If we were to conduct a ranking of the most unenviable political situations to be in the world today, the UPA government in India would surely bag the top slot. Throughout its second term, UPA had a relay of scandals – 2G, CWG, Coal Gate – to name only a few.

A grim economic situation and (a long due) public outrage over a number of legitimate concerns – corruption, inflation, safety of women – have been exacerbated by an acute crisis of leadership. If these were not enough for a party riding on a strong anti-incumbency wave to elections in a few months, the Congress has picked up a real bomb-shell by announcing the formation of Telangana and getting it approved by the Union Cabinet.

The decision has seen a wave of resignations and exodus of ministers and legislators from the party in protest. Now with YSR Congress Chief Jaganmohan Reddy on an indefinite fast in Hyderabad and Chandrababu Naidu set to do the same in Delhi, the Congress is definitely between the devil and the deep blue sea. It cannot go back on ‘T’ after coming so far. And if the past is any indication, it does not have the requisite leadership in it to effectively tackle the protests, and translate them into gradual acceptance.

Political Calculations

Apart from being the ruling party in undivided Andhra Pradesh, the Congress currently has 33 of 42 Lok Sabha seats from the state. Most of it, though, can be attributed to the efforts of former chief minister of Andhra, late Y S Rajshekhar Reddy. With elections approaching and demands for Telangana pinning the party to the wall, the Congress was left with two choices – create Telangana, claim credit and get a possible 17 seats from the state that will be newly formed; or draw a blank in a united Andhra Pradesh.

In the event of a non-decision, Congress strategists felt, K. Chandrasekhar Rao, leader of the Telangana Rashtra Samiti (TRS), and others would have blamed the Congress and walked away with a handsome tally in Telangana. But in Seemandhra (the term used for Coastal Andhra and Rayalaseema combined), the credit for keeping the state united would not have accrued to the Congress, where the YSR Congress has made sufficient dents in the party’s base.

Clearly, it was a decision purely with electoral calculations in mind. Jagan, as the Kadapa MP is popularly known as, summed it up when he asked, “Just for 16-17 seats, how can they play with the future of lakhs of people in a state?” In fact he went a step to directly attack the Congress president and said, “Someone wanted the son to become a PM and bifurcated Telangana.”

However, the calculations by the Party, it seemed, had not taken into account the substantial anti-Telangana sentiments in its own ranks. Just after the cabinet decision, a spate of resignations followed, with those of Union tourism minister Chiranjeevi and minister of state for railways Kotla Surya Prakash Reddy being the prominent ones. HRD minister Pallam Raju and ministers of state D Purandeshwari and K Kruparani also announced their resignations. Many MPs have already resigned and said they quit the party. The mess could not be deeper.

The Movement

Andhra Pradesh, as we know it today, has three main cultural regions: Telangana, Coastal Andhra and Rayalaseema. Telangana is the largest of the three regions, covering 41 % of the total area and approximately the same percentage of population in the state. Among the many reasons that the protagonists of Telangana cite, economic backwardness, relative deprivation (vis-à-vis Seemandhra) and political subjugation are important.

When the Government of India annexed the princely state of Hyderabad in Operation Polo, the Telugu speaking people were mostly distributed in the princely state of Hyderabad, Madras Presidency..

The overarching need of national unity and integration, as well as Nehru’s reluctance to recognising linguistic identities as the bases of regional organisation, meant that these peoples were to stay divided on administrative lines. However, the death of Potti Sri Ramulu in 1953 forced the government to create the Andhra state by carving out Telugu-speaking areas in the Northern Circars and Rayalaseema regions of the erstwhile Madras state.

With Andhra having been formed, soon there were demands for bringing the Telangana region also in its fold. However, the States Reorganisation Commission, appointed in 1953, was not in favour of an immediate merger of Telangana with Andhra state, despite their common language. It noted that the people of Telangana had several concerns. They had a less-developed economy than Andhra, but had a larger revenue base which could be diverted for use in Andhra.

