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Separate Telnagana dream: Is it
dead?
WSN Network
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A
belief in the movement is more essential to keeping it alive
than the shenanigans of any politicians. The TRS’ loss cannot be
the end of a dream. |
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 The
dream of Telangana Rashtra Samiti (TRS) which had made the issue of
a separate state of Telangana the cornerstone of its politics and
even changed sides at the last minute by joining the NDA (which
promised a new state within the first 100 days of coming to power)
lies in shatters now.
But is there a
lesson in this, and is the objective of Telnagana much larger than
the TRS politics? Sections of the Indian media have rushed to
underline that with the TRS winning merely two Lok Sabha seats and
getting a drubbing in the Assembly elections, the movement is
finished now.
Such predictions do
sound convincing to the uninitiated when they are told that the
Congress, which never spelt out its stand on the issue of a separate
state, got more votes and seats than the TRS and TDP, which promised
a separate state. Considering that Parliament has to pass a bill to
create a separate state and the UPA only promised to look into their
demand in principle while a sub-committee headed by Pranab Mukherjee
goes into the pros and cons of it, the Congress performed much
better than the TRS and TDP, winning 12 of the 15 Lok Sabha seats in
Telangana region. This is a clear indication of where the movement
is going.
But did the TRS
forcibly fed on the issue creating a hype surrounding it? The TRS
has been spearheading the movement since 2001, whipping up the
sentiment based on alleged discrimination towards the Telangana
region. The party quoted empirical evidence that Telangana with 42
per cent of the state’s population is given the short shrift when it
comes to allocation of river water, employment, and irrigation
facilities, and budgetary allocation for development of backward
areas.
The TRS led by K
Chandrasekhara Rao rose to prominence on these issues. It paid off
in the 2004 elections when, in alliance with the Congress, it
contested elections for the first time and won 26 Assembly seats and
five Lok Sabha seats. However, the party started falling apart soon
after when it started pressuring the Congress for a separate state —
13 of its MLAs rebelled when asked to resign and chose to support
the YSR-led Congress government.
The party got its
first indication of things to come in the May 2008 by-elections for
the seats that had fallen vacant after its MLAs resigned. The TRS
could retain only seven of the 11 seats it contested. And of the
four MPs, two lost. In this election, the party was almost routed,
getting only 10 Assembly seats and two Lok Sabha seats.
 But
Telangana ideologue S Jaishankar, who supports the TRS, says the
movement would never die. “The movement is more than five decades
old, it will never die. The setback to TRS is definitely a setback
to the movement but that does not mean it is the end,” he says.
“Political process is just one of the many facets of the movement
and there will be ups and downs for any political party.”
Jaishankar is sure
the movement will rekindle because it was not a political party that
started the movement. “The demand for a separate state was started
by Telangana’s intelligentsia, poor farmers, angry coal miners,
unemployed youth and the people in general,” he says. “The TRS is
not the first party that has tried to address the demand at a
political level. There were the Telangana Praja Samiti, Telangana
Jana Sabha, and Telangana Mahasabha before the TRS which tried to
take it up at a political level but failed. If the TRS does not
introspect and come up with a different policy to take this forward,
some other party will take it up.”
“I feel that from
the cauldron of unemployed youth, disgruntled coal miners, farmers
and intelligentsia, something will form which will take the shape of
a political party very soon and bring the movement back on its right
path,” he argues.
A belief in the
movement is more essential to keeping it alive than the shenanigans
of any politicians.
20 May 2009
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