JULY 31- Let the bubbly flow for Telangana, it’s been a long while coming.
But when the bubbly drinking is done and the burps dealt with, of course, after the headache of who gets Hyderabad is sorted out, a familiar question will play in the minds of all those residing in the freshly-carved state of Telangana.
At the end of the day, Telangana will still be in India and not in the land of everflowing milk and honey that has been painted in the collective subconscious.
In theory, small states are best. In theory, funds will be better utilised for development. In theory, everyone will benefit.
But as is the case all over the world, the cause hides the grim and mundane aspects of life after it’s achieved. Small states are good but look at the government response in Uttarakhand.
Whatever its size, the Uttarakhand government was as sluggish as the ones in the parent state of UP.
Or for that matter look at Jharkhand. The state has been victim to frequent changes in government and the best cloak-and-dagger heartland politics. Hemant Soren just got in as CM after unseating the BJP.
The granddaddy of the state, Shibu Soren, can’t be CM so everyone else took a turn until Soren senior decided it was time for a generational shift and told his beta to go for it.
Chhattisgarh is lucky that it has been with the BJP after the first Congress government under Ajit Jogi. Beset by Maoist violence, the state figures in the headlines because of Congressmen killed en masse or CRPF casualties or when some Maoists are killed in an encounter.
A new state often turns out to be as rapacious as a swarm of locusts since it has to generate revenue for development and it’s here that industries are welcomed (usually) at the cost of the tribal population whose lifestyle and rights are the easiest to trample on.
The seeds of discord are sowed here and blossom in Mao-fed revolutions and class warfare that is mindless and eyeless. Everyone of the enemy class is fair game and that includes all government employees and people who just want to deal or get on with their lives.
Telangana will now have many claimants – the Congress, the Telangana Rashtra Samiti, the BJP, maybe even the CPM-CPI which led the original Telangana uprising between 1946 and 1951.
But will the people of Telangana get the benefits or fruits, if one extends the argument, of seceding from Andhra Pradesh? Or will a new dynasty rise here too? Time, perhaps, will tell.
