implications of bifurcation of andhra pradesh into telangana and seemandhra

7/27/2019 Implications of Bifurcation of Andhra Pradesh Into Telangana and Seemandhra

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Implications of Bifurcation of Andhra Pradesh intoTelangana and SeemandhraJuly 29, 2013 at 4:10pm

Bifurcation of Andhra Pradesh is a very good thing for the people of Andhra and Rayalaseema.

However, it is a very bad thing for the people of Telangana.

I do not know how much you already know about the history of AP, but I will try to give you some

background before we jump into the main part of the answer.

History: The map below shows the provinces in south India post independence. The blue part was

actually a part of the Madras Presidency during the British rule and the yellow parts which seem to

be split by red and blue lines together constituted the Nizam state. Nizam's kingdom was divided into

3 parts as shown and the Telugu speaking part was merged with the Telugu speaking part of the

Madras Presidency to form the present day state of Andhra Pradesh. This was followed by the

formation of Karnataka, Kerala, Maharashtra, Gujarat, etc. Now why did the whole thing evenhappen?


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Ancient Map of South India. Depicting the original Division

Remember that the blue part in AP is seemandhra (Rayalaseema+ Coastal Andhra) and the yellow

part is Telangana. There was a freedom fighter called Potti Sreeramulu, who felt that the Telugu

people in the Madras presidency were not getting their fair share and started a satyagraha-

demanding a separate state for the Telugu people. Nehru initially opposed this struggle and Potti

Sriramulu died as a result of Nehru's negligence. The Telugu people were enraged and Nehru was

eventually forced to create a new Telugu state.

Now, what followed was Nehru's failed social engineering- which is the root cause of today's

problem. Remember how Patel forced the Nizam to merge his kingdom into the Indian Union? After,

kicking the Nizam out, Nehru thought he could do some clever social engineering by giving the

Telugu speakers of the Nizam's kingdom a new language-based identity. He did not care about the

disparities between the people of Telangana and Seemandhra. What were the disparities?


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Telangana had a feudal history with Islamic rule for over hundreds of years (similar to Delhi), while

Seemandhra was ruled by the British and had a long colonial past (similar to Tamil Nadu). However,

Nehru did not care. His bigger fear was that the forcibly annexed state of Hyderabad might someday

leave the Indian Union to join Pakistan.

The next step was to build a capital. People of Seemandhra proposed Kurnool as the capital for the

new state. However, Nehru convinced them that Hyderabad would be a better location because it

had all the infrastructure left behind by the Nizam.The modern state of Andhra Pradesh was formed

and was ruled by successive Congress governments- until N T Rama Rao started the Telugu Desam

Party on the basis of Telugu pride and self-rule. Now, there was also a Telangana agitation in the

meanwhile, and there was also a separate Jai Andhra movement during Indira Gandhi's prime

ministership. However, the Congress party was able to suppress these movements in both the

regions- simply because it was the single largest party in the state without a strong opposition.

During all these years- from post-independence to the late 1980's Andhra Pradesh (Telangana in

specific) was a social-economic basket case. Then came Chandra Babu Naidu. He transformedAndhra Pradesh in to what it is today: from a basket case into a top 5 state. I won't write much about

him because most people know his achievements very well and I will leave you with a graph below-

that speaks volumes. The spike in Hyderabad was during Naidu's rule. This was how Hyderabad

was transformed from a backward, lawless city in to a modern metropolis.

Development in Andhra Pradesh


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Now, this is the real contentious issue. People of Seemandhra always felt that it was their

investments and human capital that created all the wealth in and around Hyderabad, while

Telangana people were free riders. They have always been very upset that many of the coastal

cities like Vishakhapatnam, Vijayawada, Tirupati, etc., were neglected because all the investment

was flowing in to Hyderabad for far too long. Hyderabad by the end of 2005 was like a huge black

hole that gobbled up all the foreign direct investment in the state. The Seemandhra people were also

worried about the sharing of Krishna and Godavari river waters with Telangana (besides

Maharashtra and Karnataka). Meanwhile, a man named KCR tried to advance his political career by

bringing back the separate Telangana movement and starting his own party. His initial argument was

that people from Seemandhra have stolen all the fruits of development from the people of

Telangana. Later an expert panel called the Sri Krishna commission set up by the central

government proved his argument wrong. Here is the link to their

report:http://pib.nic.in/archieve/other.... Now that his argument was proved wrong, KCR picked up

another cause: Self-respect of the Telangana people. This is where things get very sensitive.

There are three major regional dialects of Telugu- each spoken by the people of Telangana, Coastal

Andhra and Rayalaseema. People of Telangana always felt that their dialect was being considered

inferior by the speakers of the other dialects. Also, the mass media (like Telugu movies and

Television) have always used the Coastal Andhra dialect. So, KCR successfully found a new reason

to exploit to his political gain. He claimed that the Telangana culture and dialect were being

considered inferior by the people of seemandhra and the only way the Telangana people could get

back their self-respect is by demanding a separate state. He started a fast-unto-death- which really

scared the hell out of Sonia Gandhi and Chidambaram in 2009 (Remember the Potti Sriramulu

incident?). So they caved in and announced in December 2009 that they are willing to form a

separate state of Telangana. Now the story moves to New Delhi. This is the election year and Soniais worried that the Congress might be decimated in AP during the 2014 elections. Since 2009, the

Congress party did not do anything about separate Telangana- until the last month when they finally

woke up to the election reality. The state of AP sends a strong contingent (~35) of Congress MPs to

Lok Sabha. She is worried that she would lose to KCR in the Telangana region; Jagan Reddy or

Chandra Babu Naidu in the Seemandhra region. So she has instead decided to divide and rule the

state. She believes that- if they can form the state of Telangana before 2014, they would at least get

17-18 MPs from the newly formed state. However, she is clueless about Seemandhra.

