There is little doubt that the Congress is in a bind over Telangana. Its own rank and file and leadership in Andhra Pradesh are divided mostly on sub-regional and caste lines.
Whether or not you favour or oppose the break up of the state depends on where you hail from. It also depends on who you are, with class affiliation and caste playing a key role in determining attitude.
Only a few days ago, the dramatic announcement by the Union Home Minister P Chidambaram had seemed to herald a new dawn for proponents of small states in general.
In Telangana itself, it led to the end of the fast of K Chandra Shekhar Rao, a one-time Congress ally turned opponent. Within hours, the script went awry as legislators and Members of Parliament from the rest of the state resigned en masse.
A political consensus had seemed near-complete last May when even the chief regional party led by N Chandrababu Naidu agreed on the need to create Telengana. That was not months but many light years ago. Naidu has done a smart about turn.
Chiranjeevi, a Kapu from the coastal region, has followed suit.More ominously for the Congress, the late chief minister’s son, Jagan has come out openly for retaining a unified Andhra Pradesh.
For a party like the Congress, highly centralised and personalised as it is, these are events with no recent precedent. True in 1969, the party underwent a great divide but there were issues of principle, ideology and leadership at the pan Indian level at stake. Now, there seems to be near anarchy in its ranks in a state that reaffirmed its role as bastion just last summer.
Andhra Pradesh’s problems can be traced to the iron grip of Y Rajasekhara Reddy on the state machinery, the party structure and the polity as a whole. He was a firm opponent of the idea of Telengana and said so in the later round of the campaign in May 2009.
More seriously, he broke the hold of the coastal Reddys and the Kammas on the print media and the television networks using government patronage to help his son’s fledgling media venture. Close links with a host of regional business interests was balanced with proper poor programmes such as low cost rice and health care.
The vacuum after his death was all too real. It took as long as three months for the Congress to convene its legislators and affirm K Rosaiah as chief minister.
Even the choice of the former finance minister, a political lightweight from a merchant community, indicates that the national leadership did not want a new strong man in place in Hyderabad. The consequences of this strategy are all too evident.New Delhi couldn’t anticipate theresistance to Telengana.
It is true that the protests are backed by strong business interests. Since the formation of a unified Telugu-speaking state, it was the coast that spawned many of India’s new capitalists, including the GMR and GVK groups.
Harish Damodaran, the chronicler of business houses in post 1947 India, showed how key families in this region saw the transition from farm to factory. Both Chandrababu and YSR indicated the yearning to power in yet another region: Rayalseema.
In the past the Congress, especially under Indira Gandhi, had leaders with a keen sense of the Telugu society. The state gave India its first ever Dalit chief minister, D Sanjeeviah, and its first southern prime minister, PV Narasimha Rao. More crucially, it stood by the Congress when it faced national routs, as in 1977 and 1989. Five years ago, it was the spring board for national power after eight long years in the wilderness.
Such depth of insight was crucial with respect to the Telengana challenge, which is by no means new. In 1969, mass protests on scale far larger than today cut off rail links of north with south India.
The key leader Dr M Channa Reddy had mass support but soon found his place in the Congress platform, going on to serve as steel minister at the Centre and chief minister in the state. Accommodation within a unified state was easier if a man from the disaffected region was at the helm or close to the top.
But much has changed in these past four decades. No one can predict which way the dice will roll when it comes to identities and borders. It is a measure of the short-sightedness of the governing coalition in New Delhi that it did not think through the implications of its announcement on Telengana.
First, it did precious little to prepare the ground for the inevitable in Andhra Pradesh. Second, and more seriously, it does not still seem to have realised that with 33 Lok Sabha MPs anything that happens in the state has consequences for the Congress at a national level. Beyond party politics, a new States Reorganisation Commission seems a logical response. But for that the government has to come up with a long term response.
The writer is a commentator on political affairs
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