Irrigation projects on the Krishna and Godavari, they feared, would not benefit Telangana proportionately, even though people of Telangana controlled the headwaters of the rivers. It was feared that the people of Andhra, who had access to higher standards of education under the British rule, would have an unfair advantage in seeking government and educational jobs. It is pertinent to note that some of these concerns still figure prominently in the demands of a separate Telangana.

Despite the unwillingness of the people of Telangana to form the larger Andhra Pradesh, the merger was done after what is known as the Gentleman’s Agreement between the leaders of the two regions to safeguard the interests of Telangana. Nehru termed the merger a “matrimonial alliance having provisions for divorce”.

The new state of Andhra Pradesh could neither dispel the fears of the people of Telangana, nor did it take effective steps to address their genuine grievances. The discontent grew and soon took the form of a movement for a separate state. The rest is history. The divorce that Nehru envisaged has come about 57 years later, completing a full circle.

Lessons for a Fledgling Democracy

What do we learn from this forced marriage and consequent divorce? Can the T incident be used as a case study to reflect upon our failings, and facilitate departure from the ridiculous ad-hocism and confusion that prevails in the politics of federalism in this country? Can relevant insights be drawn so as to better our approach towards other similar demands for statehood? The answers are anybody’s guess.
For those who care, the lessons are note-worthy.

First, it should become clear by now that ad-hoc patch work to fiddle with genuine aspirations of people always leads to disastrous results.

Second, and more importantly, it should be recognised that demands of statehood are not the end objectives in themselves. Rather, they are the culmination of many other factors. It is only when people lose all hope in the current administrative set-up that they resort to the demands for statehood.  

Third, it is high time we discarded our naïve methods of approaching issues with a singular lens – be it language, region, gender or anything else. The problems in such a heterogenous society will always be multi-faceted and will in turn require multi-dimensional approaches to address. In the case of Telangana, even though there was a state that was created on the basis of language, yet ignoring the developmental aspirations of people in certain areas was not accepted. Even after the creation of Telangana, if the genuine needs of people are not addressed, we can surely witness other movements – but with the same concerns.  Balkanisation is not the answer.

Last, and though this may be a point in vain, but the political class needs to realise that issues of federalism are not those to be decided on electoral calculations.

But who cares!!

The post In Telangana: Between the Devil and the Deep Sea appeared first on Youngisthan.in.

In one of the most eagerly awaited verdicts that will have significant implications for the politics for the country in general, and that of Bihar in particular, a CBI designated court of Judge PK Singh held Lalu Prasad Yadav guilty in a fodder scam case.

Popularly known as ‘Chara Ghotala’, the case pertains to fraudulent withdrawal of INR 37.7 crore from Chaibasa (then in Bihar, now in Jharkhand) Treasury in the 1990s. The scam was perpetrated over several years, and many Bihar state government administrative and elected officials were involved in it.

Besides the RJD chief 44 other persons – including six politicians and four IAS officers – were also found guilty in one of the five fodder scam cases. Other prominent convicted politicians include former Bihar Chief Minister Jagannath Mishra and JD(U) MP Jagdish Sharma.

A lawyer announced that the quantum of punishment will be announced on October 3 and is set to be more than 4 years.

The case unravels
The fodder scam came to light in Bihar in 1996 when Lalu Prasad was the Chief Minister of the state. Apart from the charges of siphoning of funds, there are also allegations that the accused were involved in the fabrication of “vast herds of fictitious livestock” for which fodder, medicines and animal husbandry equipment was supposedly procured.

Notwithstanding his gimmicks for which Mr. Yadav is (in)famous, he had to resign from the post of CM in 1997 after a court issued an arrest warrant against him in connection with one of the cases.

The FIR was lodged by Bihar government in February 1996 but the case was transferred to CBI a month later. CBI investigated the scam for a year and the charge sheet was filed in 1997. The charges were framed in 2000 following which the Special CBI court commenced trial against Lalu Yadav and 44 other accused.

