TELANGANA-NAADI: IN PRINCIPLE -What Telangana says about our democracy

Whether you agree with their demand or not,there is no denying the extraordinary commitment on display across Telangana.Lakhs of government servants have been on a strike for over a month,suffering loss of pay and ruining their Dussehra.Given the Centres prolonged consultations and deliberations,the agitators are likely to miss out on Diwali too.
Their bid to intensify the agitation with a rail blockade has prompted the Andhra Pradesh government to come up with tough measures.Things could get worse in a situation where schools and colleges have been shut as teachers too have taken to the streets.Similarly,the involvement of bus drivers has disrupted public transport in Telangana and of coal miners has caused a power crisis in the whole of Andhra Pradesh and neighboring states.The political response to this popular revolt has thrown up larger questions about democracy,governance and constitutional morality.Although the movement has been by and large peaceful,ministers and legislators are in no position to set foot in Telangana districts outside Hyderabad. This is even after MLAs and MPs tried to pacify agitators by tendering mass resignations about two months ago. The gesture proved to be farcical as none of their resignations have come into effect.State ministers on their part made a similar show of boycotting the secretariat and cabinet meetings.The stalemate in governance has resulted in incalculable social and economic costs.

What is worse is the subversion of democracy by the Centre in Telangana.In the 2004 Lok Sabha election,the Congress partys alliance with TRS won the popular mandate in Telangana,which has 17 constituencies. Despite the incor-poration of Telangana in its CMP, the UPA-1 made little effort to honour that promise.Yet,in the 2009 election,the Congress party fared even better in Telangana for two reasons.First,all the major parties had by then come out in support of the statehood demand.But,more importantly,chief minister Y S Rajasekhara Reddy played a fraud on the voters in Telangana.Taking undue advantage of the multi-phase polling in Andhra Pradesh,Reddy sought votes in Telangana by making suitable noises.Then,while campaigning in the rest of the state,he claimed that those people would need visas to visit Hyderabad if they did not pre-empt the division of the state by voting for Congress.

Later in the same year,after Reddy had died in a crash,the Manmohan Singh government betrayed similar disdain for the Telangana sentiment.Reacting to the hunger strike forced on TRS leader K Chandrasekhar Rao by agitating students,P Chidambaram famously announced on December 9,2009 that the process of forming a separate Telangana will be initiated. Yet,within a fortnight,Chidambaram reneged on it,saying that the situation in Andhra Pradesh has altered since his state-ment.Why,did the people of Telangana suddenly change their mind.No,Chidambaram was actually referring to differences that emerged among political parties after he had conceded statehood.A large number of political parties are divided on the issue, he said,adding that this was despite the all-party consensus in Hyderabad just two days before his December 9 statement.In effect,the Centre placed fickleness of political parties above the will of the people of Telangana,manifested in successive elections.

By the time the current round of the agitation started last month,the peoples will had been expressed even more emphatically in the 2010 assembly by-elections,when Telangana proponents had won all the 12 seats.The by-elections took place while the agitation was on hold for a year,in deference to the consultations held by the Justice Srikrishna Committee.But its anti-Telangana report turned out to be so flawed that the Centre has never dared to convene the promised all-party meeting to discuss its findings. A secret chapter of the Srikrishna report,laid bare by the Andhra Pradesh high court,was so partisan that it advised the Govt.
on how it could deal with opposition parties and manage the media.

The insults heaped on the Telangana movement by the Manmohan Singh government contrast with the respect shown by Jawaharlal Nehru in a speech delivered early 1956 in the then Hyderabad state,which included Kannada and Marathi-speaking districts.He was opposed to the idea of separating those districts from Telangana because it is a flourishing province.He however yielded to the preference expressed by the people of Kannada and Marathi-speaking districts.For,who was I to force my views down their throats.This is not how a democracy works.Therefore,though it was my firm opinion,I gave it up. On the demand since raised by Telanganites for breaking up another flourishing province called Andhra Pradesh,Nehrus successors could well redeem themselves by following his democratic approach.