Meet the Politicians

For this post of mine, I draw inspiration from a song that Roger Waters wrote in his last record with Pink Floyd  which was called the Final Cut. The song I refer to is actually called "The Fletcher Memorial Home" which is about how all the tyrants and kings were confined in an imaginary home that was named after Eric Fletcher Waters, Roger Waters' dad who died when Roger Waters was three months old, in the Second World War. In this song there is a brief spoken word section where Waters makes fun of politicians and I have felt that the same lampooning can be done about our own politicians who are bent on destroying Andhra Pradesh first and later the country itself. So that you get the sense of what I am doing here is the spoken word section that Roger Waters wrote:

"Ladies and Gentlemen please welcome,

Reagan and Haig, Mrs Thatcher and Paisley,

Mr. Brezhnev and Party, Mr. Begin and friend,

The ghost of McCarthy and the memories of Nixon,

And now adding colour, here are a group of anonymous Latin American meat packing glitterati".

This song and the album were created after the Falklands War which was seen as a betrayal by Waters of the post second world war dream that England would fight no more wars. I am just going to paraphrase the lyrics with the names of all the great politicians who are doing their best to destroy Andhra Pradesh. Needless to say the names are too many to add into those 5 lines, so I will selectively pick up the ones that I think will make the most sense.

"Ladies and Gentlemen please welcome,

Sonia and Singh, Kiran and Ashok (NGO leader)

Mr. Naidu and party, Mr. Jagan and friend,

The ghost of Indira Gandhi and the memories of Channa Reddy,

And now adding colour here are Prof. Kodand and his group of anonymous state splitting literati".

Do they expect us to treat them with any respect?

I am not going to go into the twists and turns that this sordid drama is taking. All I know is that politicians from both sides are least bothered about common people and all that they want is something to satisfy their power for hunger, which I suppose is this city called Hyderabad. Today all those warring for this city and against each other see Hyderabad as a combination of gold+diamond+coal+mica mine that can be harvested to their advantage. What I see is that while they do this for their own benefit and satisfaction of their greed, for common people who live here the city is slowly turning into a big landmine that will blow up sooner or later and take their lives. How many more twists and how many more terms before anything concrete comes out of this imbroglio. My estimate is that they will be infinite in numbers. One side waits for the other side to get some assurance and then they will start playing their games. First when Telangana was burning, Coastal Andhraites were fiddling, now that Coastal Andhra (including Rayalaseema) is burning, the Telanganaites are fiddling.

I think this is an issue that is being kept alive. It is like a relay race where the baton is passed on to the next member of the team. Here it might appear that there are rival teams that are passing the baton on to each other. That is the chicanery of it all. In reality they are all aligned on the same side and are making hay when the sun is shining. And this is an endless relay race with newer members becoming part of the team. Now that YS Jagan claims that he stands for status quo, it is quite clear that there is a deep strategy here between his party and the Congress. In fact, there has been an allegation for a very long time that it was he and his father YS Rajashekhar Reddy who instigated the movement for a separate Telangana as a strategy to defeat Chandra Babu Naidu and the Telugu Desam Party that seemed invincible. Even now the Congress is using a strategy by which it will not lose too much in the new Telangana state and the residuary state of Andhra Pradesh.

Look at it this way, the Congress has a tie-up with the TRS here in Telangana. So they will sweep the polls in the Telangana region together. By granting a separate Telangana the Congress will have alienated a number of people in the Coastal Andhra side. There Jagan Reddy and his YSRCP have emerged as a strong force since it was Jagan and his mother who did the first volte face and pledged loyalty to keeping Andhra Pradesh undivided once Digvijay Singh made the announcement of a separate Telangana. The law courts have been very cooperative with Jagan Reddy once he has been given bail. He was first told not to leave Hyderabad and later it has come down to he can go anywhere as long as it is in India. So what did the courts now see that they did not in the past? Why did the CBI not oppose bail and all that followed vehemently. It is perhaps ironical that the High Court of Assam has held that the Central Bureau of Investigation is an unconstitutionally constituted body!!! Does this mean that Jagan and company are now free birds? I am waiting for some other court to say that the police in India is an unconstitutional body.

But to comeback to what I was saying, since the first about face was done by Jagan and YSRCP they are now favourites in the coastal Andhra side to perform well in the polls that are just a few months away. So here is the picture. The Congress is not likely to get too many seats from the cow belt. It will have to rely upon Andhra Pradesh to give it enough seats for it to head UPA - III.  We have seen that the Congress thinks that it will do well with the TRS in the Telangana region. Now if Jagan Reddy does well, slowly the cases will all be dropped and he will get a certificate of being squeaky clean, and to fight the communal forces and anti-national forces, he will sink his differences with the Congress party and give the party support either from outside or by merging with the Congress. And who knows he may even get that post of Chief Minister for which there are no great leaders available within the Congress. So the question is why do this? Just for this election?

