Opinion Method or madness?

The switch in symbols this time around is interesting. To add some novelty,the TRS has decided to cook food on the streets of Andhra Pradesh as opposed to fasting,and the Congress’s Telangana representatives (not its opponents) are the ones resigning.

It is interesting that just two months ago,the entire debate in the state after YSR’s rebel son,Jaganmohan Reddy,and his mother,Vijayalakshmi,secured staggering margins in the by-elections,was on the internal dynamics of the Congress in the state — whether the party,despite having the support of 173 members in the House (after securing a merger with the two-year-old Praja Rajyam),was safe till 2014? But within weeks,almost pre-empting the resurrection of the TRS or the JAC (Joint Action Committee) on Telangana,it has now become the ruling party’s own demand and so the Congress would have no problems responding to the “pressure”. The pressure of not being left out has prompted a crisis within the TDP,which can only help the ruling party,as several of the TDP’s Telangana representatives have quit the House. Back-of-the-envelope calculations suggest that even if all Telangana MLAs were to resign,the Congress would retain a good enough majority in the assembly and be able to change the debate on problems arising from Jagan Reddy’s revolt,his display of a “mass base” and hope to limit his influence in Andhra and Rayalaseema areas — in the expectation that he gets pushed into opposing the Telangana demand.

How this plays out remains to be seen. The Congress-led resignations could succeed in containing the agitation and ensure that the party appears proactive and “sincere” about Telangana and successful in securing concessions like genuine adherence to the spirit of the 1956 gentleman’s agreement signed at the time of the formation of the Telugu-speaking state,the first linguistic state in the country.

By “leading” this round of agitation on the issue,the Congress could also gain by pipping the TRS and leading to chaos in the TDP,its main opposition in the state.

Interestingly,the revival of the issue changes the faultlines along which politics is currently being played out in the state. The rumblings within the Congress on the so-called Reddy dominance (sought to be broken by the induction last month of PCC chief Botsa Satyanarayana,a man with a mind of his own,but further compounded by Jagan Reddy snapping at the heels of the Congress) could be temporarily hushed and the Telangana “solution” presented as the Congress’s own idea.

However,the fact remains that over the years the Telangana demand has erupted periodically,and defied a long-term solution,whether in managing political sentiment or in addressing its economic underpinning. The gentleman’s agreement and then the amendments made in the Constitution as Telangana was added as a backward region by introducing an amendment to the Constitution after 1969 have not been fulfilled in spirit. The rights of those who feel disadvantaged,even if there is a case to show as the committee headed by Justice Srikrishna did,that backwardness is not limited to the Telangana region,have been handled tentatively,with the leading party in the state not airing an opinion if it has one,let alone displaying fair and firm handling.

The debate over a possible settlement is older than the state of Andhra Pradesh itself. There is an excellent chapter in a monograph,published last year,called “A State in Periodic Crises: Andhra Pradesh”,based on the travails of the state. Veteran civil servant B.P.R. Vithal documents the concept of the Telangana Regional Committee,a legislative-budgetary committee mandated to look at Telangana revenue generation and oversee its allocation in Telangana and the rest of the region. Vithal shows how successive agitations resulted in first strengthening this provision (the Telangana agitation of 1969) and later (the Andhra agitation of 1973) resulted in the abolition of the provision entirely — the same see-saw appears to be in operation even now as employment rules are tweaked and sentiments of the Telangana side are managed.

Curiously,the only person from the state of Andhra Pradesh to make it as PM was from Telangana,and it was the same P.V. Narasimha Rao who was deputed by Indira Gandhi in 1982 to write a report on the political situation of the state. The job eventually landed on Vithal’s desk. He suggested a whole lot of things to deal with what he understood to be the “unprecedented political phase” that Andhra Pradesh was entering. But his recommendations were struck down and an entirely different set of fiscal steps was taken,and the bureaucrat preferred to take an assignment to Khartoum rather than stay on. That aside,not dealing with politics sensibly and not addressing concerns and murmurs then ensured that 1982 proved to be a turning point for politics in the state with the emergence of a new political force,NTR’s Telugu Desam.

It is early days yet,but the past has enough examples to show how efforts at containing the “situation” can quickly spin in an entirely different direction.

seema.chishti@expressindia.com