dna edit: Unhappy precedent

To hear Home Minister Sushilkumar Shinde tell it, it was impossible for the Congress to hold back the Telangana Bill because “Sonia Gandhi had promised statehood to Telangana during UPA I itself.” It is a fitting epitaph for one of the most muddled, disgraceful episodes in the history of the nation’s Parliament. The Congress may have honoured its matriarch’s putative intent, but it has failed in every other respect — from honouring the norms that govern Centre-state relations to political and party management. The manner in which the Bill was tabled and rammed through amidst dissent on the basis of a voice vote, without adequate deliberation and with Lok Sabha television blacked out, has set an exceedingly dangerous precedent. The consequences that are likely to play out now, with YSR Congress chief Jagan Reddy calling for a statewide bandh and Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister Kiran Reddy’s impending resignation, will not be pretty.

There is an economic, administrative and historical case to be made for Telangana. The statehood movement, after all, started as far back as 1969 with the Jai Telangana movement. But the Congress has not made that case. At every step of the way, its motives and calculations seem to have been based on short-term political gain. When it allied with the Telangana Rashtra Samiti (TRS) in 2004 for electoral reasons, it bound itself to giving its partners’ cause due consideration. It failed to set up a second state reorganisation committee and fulfil this promise. Its subsequent decision in 2009 to bring up the issue again was another instance of electoral considerations shaping party policy. Then-Chief Minister YS Rajasekhara Reddy, the state’s tallest leader, had just died in a helicopter crash, making the party’s position in the state precarious. When TRS founder Chandrasekhara Rao subsequently started a fast unto death for Telangana state, the Congress rediscovered the cause in a bid to strengthen its standing — and promptly abandoned it again when the inevitable protests followed.

The cynical back-and-forth and manipulation of both pro and anti-Telangana factions within Andhra Pradesh has vitiated the atmosphere to the extent that the current chaos was inevitable. Worse, the Congress has violated the spirit if not the letter of the Constitution. Given the nature of the Indian state at the time of independence and the imperative of pulling together 550-odd princely states, the Constitution does not mandate the consent of a state before altering its boundary. But in every instance of a new state being created since then, the government of the time has wisely employed a consultative process with compromises that have secured the consent of all stakeholders. The creation of Telangana stands in stark contrast.

The BJP has made its stand on smaller states clear. And to its credit, the manner in which the NDA carved out Jharkhand from Bihar, Uttarakhand from UP and Chhattisgarh from MP was in keeping with the democratic spirit that must imbue Centre-state relations. The Congress — as it has done in so many issues over the past decade — has, in contrast, shown that it is ruled by the need to stay in power, not by any clear policy or ideology. It is likely to pay the price for this in the upcoming elections. Unfortunately, so are the people of Andhra Pradesh and Telangana.