State News And Discussion - 3

[dhu]

[url="http://www.dailypioneer.com/222245/Cong%E2%80%99s-inept-State.html"]Cong’s inept State[/url]



Chandan Mitra

What made the dramatic events of last Wednesday midnight quite incredulous was the rapidity of capitulation by the Congress high command. That fasting Telangana leader K Chandrashekhar Rao’s health was deteriorating by the hour was apparent for at least three days previously. But the ruling dispensation in Delhi displayed no great concern, evidently confident of tackling the situation on the law and order front as well as managing to break KCR’s resolve, and get him over to the Capital for protracted negotiations.



In the past, the Telangana leader had not demonstrated iron will and appeared eager to compromise whenever rewards were dangled before him. His political judgement was also not particularly spectacular; it was rather strange that he should have put in an appearance at NDA’s last pre-election rally in Ludhiana in May although his party was contesting the poll in alliance with BJP’s ex-partner TDP and the Left. KCR’s Telangana Rashtra Samithi came a cropper in the elections, bagging just 10 Assembly seats out of the region’s 119.



Once more, pundits busily penned the maverick leader’s political obituary, ascribing his party’s declining fortunes to KCR’s erratic behaviour, failure to rein in malcontents in the organisation and, most importantly, inability to retain the faith of followers that he could actually deliver a separate State.



Where the Congress high command erred was in assuming that KCR’s popularity was in terminal decline and for a third time since Independence the demand for statehood had been successfully defused. Aware of mounting doubts about his leadership qualities, KCR opted to gamble with his life. Probably even he was pleasantly surprised by the manner in which the latent popular demand for statehood got ignited by his decision to fast unto death. Students of Osmania University took the lead yet again in galvanising the movement, just as their parents had done in the 70s when M Channa Reddy had raised the banner of revolt through his Telangana Praja Samithi.



Buoyed by public support KCR’s resolve steeled and this time he spurned all allurements. Meanwhile, absence of a master tactician like YS Rajashekhar Reddy had weakened the Congress’s negotiating skills. Besides, the party had reluctantly accepted the high command’s diktat anointing K Rosaiah as Chief Minister; privately most party MLAs continued to root for YSR’s son Jaganmohan. They obviously seized this opportunity to embarrass the Chief Minister and “expose” him before the high command.



In many senses, Congress is now paying for its duplicity. It swept the 2004 elections in alliance with TRS, half-heartedly pledging statehood for Telangana without any serious intention to keep the promise. The Pranab Mukherjee Committee set up by the Prime Minister to examine the issue was aimed only at buying time. Exasperated by the pussy-footing, KCR quit the Union Cabinet in 2006, but the fact that he had grabbed the first loaf of office thrown at him without clinching Telangana first, sharply lowered his credibility, which was reflected in the near rout of his party in the by-elections that followed his decision to pull out all elected representatives and seek a renewed mandate.



Had the Congress used Manmohan Singh’s first term to initiate the process of statehood for Telangana, it would not have been forced to procrastinate before KCR virtually at gunpoint. Having done so last Wednesday, it now has to reap the whirlwind of fury that has gripped the rest of Andhra Pradesh. This is what happens when a leadership concedes a demand under pressure: Pre-existing fissures elsewhere open up instantly because the ground has not been prepared patiently over time to bring other interest groups around to accepting the idea.



The ham-handed manner in which the Congress leadership handled Telangana, therefore, stands out in stark contrast to the finesse displayed by Atal Bihari Vajpayee who carved out as many as three new States during his six year tenure.



Unlike Congress, the BJP was earnest about its manifesto commitment to create Uttarakhand, Chhattisgarh and Jharkhand out of UP, Madhya Pradesh and Bihar respectively. Vajpayee picked up the threads only after the agitations for statehood had peaked in these areas. In fact, he added Chhattisgarh to the list although there was never much of a demand for it. With the Uttarakhand Kranti Dal spending much of its ammunition in the bloody conflict with trigger-happy Mulayam Singh’s police and the All-Jharkhand Students’ Union and Jharkhand Mukti Morcha on the decline, it was relatively easy to move peacefully towards setting up these States.



BJP also introduced the idea of the existing Assemblies adopting resolutions for division of their respective States. Even Lalu Prasad, never an enthusiastic promoter of Jharkhand, fell in line. Consequently in November 2000, the first major division of States since their original reorganisation in 1955 was accomplished seamlessly. Nine years have passed but the creation of three new States has not led to an explosion of unrest elsewhere, except for occasional stirrings in West Bengal’s Darjeeling district.



It’s different this time, because the Centre has capitulated under pressure and fear of violence. Leaders like Gorkha Janamukti Morcha’s Bimal Gurung will now be compelled to launch a hard line agitation on TRS’s lines if he has to retain command of the Gorkhaland movement. This trend could be repeated to revive dormant demands for Harit Pradesh and Vidarbha, besides spurring relatively fledgling agitations for Purvanchal, Bundelkhand, Bodoland, Karbi Anglong and a host of separatist tendencies in Assam. Of these, I foresee a significant surge first for Gorkhaland — a demand that has simmered for more than three decades and revived in a big way after Gurung successfully sidelined Subhash Ghising some 10 years ago.



For the BJP, this will pose a dilemma because its erstwhile bigwig Jaswant Singh is the incumbent MP from Darjeeling who won the seat on the lotus symbol but was sponsored by GJM. However, since the party has reiterated its commitment to establishing smaller States and, after shedding its alliance with TDP, supported Telangana, it should be able to work its way through the maze. It is the Congress which is now hoist with its own petard.



Although most parties are cagey about it, I believe the only way out now is to set up a fresh States’ Reorganisation Commission. Statehood demands have gone beyond linguistic contours and are today focused more on relative economic deprivation, cultural identities, ethnic separateness and so on. Besides, some States like UP are simply too big and unwieldy to be governed as one politico-administrative entity. In other cases, such as in the North-East, mixed tribal and plains populations make it difficult to undertake surgical operations, so a greater degree of local autonomy may be the answer.



Instead of helplessly waiting for KCR clones to sprout all over the country, political maturity demands that the Centre takes the initiative through a new Commission that can lay down clear guidelines for accepting or rejecting statehood demands. There could be some short-lived turmoil on this score, but that would be easier to handle than waiting for violent agitations to explode all over India.