Chandrababu Naidu must be ruing the day he relegated Chandrasekhar Rao (KCR) to the position of deputy speaker of the Andhra Pradesh Assembly in 1999. A miffed KCR, earlier a minister in Naidu’s cabinet, thought that he deserved more. He quit the Telugu Desam Party (TDP) and set up the Telangana Rashtra Samiti (TRS) to fight for a separate State of Telangana.
Ever since Andhra Pradesh was created in 1956 by merging Andhra State and the Telugu speaking areas of the Nizam of Hyderabad there had been murmurs that this amalgamation was not fair. The merger was ostensibly on the grounds that both the regions were Telugu speaking, but the real reason was that the Congress party was finding the going tough in Andhra where the Communists were giving them a run for their money. Nehru was convinced by a lobby led by Sanjeeva Reddy (later President of India) that an integrated State would allow the Congress a better deal.
Disparate regions
But the merger was unfortunate because the two areas were vastly different: the Andhra region under British rule had developed reasonably, whereas the Telangana region was backward and feudal. When the integrated state of Andhra Pradesh was created, it was the Telugus from erstwhile Andhra state who dominated and migrated to the capital Hyderabad. The original residents of Telangana (who knew little English because Urdu was the medium of higher education) found themselves marginalised .In 1969-70, an intense agitation for separate Telangana gathered momentum but was defused cleverly by then PM Indira Gandhi.
But the angst of the Telangana origin population remained, and in fact intensified over the 1980s and 1990s. It was propelled by cine hero NT Rama Rao who formed the Telugu Desam Party (TDP) and stormed to power in 1982. If the hallmark of the Congress policy was ‘running with the hare and hunting with the hounds,’ the TDP was unabashedly an Andhra party whose rule alienated the Telangana denizens even more.
KCR aligned with the Congress — which was more concerned about wresting back power — and in 2004 the combine came to power. But Congress’s Chief Minister YS Rajasekhara Reddy (YSR) was no supporter of Telangana and he kept KCR at bay till he died in 2009. His sudden death prompted KCR to step on the gas. After a false start, Sonia Gandhi agreed to create Telangana in 2014 averring that the party would romp to power. But the wily KCR distanced himself from the Congress and TRS emerged victorious if only with a very thin majority. The Congress was left powerless.
Once in power, KCR forgot his old slogan of ‘Telangana walon jago and Andhra wale bhago’ (roughly translated into Hindi) only using subterfuge to oust Naidu from Telangana. Although the masses were happy to have their own State (where their self-esteem would be intact), the others who originally hailed from Andhra region were not disturbed by the TRS government.
Top businessmen from Andhra region who had made Hyderabad their home were assiduously courted: the new bosses of Telangana did not want to lose the brand equity of Hyderabad, created by Chandrababu Naidu. Thus the KCR government has been wooing investments. The skyline of Hyderabad is today more impressive with new investors making a beeline for the city. A good reason for this, however, is also that the real estate prices in Hyderabad are far lower than Bengaluru and Chennai.
In the rural areas, the KCR government launched big irrigation schemes and welfare programmes (which basically entail direct transfer of resources to the rural populace and thus designed to gather votes). In order to bring the government closer to the people the number of districts has been increased from 10 in 2014 to 31 now. Whether the various initiatives have impressed the voter, would be seen in the next Assembly elections. The Assembly’s term ends in May 2019 but KCR wants to schedule elections ahead of the national polls so that the achievements of his government are not dinned by the Modi-Rahul campaigning.
Elites intact
KCR who rules his State much like a feudal baron helped by his son and nephew (both cabinet ministers) and does not go to office (but operates from a new chief minister’s office at his residence) has apparently told Modi that if he is allowed to run Telangana he will support BJP at the Centre. BJP has a very minimal presence in Telangana but to ensure that his party is not taken for granted, party president Amit Shah came to the State in September and publicly lambasted the KCR government. Whatever the result of the elections, five years of Telangana has led to the rise of new elites (who are locals from Telangana) without decimating the older elites (who came from Andhra region).
But is Telangana better off than what it was under Andhra Pradesh? Less than five years may be too small a period to assess this, but certainly the State is not drifting and not worse off than before.
The writer is an author and senior journalist.