Divided by birth

One year after their contentious creation, India’s newest States — Telangana and residual Andhra Pradesh — remain very much a work in progress. On the ground, there is little evidence to support the ‘small State’ theory, which was the justification for what was essentially a pre-poll gambit by the erstwhile UPA government. If proponents of smaller States point to Telangana’s first-year surplus of ₹531 crore, opponents point to the fragility of its finances, with a bulk of it being generated by the IT hub in Hyderabad. Without IT money, Andhra Pradesh faces a revenue deficit of ₹7,300 crore. The separation has hurt both. Andhra Pradesh does not have an international airport, a key requirement for the international investors it is trying to woo. Telangana has lost maritime connectivity, which global manufacturers place a priority on. The division of assets is far from complete, with the open animosity between the leaders of the two States only serving to worsen matters. Often, this has spilled over into violence. Students have clashed with students, lawyers with lawyers, government employees from both sides have had pitched battles and, alarmingly, even the police forces of the two States clashed near the Nagarjuna Sagar Dam during a stand-off over water-sharing, forcing Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh to intervene.

The human cost of this collapse of governance has been unconscionably high. Both Andhra Pradesh and Telangana reported an inordinately high number of deaths during last year’s swine flu epidemic, as well as this year’s heat wave. There is acute agrarian distress in Telangana and AP’s Rayalseema region. There has been little progress on the job creation front, while the future of lakhs of students hangs in balance, with both States holding competing entrance exams for medical and engineering education, and treating each other’s students as ‘non-locals’. The bulk of the new colleges for technical education are in Telangana, but are unviable without students from AP, a fact the governments refuse to acknowledge. On the social front, the Telangana government has only taken token steps to address the endemic poverty in the districts outside Hyderabad, the skewed landholding pattern and the exclusion of tribals from the mainstream; meanwhile, the AP government’s energies appear focused on getting its new State capital off the ground, while pressing problems relating to power and water remain unaddressed.

There are some positives. Hyderabad’s natural advantages have helped bring in more IT players such as Google and Amazon. In Andhra Pradesh, ‘Sri City’ in Chittoor district, which has easy access to Chennai and Bengaluru, has seen the entry of as many as a dozen Japanese firms. But if these green shoots are to grow, the two chief ministers have to bury their differences and learn to work together.

COMMENT NOW