Telangana - From Agitation to Reality

 On 20th February 2014, the TELANGANA Movement  has finally reached  its  final destination when the Bill for TELANGANA was passed by both the Houses of the Parliament and it became 29th State of India. For this  great momenent ,the people of  Telangana region have to wait for more than 60 years and finally when this day has arrived then there are mixed reactions. Like every movement ,it has its  own cost also.More than thousand people who lost their lives were students of Usmania University which remaind  the centre of this movement. Many people may be surprised by this revelation that Telangana movement is the outcome of a social and political engineering .The rising aspirations of SC, ST and backward castes due spread of eduation  provided energy to this movement.Political opportunism and economic exploitation by upper caste, lack of job opportunities for lower caste people further intensified this movement. The demand of Hyderabad as capital of the new state symbolises all these under currents of the movement. Therfore this movement will give expression to rising desires of lower castes.And doubt history gives us a moment which leaves long lasting impression and leaders may forget what had happened  in Parliament and how the temple of democracy was vandalised but common man will keep this in his long lasting memory. After independence, the government of India has appointed a State Reorganization Commission in 1953 keeping in view the various complexities in the process of creating new States. On public demand the State of Hyderabad was disintegrated and Marathi speaking region was merged with Bombay and Kannada speaking region was merged with Mysore State. The State Reorganization Commission (SRC ) also recommended merger of Telugu speaking region of Hyderabad with Andhra State. After going through pros and cons of SRC recommendations, the Central Government decided to merge Telangana with Andhra Stateand a new  State known as Andhra Pradesh was formed on 1st November 1956 with special safeguard measures to protect interests of Telugu speaking people. 

The Telangana region cotributed tremendously to the growth of Andhra Pradesh but very soon it was realised by the people of Telangana that all the promises made under "Gentleman Agreement" have not been honored and discontent started growing. After a lot of deliberations, an all party agreement was signed on 19th January, 1969 for proper implementation of Gentleman Agreement, but discontent kept on growing and  agitation for Telangana became violent. The Telangana movement passed its several phases and finally from 2000 onwards ,this gained momentum with the formation of Telangana Rashtra Samithi (TRS) led by K.Chandrashekar Rao.

In 2001, Congress Working Commitee sent a resolution to the  NDA government to look into this matter however it has rejected this proposal on the ground that problem of backwardness can be solved with proper utilization of the available resources.  After that again this movement  kept on moving but growing discontent among people of this region on many occasions became violent. Knowing the long term implications of the neglect of people's demand Home Minister P. Chidambaram announced formation of Telangana State on 9th December 2009. But instead of providing any solution to the problem it created stir and protests across Andhra Pradesh and Rayalseema. As a result the government has to announce the withdrawal of its notification on 23rd December. The government  appointed Justice Sri Krishna commission to look into the matter. But nothing concrete came out of all these exercise and finally on 17th February 2011,  non cooperation movement was started and it continued for sixteen days causing huge loss to state government. 

After many small and large threats of resignation and causing damage to the state property the Central Government finally decided to introduce Telangana State Bill on 17th February 2014 in the Lok Sabha and rest is the history .It was finally passed by both the Houses and now waiting for President nod.But the process of creating a new state will be remembered for its persistent struggle and dirty behavior of MPs .Now question arises if Telangana was a necessity then the decision to form twenty ninth State should not been delayed so much so that a system becomes a looser and faith of people in Parliamentary system is dampened.The logic of smaller states has to be studied in great detail and should  be examined in the light of performance of already created states.