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Journalism of Courage
The Andhra Pradesh assembly results were regarded with unprecedented national attention. Whether they represent a curtain raiser to the future will have to await Thursday8217;s General Election verdict, but at the strictly regional level they indicated that there is more that unites the people of Andhra Pradesh, than divides them. The decisive manner in which the Telugu Desam Party was beaten across all the three regions of the state shows that the anti-incumbency factor played a larger role than any sentiment for or against separatism. There is no doubt that the Congress Party8217;s decision to enter into a seat-sharing agreement with the Telangana Rashtra Samiti helped it improve its tally in the Telangana region. However, the view that this would create a backlash and prompt the people of coastal Andhra and Rayalaseema to unite behind N. Chandrababu Naidu proved wrong.
This display of across-the-state unity suggests that the Congress Party, with its greatly enhanced political presence, can easily retrieve the ground within Telangana by directly addressing local feelings of alienation within the framework of a united state. In other words, the Congress must dust down the six-point formula crafted by none another than Indira Gandhi in 1974 and revive the three regional development boards. It must breathe new life into panchayat raj institutions that had all but withered under the Naidu regime so that development can be fostered in the region through new institutional arrangements. What the region needs is devolution, not separation. A separate Telangana is no solution to the problems of the region nor is it in the developmental interests of Telugus as a whole.