In an interesting turn of events, Yadav had moved the Jharkhand High Court and later the Supreme Court, seeking change of the judge in the case. Yadav had in his petition alleged that trial court judge PK Singh was biased against him as he is a relative of PK Shahi, Education Minister in the Nitish Kumar Government in Bihar, “who is his (Yadav”s) biggest political enemy”.

RJD’s plea had faced stiff opposition from JD-U leader Rajiv Ranjan who submitted that it would be a ‘travesty of justice’ if the judge is transferred at the far end of the trial. He raised a question on RJD supremo’s petition seeking transfer of the judge who has been hearing the case since 2011.

Both the courts dismissed his petition, and directed him to complete argument in the case before the CBI court.

The Timing
What is so special that makes this case so noteworthy? Are we not witnessing a period of frequent arrests and convictions of politicians – Suresh Kalmadi, Madhu Koda, A Raja, Om Prakash chautala – to name only a few? Some of these have been convicted and others are most likely to be. The sums involved with these gentlemen range from a few hundred crores to lakhs of crores. So why this excitement with a case that dates back to 17 years and involves ‘small’ sum of 37 crores? The biggest differentiator in this case is the timing of the verdict.

The conviction of Mr. Yadav comes at a time when India’s political history is witnessing significant – if not paradigmatic – shifts. It was only a few weeks ago that the Supreme Court ruled that legislators, if convicted, stand to lose their seats from the very day they are convicted. They no longer get the grace period of three months for appealing that they enjoyed earlier.

Though political calculations of the UPA government tried to get this negated through an ordinance that was almost through, Rahul Baba appeared from nowhere and decreed that the ordinance was fit only to be torn. Lalu’s luck could not have been worse.

New Twist for Electoral Calculations
We are due for elections to five state assemblies, as well as for the Lok Sabha within a year. With Lalu wielding substantial weight in Bihar (that sends 40 MPs to the Lok Sabha) and among the Muslim-Yadav and OBC communities in the northern Indian belt, he was going to be a key figure in the Congress’ strategy to take on Narendra Modi.

It was widely perceived that the ordinance to negate the SC order was primarily aimed at rescuing Lalu. His conviction alters the electoral calculations substantially. While the BJP, with its cry of Swaraj, stands to gain, the Congress and its allies have to do some thinking now.

Secondly, this has significant implications for Bihar politics as well which, in turn will have its own effect at the national level. This will strengthen, though ironically, both the JD(U) as well as the BJP.

However, Nitish Kumar stands to gain more for his frontal attack on corruption and his emphasis on good governance. It also gives us enough reasons to guess that, especially in the light of Rahul Gandhi’s stance on the ordinance, the Congress and JD (U) can move closer.

Yadav’s conviction will badly hit his own party – the RJD – not least because there has never been a succession planning in that party. One silent beneficiary can be Ramvilas Paswan who is also a leader of the backward castes, and can be expected to gain at the cost of the RJD.

Healthy Signs for Democracy
The conviction of Yadav, along with other politicians and high ranking officials, in separate cases comes at a crucial juncture. Justice – procedural as well as substantive – is one of the key pillars on which democracy rests.

The elected representatives are the drivers of parliamentary democracy. The perception – which is becoming a general conviction – that political leaders can get away with almost anything – acts like a termite that undermines peoples’ faith in democracy and its manifest institutions.

That the gap between publicly held beliefs and judicially attested convictions is narrowing, is a healthy sign for democracy. This sign, when seen against the backdrop of the anti-corruption wave, demand for better governance, safety for women, legislations for socio-economic justice etc., is enough to give us hope that the democratic project has affirmed its roots in India, finally.

(Amulya is a writer based in Delhi. He writes on political, socio-economic and developmental issues.)

The post Behind the Bars: End of Lalu’s career, victory for democracy? appeared first on Youngisthan.in.