The demand for separate statehood for Telangana

The demand for separate statehood for Telangana is something beyond the factional strife and party affiliations of the leaders of local bourgeois. The demand arises out of the petty interests of local sections of bourgeois, and confides in the general backwardness of this region as compared to two other parts of Andhra Pradesh, its Coastal region and Rayalseema.

To begin with, Telangana is not a land of scarcity but spectacularly a land of plenty, as far as natural and human resources are concerned. But political discrimination has held it back.

Andhra Pradesh is divided into three regions - coastal Andhra, Rayalaseema and Telangana. Of the three regions of the state, Telangana region is the largest one spread over an area of 1,14,800 sq.km. comprising of ten districts, including the state capital: Hyderabad. The region lies on the Deccan plateau to the west of the Eastern Ghats range, and includes the north-western interior districts of Warangal, Adilabad, Khammam, Mahabubnagar, Nalgonda, Rangareddy, Karimnagar, Nizamabad, Medak, and the state capital, Hyderabad, all of which are Telugu speaking and were parts of erstwhile princely state of Hyderabad, till its accession into India in 1948.

The entire region is divided into two main regions namely ghats and peneplains. The surface is dotted with low depressions. Much of the land in Telangana region is arid and rocky, lacks access to fresh water, and is not nearly as fertile as the agriculturally rich coastal region.

Of the three regions of Andhra Pradesh, Telangana is today the most neglected. The region has been given a raw deal in education, irrigation, budget allocation and job opportunities.

Despite having the mighty Krishna and Godavari rivers flowing through it, the region faces acute scarcity of water. The reason is not far to seek: no government has cared to implement any irrigation projects here. Nearly 79 per cent of the catchment area of the River Godavari and 69 per cent of that of the River Krishna are in Telangana, but the region barely gets 25 per cent of the river waters. Since the formation of Andhra Pradesh in 1956, successive governments have spent Rs 190 billion on irrigation in coastal Andhra. In the same period, less than Rs 35 billion has been spent on Telangana.

It is only after the demand of separate statehood getting roots in the region, that a foundation stone for an Rs 18 billion irrigation project at Devadula, was laid by the State government.

Educationally, Telangana lags behind the rest of Andhra Pradesh. While the literacy rates in coastal Andhra and Rayalaseema are 46 and 45 per cent, respectively, it is only 37 per cent in Telangana.

Telangana has only one university. Coastal Andhra has three, and Rayalaseema, seven. Of the 91 polytechnics in the state, only 20 are in Telangana. Of the 72 government technical institutes, just 26 are in this region.

In 1985, Chief Minister N T Rama Rao pledged 60,000 jobs for youth in the region, but nothing happened. Joblessness among the youth is rampant here. Telangana tops the list in suicides by the peasants in distress of poverty.

Today, eight of the 10 districts in the region are under the sway of armed peasant resistance. Successive governments have used this resistance movement as a pretext to justify the neglect of industrialisation in Telangana. The truth is that the resistance movement itself has erupted directly from the devastation and poverty among the peasantry due to backwardness of the region.

"Farmers in coastal Andhra and Rayalaseema are enjoying all kinds of subsidies. Farmers in Telangana are getting fried in the parched fields." This observation by Professor Jaya Shankar, former vice-chancellor of Kakatiya University, who has studied the problems of Telangana, exposes the reason for popular support to the appeal of separate statehood for Telangana.

In this backdrop of the circumstances and conditions, local sections of the bourgeois have succeeded in seeding the illusion in the minds of the people that statehood under its leadership is the only way to wipe out the 'inequality, injustice and discrimination' the rest of Andhra Pradesh has shown to the people of this region.

The operation of capitalist development in the state has led to palpably more unequal development of different regions under it. Rayalseema with more fertile agricultural lands and the coastal region for its trade, took to steady development, while Telangana could not keep pace with these two. With passage of time, the development continued to be more and more unequal and imbalanced against Telangana. This persistent backwardness of the region, in the backdrop of the failures and illusions of Stalinist-Maoist leadership of the communist movement in the country, provided an instant ground for proliferation of the separatist demand of the local bourgeois for statehood of Telangana.

Even in the background of its general backwardness, lie the rich material and human resources of the region, which make it an ideal land for the investment of productive capital.

It is Telangana which supplies coal to produce power in the other two regions of the State, but on its own it could generate merely 1543 MW of power compared to the 7447 MW in the other two regions, because of lack of industrial infrastructure and paucity of investment.

District-wise analysis conducted by the 'National Council of Applied Economic Research' in 2001, reveals that the Human Development Index scores two positions in top five for two districts of Telangana, two form Costal Andhra districts, and only one from Rayalaseema districts. In bottom 5 positions there were three Coastal Andhra districts and only two Telangana districts.