My take on agitations.

Let me start off by being honest. I have always been one of those skeptics who could not determine if writing was a good idea. Somewhere in the back of my mind there was this thought while writing is most certainly a transmission of ideas, it probably is also a certain form of self perpetuation. This lingering doubt along with an all encompassing laziness kept me from being a writer. I have written those articles and theses that are necessary for the obtaining of promotions in my profession, which incidentally is teaching, but I have always been of the opinion that writing anything more was quite unnecessary. Now I am veering round to the view the writing a blog or a book may not be such a bad idea. A question can therefore be asked as to why the change?

The answer will have everything to do with the afore mentioned idea of self-perpetuation. While at one time it seemed that self-perpetuation was a regrettable exercise, my recently confronting a situation in which self-perpetuation is the norm has decided for me that in the context of many perpetuating selfs, mine too can be one. I therefore write my first piece in my blog.

The context of this is the agitation that is taking place in the University where I work, the Osmania University at Hyderabad in India. The Osmania University was set up the Nizam of Hyderabad with a noble intent; of educating the people in his State. Unfortunately however the University has now slipped slowly into a situation that is ignoble. Till about twenty years ago, many places in the world, especially universities in the United Kingdom, including Oxford, had recognised Osmania University as a good and well-known university in India. Sadly today that is not the case. Everywhere I go I am asked about why the standards have plummeted so much in my university. My answer often is just a wry smile or a shrug of my shoulders. Today however, those gestures do not suffice as adequate answers when the university has become the focal point of attention. What has made it that is the fact that the Separate Telangana Agitation seems to have its epicentre here. In fact, it is not an epicentre at all. It seems to be the only point from where the agitation is happening. This is borne out by the fact that the rest of the city of Hyderabad and areas in the Telangana region are going about their lives as they would in regular circumstances.

It is not my interest here to discuss the merits or the demerits of this agitation, though I can see the demerits in huge, magnified letters. For one, I can see that no foreign students will be coming to the university if things proceed on these lines. But the protagonists of the agitation will say to hell with the foreign students. This is a point of distress to me. The student composition of the university today is such that a great majority of students come from a rural background with very little exposure to the ways of the present day world. In such a situation, having foreign students on the campus is one compensatory measure of providing a little more exposure than one would otherwise have. My anxiety is that if the foreign students stay away from my university then it would negatively impact on the culture and possibilities of exposure available to local students. In my mind this is all important because it hurts me to see that my students are already disadvantaged in more ways than one. So am I against the agitation?

I am against the agitation in its present form. My understanding of the issue of division of the State of Andhra Pradesh is that its motivations are very political and embroiled in a power struggle that has not much to do with the aspirations of the common man. The common man that I am talking about is not one who belongs to any particular section, stratum or denomination of society. The common man is the one who is truly common in its most literal sense. It is not really my intention here to go into the historical factors and facts that have contributed to the present imbroglio, though I believe that I am very much in possession of all those murky details. My present concern is the articulation of the problem. Recent history has documented very clearly that a rift of sorts between a couple of politicians in one political party led to the creation of a political party based in the principle of separation. Though this party has been in existence for a period that is long enough for it to take part in two general elections. Its performance in the first general elections that it faced in 2004 was nothing to write home about, but the second time out in 2009, it was something to write about. It was all but decimated. Yet a few months after the poll results are out and after the party in question lost the confidence to take part in the elections for the Municipal Corporation of Greater Hyderabad and rather coincidentally with the elections an agitation has been launched. The party under discussion does not have a cadre and it has not been in a position to show a mass base either. So it seems it deemed it fit to convert the student base of the region into its de facto cadre and has launched the agitation for a separate state. What is now obvious is that the students themselves have many different benefactors coming from different political and ideological backgrounds and the consequence is that while the students are together in their agitation there is no clear or apparent leadership. It is now therefore an agitation that is running as per the laws of physics rather than on the basis of any enlightened leadership. Meanwhile there is no resolution in sight.

I shall end this post here. Treat this as part one of what could be a very long post. I will be back with part two sooner than you think.