for irrigation from rivers has been difficult. Therefore, it remained backward. The Rayalaseema region, too, did not progress for almost similar geographical reasons.
The distinct character of Telangana, setting it apart from the other two regions of Andhra Pradesh, has been a festering problem since the beginning of Independence. Successive dispensations at the Centre and in the State tried unsuccessfully to find a workable solution to it without going to the extent of conceding statehood to Telangana.
Andhra itself was carved out in 1953 from Madras Presidency after Potti Sreeramulu fasted to death and forced the hand of Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru. It was the first revoking of the countrys internal boundaries on linguistic lines. Three years later, in 1956, the State of Andhra Pradesh was formed with the merger of the Telugu-speaking districts of Hyderabad state (now the Telangana region) with Andhra.
K. Chandrasekhara Rao, a leading light of the TDPs think tank, was unhappy with N. Chandrababu Naidu, then Chief Minister, for being denied a Cabinet berth. He resigned as Deputy Speaker of the Assembly and floated the Telangana Rashtra Samithi (TRS), first as a movement in 2000 and later as a full-fledged political party in 2002. Perhaps he thought history would repeat itself: Marri Channa Reddy became the Chief Minister of an integrated Andhra Pradesh after leading a violent agitation for a separate Telangana in 1969 through the Telangana Praja Samithi (TPS).
Fifty-six-year-old Chandrasekhara Rao is a canny politician who was groomed in the Congress and learnt his political ropes in the TDP, which he joined later. He hitched his bandwagon in the 2004 general elections to the Congress, fared moderately and became part of the United Progressive Alliance government at the Centre. But his honeymoon with the Congress was short-lived as he made demands that the Congress could not fulfil. He and other Ministers resigned, and his party was in a shambles. It nearly broke up as his MLAs mistrusted his leadership.
He did a political volte-face in 2009 by joining hands with the TDP. Never mind that it was led by his bete noire, Chandrababu Naidu, who himself did a U-turn by expressing support for a separate Telangana. The vaulting ambitions of both to defeat the powerful Chief Minister Y.S. Rajasekhara Reddy did not fructify as people once again gave a mandate to the Congress.
His credibility with the electorate comprehensively eroded, Chandrasekhara Rao had to do something spectacular to redeem his image. He had twice resigned as party president in the wake of the TRS electoral debacles. It was a do-or-die situation this time.
An opportunity presented itself after the death of Y.S. Rajasekhara Reddy, who, as Chief Minister, had frustrated all his attempts to emerge as an unchallenged leader of Telangana. YSR encouraged defections from the TRS and outwitted the Telangana leader in his own political games by speaking in favour of Telangana before the elections and changing his tune later.
The turnarounds by the TDP and the Communist Party of India (CPI) from their long-standing positions favouring an integrated Andhra Pradesh came in handy for Chandrasekhara Rao. He was strengthened further by the support that the fledgling Praja Rajyam, launched by the Telugu matinee idol K. Chiranjeevi, extended to the Telangana cause. The Congress remained the only hurdle to creating a separate state though a sizable number of its MLAs from the Telangana region were in its favour, for their own political survival.
He resolved to launch a fast unto death from November 29 and settle for nothing less than a separate Telangana state this time. There was a political vacuum of sorts with a none-too-assertive Chief Minister Koinjeti Rosaiah at the helm. It was just the kind of situation where pressure could be built up. Before long, the Centre would buckle under it.
The Congress leadership in New Delhi proved him right. As Chandrasekhara Raos health deteriorated, violence threatened to spiral out of control in Hyderabad, a city that had been carefully showcased to domestic and international investors as an ideal destination to park their funds, and in other places. The core committee of the Congress imagined it could solve a half-century-old problem in half a day.
Its poorly thought-out announcement betrayed a shocking lack of understanding of either the significance or the implications of such a decision for the other regions. The Congress strategy was to appropriate to itself the credit for carving out a separate Telangana and to be seen as fulfilling the dream of a large section of people in the region. It could harvest a rich haul of votes in the 2014 general elections, it thought. The Congress plan even went beyond this the party wanted to kill two birds with one stone. The TDP, it thought, would not only lose out in Telangana but stand exposed before the electorate in the coastal Andhra and Rayalaseema regions, where Chandrababu Naidu would be seen as having espoused the cause of dividing the State.
Unfortunately for the Congress, there was a backlash from within when J.C. Diwakar Reddy, a Minister in YSRs team, submitted his resignation and set off an avalanche. Showing scant respect for the high command or commitment to the resolution that the Congress Legislature Party had passed days earlier authorising AICC president Sonia Gandhi to take an appropriate decision on Telangana, 76 Congress MLAs and at least four party MPs resigned.
The Congress had not only shot itself in the foot but created instant turmoil in coastal Andhra and Rayalaseema, where there was outrage over the Centres decision. There were spontaneous bandhs in cities such as Visakhapatnam and Vijayawada; trains were stopped, bus services were paralysed, and demonstrations were conducted to demand that Andhra Pradesh remain an integrated State. An HSBC call centre was vandalised in Visakhapatnam, which was being projected as one of those Tier-II cities that were ideal for attracting investments in the information technology sector. Hyderabads reputation as an IT hub had already taken a blow, with agitators terrorising anyone who dared to open shop.
The United States had issued an advisory to its citizens not to visit Hyderabad on December 10 when pro-Telangana organisations planned a massive march to the Assembly. There was a touch of irony to the vandalism in the State capital. The status of Hyderabad is a major bone of contention between those who want a separate state and those who do not.
There can be no Telangana without Hyderabad is the refrain of pro-Telangana activists. Leaders in Andhra say they cannot start searching for another capital in the event of the States division. The administration had shifted once before, from Kurnool, the capital of Andhra State during 1953-56. The dispute over Hyderabad is one among the many critically important issues that need a dispassionate and democratic discussion between leaders of the three regions.
But, the Congress core committee, reviving memories of the style of functioning when Indira Gandhi was at the helm, did not somehow believe that consultations within, leave alone with other political parties or representatives from the three regions, were necessary before taking a decision that would change the history and geography of southern Indias largest State. The implications of the announcement on fuelling the demand for the creation of states such as Harita Pradesh, Bundelkhand, Gorkhaland and Bodoland did not seem to matter. Nothing had been learnt from history, either, which showed how Andhra Pradeshs development was set back by years when the Telangana agitation in 1969 and the separate Andhra agitation later gripped the State.
Everyone was expected to fall in line just as Chief Minister K. Rosaiah did. The servility that the Congress high command demanded and received from Rosaiah was reminiscent of the shoddy treatment meted out to another Congress Chief Minister, T. Anjaiah (1980-82), by Indias first family. Its consequences were there for everyone to see N.T. Rama Rao threw the Congress out of power on the plank of Telugu self-respect and pride.
The party has now pitted Telugus against Telugus by inventing a remedy that has proved to be worse than the disease.
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