I am fully aware that yet again I have fallen behind by not posting for a while. There have been good reasons for that. I have been busy with a few things at work. I will continue to post about Education being a categorical imperative, but for the time being let me write about something which totally shocked me yesterday. Once again we will have to revisit the Telangana issue in order to understand my angst about what happened yesterday. I have the honour of working at the Arts College on Osmania University Campus which somehow has become the main arena for all things sensational. It seems to be the only place where people think they can do something about Telangana and therefore on a daily basis there are a couple of outdoor broadcast vans on the OU campus and these belong to the increasing number of Telugu news channels that lean on the Telangana issue to provide some software for them, with no expenditure. You may be aware that in the last few days there have been a spate suicides on the part of people starting from the age group of 16 to 28 and apparently all of them died because Telangana was not being formed soon enough. This has lead to some students meeting on the OU campus where a call went out to all students to NOT commit suicide. A few days later, i.e yesterday a meeting was organized to have students take a pledge that they will not commit suicide for Telangana. What I saw was what shocked me.
In the space in front of the Arts college, stood a number of outdoor broadcasting vans of some TV channels. And there in whatever space was available were students brought in the droves by the organizers. What shocked me was that most of them were possibly below the age of ten and the others were definitely below the age of fifteen. They were all in school uniforms of different schools. I wondered if this is the age group of people who commit suicide for Telangana. Do they even know what the issue is? What saddened me even more was that after the pledge was taken these little ones were made to shout slogans of Jai Telangana in front of the TV cameras. What is this? Shades of LTTE? Are we now recruiting babes in arms for the furtherance of politics? Is it really necessity to involve small children for the realization of a separate Telangana? I personally think not. But you decide for yourself. And somehow I have a sneaking suspicion that this is recruitment of people for the cadres of political parties for the future. We have really started catching them young by the look of it.
