Problem sets

The Congress sealed its own fate,perhaps,when it decided to ride the choppy Telangana wave last year. An issue that is tangled up with the very creation of Andhra Pradesh in 1956,it has been taken up by parties like the Telangana Rashtra Samithi but the Congress,seeking insta-credibility,announced separate statehood for Telangana last December. Later,it tied itself up in knots trying to sort out the ensuing chaos in the absence of a real reorganisation mechanism. Its Telangana failure is now writ large,as it has been significantly bruised in the by-polls to 12 assembly constituencies in the area,while the TRS,which derives all its strength from the statehood cause,is expected to comfortably win most of the seats. Tellingly enough,the Congress state president,D. Srinivas,was beaten by a 12,600 vote margin from the Nizamabad urban constituency. With TRS support,the BJP candidate,Y. Lakshminarayana,sailed through.

The Congress depends heavily on Andhra,which hauled in 29 seats for UPA-I and 33 for UPA-II. After YSRs death,however,the party has been floundering from crisis to crisis. It has visibly failed to contain the Jagan problem,and faces the possibility of the state unit turning on itself. By taking on an insufficiently understood issue like Telangana,it has undercut its previous pan-Andhra talk. And with this loss to the TRS,it has demonstrated how easily a flammable cause can be converted into political opportunity. Both the TDP and Jagan have raised the emotional pitch,and may yet hurt the Congress further.

The TRS has no issues weaving in and out of political formations,so long as it manages to be the loudest and most unremitting voice speaking for Telangana. Just last year,it made the latest in a series of political flips after joining the third fronts grand alliance,it went back to announce it was going with the NDA. The party had been severely diminished in both state and national elections. Now,if they find themselves rejuvenated,that has much to do with the Congresss self-destruction in the state.