There appears no end in sight to the Congress Party’s self-inflicted blows on the Telangana question ever since the midnight announcement by Union home minister P. Chidambaram in Parliament in December 2009 that steps will be initiated for the formation of a new state of Telangana by bifurcating Andhra Pradesh. It is unlikely the UPA government will allow itself to be diverted by the Telangana question now until the forthcoming Assembly elections are over in four states and the Union Territory of Puducherry, and the Budget Session ends as well.
As such, there is unlikely to be any immediate effort on its part to make a commitment of any kind. There can, of course, be no condoning of the mass violence by Telangana’s street-level protagonists in Hyderabad on Thursday. No matter how strong the desire for statehood in the 10 Telangana districts, the largescale breakdown of law and order hardly strengthens the case for a new state. It has to be noted, though, that the Kiran Reddy government failed to anticipate trouble, especially when the joint action committee — which mainly comprises the Opposition parties in Andhra Pradesh — made no secret of the fact that it intended to create as much trouble as it could for the Congress and its state government. The committee’s strategy might well be to paralyse the state government and seek to create a constitutional crisis. If so, the government would do well to stand firm or risk becoming a laughing stock. Bending in the face of largescale violence, as distinct from peaceful protests, will encourage similar tactics in other states where such bifurcation demands exist. It is a pity that Telangana Rashtra Samithi chief K. Chandrasekhar Rao had not taken sufficient steps to ensure that violence does not accompany protests by the TRS.
For all practical purposes the Srikrishna Committee report submitted last December does not offer a roadmap. Its terms of reference were suitably vague. But all sides need to ask two questions: One, what was the reason that Telangana districts agreed to be part of the new state of Andhra Pradesh; and two, why did the Telangana agitation not go far in 1972? If history is made clearer, it would be possible to have a more reasoned discourse. There does appear to be an emotional case for a new state. But so far only an insufficient — and loose — case has been made out for a separate Telangana in terms of concrete socio-economic benefits that might accrue to the people of the region. The available data, some of it cited by the Srikrishna Committee, does not indicate that the state or pace of development in the Telangana districts is any worse than elsewhere in Andhra Pradesh. This, most often, is the standard argument for statehood.
In 1972, it was the Congress that was in the forefront of the agitation for a separate Telangana. That is no longer the case. The TRS has picked up the mantle, and it employs emotionalism to further its cause. Perhaps the Congress needs to engage the TRS in a sustained dialogue covering all aspects before the outlines of a solution become available. This must necessarily be different from the perfunctory promise it made in 2004 to the TRS that it would study the demand for a separate Telangana in return for TRS support for the formation of the first UPA government. The onus right now is on the TRS to disavow and condemn violence. This would allow tempers to cool and allow all parties in the state to adopt duly considered positions.