Here comes Mr. Owaisi. Remember this hate-monger from Hyderabad? This guy has collaborated

with the Kashmiri Congress leader Ghulam Nabi Azad- to work out a plan to socially re-engineerAndhra Pradesh all over again. They have created a plan that would split the four districts of

Rayalaseema into two- one half would be merged with Telangana and the other half would be

merged with Seemandhra. They want to rename the new Telangana state as the 'Hyderabad state'-

just like the Nizam times! This will be a very dangerous thing for India in the long run. The idea here

is to create a huge Muslim minority, which would ensure that the congress party has a secure vote

base and political future in the new state. Take a look at the social composition of Andhra Pradesh.
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Social Engineering in Andhra

Now why would Telangana lose out and how would Seemandhra gain from the division?

1. Telangana would fall prey to the vote-bank and socialist economic policies of the Congressparty due to the presence of a large number of minorities, and backward classes. Note that

the Muslims in Telangana are Urdu speaking, whereas the Muslims from Seemandhra are

Telugu speaking and are very well assimilated into the society. Look at the social mix from

the 6th bar in the graph above- Telangana would have a huge minority population- which is

like Congress party's dream come true. However, the opposite of this would happen in the

state of Seemandhra- as it would have less than 5% Muslim population. Refer to the last bar

in the graph above.

2. Compare the percentage of high-castes in Telangana vs Seemandhra, i.e 6th Bar Vs the lastbar in the graph above. The high castes from Seemandhra were the entrepreneurial classes

who have been creating a lot of wealth over the last few decades (including Hyderabad).

Think GMR, GVK, LANCO, Dr. Reddy's, Satyam, Redbus, media conglomerates, and the


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whole of Tollywood, etc. Telangana would lose out on these capitalist classes and their

entrepreneurial spirits. On the contrary, the elites in Telangana have always been feudal but

never entrepreneurial and these are the capitalists the state of Telangana would be left with.

This will impact their economy over the long run. On the other hand, Seemandhra would

have a huge amount of these entrepreneurial classes- close to 31% of the population.

3. Hyderabad would no longer be the cash cow. The first wave of wealth creation in Hyderabadis over and this can be inferred from all the economic indicators. This is the worst time to

separate this city from its capitalists and entrepreneurs. The opposite is true for

Vishakapatnam and Vijayawada. They are yet to begin their first wave of economic growth.

4. Seemandhra would be a power-surplus state while Telangana would be a power deficit state.Seemandhra would have an infrastructure surplus, while Telangana would become a

landlocked state by losing out on major ports, coastline, golden quadrilateral and major

railway freight corridors. It would also lose its share of revenues from the KG gas basin.

5. The Telangana movement was very successful because of the involvement of the students.KCR has promised government jobs to all these people. Now the real question is how would

he create all those government jobs? On the other hand, a great amount of job creationwould happen in Seemandhra because they would need brand new infrastructure and need

to build their new capital.

6. Identity politics and the loss of cultural capital all over again. The division is not only beingmade on the premise of under-development but also on the basis of self-respect and Culture.

How would the people of Telangana reconcile with their identity issues once the division is

over? Is there a real leader who could make this process smooth and rebuild their identity?

What kind of Telugu would be taught in Telangana schools? Would you eliminate Andhra

poets from your reading list? How would the Telangana people be able to assert their rights

over the Telugu language and its 4000 years of literature, when most of it was produced by

Seemandhra people? Will the Telangana media immediately switch to the Telanganadialect? Will there be Telangana movies? If yes, would they be disrespected and

ridiculed? Will the new Seemandhra state successfully hijack the Telugu identity once and

for all? Will Seemandhra emerge as a strong language based state like TN? All these

questions have no concrete answers, but my prediction is that Telangana will be in a state of

deep identity crisis for a long time to come and this will be their biggest handicap. After all,

4000 years of identity cannot be divided as easily as a piece of land. This is similar to what

happened during India-Pakistan partition.

The Seemandhra region might lose out on water-sharing etc., but the merits clearly outweigh the

demerits. Besides, they would still have the access to the private sector jobs in Hyderabad. Now

how would all this affect the nation?

1. The Pandora's box of state division would be opened once again. There will be demands forVidharbha, Tulu Nadu, Saurashtra, Gorkha land, Bodo Land, Purvanchal and many others.

2. Economic barriers between the newly formed states of Telangana and Seemandhra wouldimpact the market forces and the overall trade in the region.


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3. Communal forces would increase in Hyderabad and the Maoist activity would grow manifoldin the forest areas of Telangana. There is no concrete proof for this but this has been the

trend in the states like Chattisgarh- which actually shares the Maoist affected forest area with

Telangana.

4. This is clearly a case of the congress party exploiting sub-regionalism in order to reappolitical benefits from it. Its pure social engineering at work. This is nothing but a mockery of

the Indian democracy.

What is being reported in the national media is a very superficial analysis of what is really

happening. They make it seem like the division is Telangana's gain, while it is actually

Seemandhra's. Here is why- Imagine a state where one half of it was like Gujarat and the other half

was like Chattisgarh, and assume they were forced to coexist. That was exactly how Andhra

Pradesh operated, thanks to Nehru's disastrous social engineering.

Now that Telangana has voluntarily chosen to break away, the Seemandhra region will be

unchained, and the people there will finally be able to unleash their true potential. If things gothrough as most of us expect, you have another Gujarat in the making.This is how I look at it.

implications of bifurcation of andhra pradesh into telangana and seemandhra

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