(5 January 2011, Special to ‘The Bengal Post’)




by Praful Bidwai




If the Congress party in Andhra Pradesh had a death wish, it couldn’t have expressed it better than by announcing its support for a separate Telangana state in December 2009, and then dithering on the promise and inviting trouble for itself in the state’s other two regions, coastal Andhra and Rayalaseema. The appointment of the Srikrishna committee on Telangana hasn’t helped matters. The committee apparently doesn’t recommend a specific solution to the issue. It only outlines several options, all of which are problematic.




The Telangana Rashtra Samithi, led by K Chandrasekhara Rao, has decided to boycott meetings called by the government to discuss the Srikrishna report. So has the BJP. They both want the Centre to introduce a motion creating the new state in the Parliament’s coming (budget) session. The Communist Party of India is also for a separate Telugu state, as are many Telangana-based members of the Congress, Telugu Desam and Praja Rajyam Party.




Arraigned against them up-front are two forces, the Communist Party-Marxist and the new political formation that Jaganmohan, son of former Chief Minister YS Rajasekhara Reddy, is building after quitting the Congress. Allied with these are the coastal Andhra-Rayalaseema-based legislators of the Congress, led by Chief Minister Kiran Kumar Reddy, and a good chunk of the TDP.




As the confrontation grows, with an unprecedented split within the Left, it’s clear that a Punjab-Haryana type solution, with Chandigarh as the capital of both and itself a Union Territory, won’t be acceptable to any of the three regions, each of which lays claim to Hyderabad, the capital. The Congress panicked a year ago: fearing that the fasting Rao would go into a coma, it hastily announced that it would start the process of giving statehood to Telangana. It has repented this ever since.




The proponents of Telangana’s statehood emphasise the region’s distinctive culture, dialects, cuisine and customs. They also argue that as a political entity, Telangana as the erstwhile Hyderabad state is older than Andhra. Its identity is partly rooted in the anti-Nizam–anti-British Freedom Movement and the Telangana armed peasant struggle.




Andhra came into being only in 1953, comprising the coastal region and Rayalaseema, with Kurnool as its capital. The present linguistic entity called Andhra Pradesh was created in 1956 through Hyderabad’s merger on certain conditions, including adequate economic development in and political representation for Telangana. These conditions haven’t been properly fulfilled.




Statehood’s opponents warn against violating the accepted principle of linguistic reorganisation of states, and triggering the formation of “too many” small states like Vidarbha, Bundelkhand, Gorkhaland and Bodoland. They also club Hyderabad with Telangana to argue that Telangana’s development indices are higher than coastal Andhra’s or Rayalaseema’s. Besides, Hyderabad’s prosperity is the result of investments from the other regions, especially coastal Andhra, known for its aggressive enterprise in construction, trading and industry. Thy do have a point.




Yet, on the whole, the Telangana proponents are right. India has 1,130 million people compared to the 30-35 million average for each of the world’s nations. There are strong political and administrative reasons for smaller states, based on cultural, agro-climatic, economic and administrative considerations, over and above broad linguistic divisions.




Small social groups would be better represented by, say, 50 states, than in the present 28 states and 7 Union Territories. Smaller states are generally better at promoting participatory democracy and development. Federalism, a worthy principle, is neglected in India, where over-centralisation has held sway.




There was a strong assertion of a distinct Telangana identity through two major agitations in 1969 and in 2000. These sharpened the Telangana people’s sense of discrimination and highlighted the region’s educational backwardness and “developmental backlog”. Statehood’s proponents rightly argue that Telangana hasn’t received state development assistance proportional to its size. But semi-arid Rayalaseema too can claim that it’s underdeveloped. Only coastal Andhra, with its prosperous agrarian economy and rapid industrial growth, is decisively more developed.




Telangana has an even stronger case on its share of the waters of rivers Krishna and Godavari. Sixtynine percent of the Krishna’s catchment area, and 79 percent of the Godavari’s, is located in Telangana. Internationally, water-sharing is decided on the basis of catchment area.




Telangana has the first claim on Hyderabad: it’s literally at the region’s heart—historically, culturally and politically. But many non-Telangana people have settled in Hyderabad for decades; it would be unfair to displace or disenfranchise them. So, it would be logical to treat Hyderabad as a special category, where some degree of regional representation and sharing is possible.




Hyderabad can be the capital exclusively of the new state of Telangana, and also have a city government in which all the local people participate. A truly federal India ought to go beyond the “Chandigarh Union Territory” formula, and try something that would substantially meet divergent sub-regional expectations.




There are useful precedents from elsewhere. Italy and Slovenia agreed to share sovereignty over Trieste, an ethnically distinct region. The Autonomous Aland Islands in Finland have a Swedish ethnic majority. Above all, there is Hong Kong, where China set up a Special Administrative Region in 1997 while taking it over from Britain—a case of “One Nation, Two Systems”.




There’s no reason why India should not have a plural kind of federalism, in which various different regional arrangements are possible. But can the Centre summon up the courage to imagine and implement federalist solutions which reconcile contradictory regional demands and aspirations? That’s hard to say. But it’s clear that the alternative is endless chaos and bloodletting in all of Andhra Pradesh.