Born of several agitations, Telangana doesn’t shy from change; Assembly results reflect this

The BJP was surely attempting to mount a challenge, but did not have a base. The Congress, which had won 19 seats in 2018 and was dealing with internal differences, was considered to be nowhere in the picture.

But a dramatic turnaround ensued and now, the mighty BRS has been reduced to 39 seats.

What could explain this change and what did the Congress, which for a long time was painted as “anti-Telangana” for the delay in granting statehood, capture in its campaign?

One answer to this could lie in the history of the Telangana region and its public movements.

Dissent not new

The people of Telangana are no strangers to protests, mobilisation, and articulation of demands. There was a spirited Communist-led peasant agitation between 1946 and 1951 that was fighting for the liberation of Hyderabad state from the feudal Nizam rule.

There was of course the Telangana agitation itself, which existed since the 1960s but took its most potent shape between 2009 and 2014, spearheaded by students. The state had come to a standstill several times during this period, with several sections of society joining in, demanding their share of “nidhulu, neelu, niyamakalu (funds, water, jobs)”.

The Naxalite movement in undivided Andhra Pradesh was also very strong. Under the People’s War Group (PWG), 21 of the 23 districts in the state, including seven districts in present-day Telangana, were affected by Left Wing Extremism (LWE). Many of these districts were part of the designated ‘Red Corridor’ that stretched from Andhra, across Maharashtra and Chhattisgarh, all the way to Odisha. The Maoists were able to cultivate a base in Andhra Pradesh largely by tapping into the resentment against big landlords, stemming from the Nizam rule, among the peasants and the landless.

In a society such as this, shaped by the awareness of multiple forms of protest and mobilisation against the clampdown by the powerful, there seemed to have been a growing perception of the KCR regime’s dominance over the state. The words that people repeatedly used while speaking to this reporter were “ahankaram (arrogance)”; “pogaru (pride)”; and “kumbakonalu (cheating or scams)”.

The Congress appears to have seized this specific undercurrent, playing it up, while also emphasising on the irregularities in implementation of the schemes, the lack of government jobs and the discrepancies in conducting recruitment exams in a state that has a higher unemployment rate than the national average. It is also a testament to the strong civil society presence in the state that jobs became one of the primary issues in the poll discourse, with the Congress announcing a job calender in its manifesto and highlighting it as its core points of focus.

Notice the words newly-appointed CM Revanth Reddy used after the Congress win on Sunday: “We will revive democracy in the state…We will set an example of how human rights can be maintained…Pragati Bhavan (the CM’s residence) would be named as Praja Bhavan and it would be open to the public, unlike in the past. Similarly, the Secretariat would be opened to people and the media and there would be no restrictions.”

The phrase “open to the public” is crucial here and, in one sense, a foundation on which the Congress spun its campaign.

Targeted campaign

The Congress’s messaging across its campaign songs, advertisements, and cartoons targeted the “inaccessible”, “corrupt” and “arrogant” BRS government. KCR was repeatedly referred to as the “farmhouse CM” who had no time for people’s concerns. His family was said to be reigning over the state. The Congress promised a “prajala rajyam (people’s government)” instead of a “dorala rajyam (landlord’s government)”. The party’s tagline was: “Marpu kaavali, Congress ravali (There needs to be a change, Congress needs to be in power).

In the last nine-and-a-half years of KCR rule, there seemed to be a growing perception regarding the BRS government’s unchecked control over the state, leaving no opportunity for virtually any opposition, with a few perceived to be cornering all the benefits.

Local MLAs were seen as having grown in stature and become openly corrupt, pocketing cuts from a range of welfare schemes. In November last year, the Telangana High Court called for “impartiality” in selecting beneficiaries for the Dalit Bandhu, which provides Rs 10 lakh to Dalit families. Concerns had also been raised over irregularities in the 2BHK dignity housing scheme to provide houses to those below the poverty line, the Dharani portal to digitise land records, and the lack of an upper limit on those who could get farm incentives as part of the Rythu Bandhu scheme.

A tenant farmer from Kamareddy told this reporter: “The land next to me belongs to a family with 200 acres. They don’t cultivate anything and are not in the village too… They are still getting the benefits.”

This sense of strongman MLAs wielding a lot of power even as benefits did not reach everyone equitably seems to explain the BRS’s dismal performance in the rural regions of the state. Of the 39 seats it won, 16 were in Hyderabad and five in the neighbouring Ranga Reddy district.

The Indian Express previously reported on the Telangana government’s sweeping use of the preventive detention law, which the Supreme Court had called “a callous exercise of exceptional power”.

With his aggressive vocal abilities, Revanth became the perfect face to seize on all of these factors. It certainly did help his narrative that he was also jailed during the BRS rule.