I think there is another dimension to this as well. The Congress is trying to finish off the Telugu Desam Party and Chandra Babu Naidu in a big way. Chandra Babu Naidu and the TDP have no strategy and have been out of power for 10 years. If they are shut out in this election, it will be very difficult for Naidu to even run his party. Fifteen years of not being in power can hurt politicians very badly and where it matters most; their pockets. That could be the beginning of the end for the Telugu Desam. The MIM is another interesting case. They do not want a separate Telangana but if it is inevitable then Hyderabad should be an integral part of it; not a joint capital or a Union Territory. The reasoning here is simple. The MIM owes its existence to Hyderabad and its surrounding areas. If this becomes a UT or a Joint Capital in the control of the Central Government, where do these people go for their living? So that is why they have now revived the call for a Rayala Telangana so that they will have some constituencies where then can be in politics in the Kurnool and Anantapur districts. And so they are looking after their own interests.

The BJP is the biggest casualty in this. They have shouted themselves hoarse about how they will give Telangana if they come to power. Nobody heard their shouts. Now they have been saying that they will give full support to the bifurcation bill. This was until yesterday when finally someone switched on the light in their office. What does BJP gain by supporting the Congress? Nothing. On the other hand it will facilitate the Congress' strategy and its victory. So the BJP is now dithering on how to make things difficult for the Congress without appearing as if they are doing this deliberately. And ironically enough Sonia Gandhi went to Bastar in Chattisgarh and told the people there that the BJP was dividing them for its (BJP's) own gains. Now what was that English saying. Something about the pot calling the kettle black. Enjoy these games now. But remember they will comeback to bite us all and at least for that let us be ready.

P.S: Not proof read due to paucity of time. All errors of syntax, semantics and anything else may be excused. Thank you.

The politics of Andhra Pradesh are a preview of what is to come in the future of India

I have not been posting for a while because of some personal problems and also because I thought things will be repetitive. So I kept away from the blog even while the agitation for United Andhra Pradesh was on for more than two months. I told myself that there is no need for commentary on the filth that was taking place in the name of politics. However, upon reflection I have felt that if I did not comment on what happened in the last two months in the Andhra and Rayalaseema regions then it would seem as if I was more than happy to castigate things that were happening during the separate Telangana agitation but I did not react when something similar is happening in the other two regions in the name of keeping the State of Andhra Pradesh united. Therefore I shall make a commentary which I hope to keep short because all the things that I said about the separatist agitation in Telangana are valid for the integrationist movement which is still taking place on the other side.

I have always maintained that I stand for leaving the State of Andhra Pradesh as it is even though I come from the Telangana region. For me the games that are being played on either sides are those which are necessarily the ones that politicians want for their own survival. In some of the posts in the past I have said that bandhs and agitations that disrupt the lives of people are not Satyagraha but anti the principles of Satyagraha. I still maintain my position. It is at one level laughable that the so called practitioners of non-violence on both sides of the divide style themselves as satyagrahis who are peacefully agitating for the satisfaction of their demands. And these demands and the methodology adopted for making the demands are non-violent and peaceful. I would like to disagree. The inconveniences caused to the common people even in the Coastal Andhra and Rayalaseema areas due to the strike of the government employees has shaken me just as it did when similar things were done here. 

It hurt to see Intensive Care Units in hospitals not having electricity and water and patients not getting the care that they are entitled to. If this is not violence against people, then what is?  Paralysing the state administrative machinery and making sure that we the people take giant leaps backward in the developmental process is indication of how base and immoral politics have become.  Many people from the other side expressed awe at the way in which the employees kept the strike going despite not getting salaries. It goes without saying that salaried employees need salaries every month to keep their households running. It is obvious that some politicians have been funding the movement on the other side as well. 

One of the things that has surprised me most is the fact that the Congress has become such an opportunist party that it represents both sides, that of separatists and that of integrationists. The Union government wants the state to be divided and the State government does not want it to be divided. The agendas of both sides have been hijacked by Congress politicians making other political parties irrelevant. This is like the left hand fighting the right hand. And when the announcement came that a separate Telangana will be created parties like the YSR Congress Party headed by the son of former Chief Minister YS Rajashekhar Reddy decided that they would throw in their lot with the integrationists so that when the State does get divided they will have an advantage over every other party. 

Innocently or stupidly it is being believed that the Congress along with the TRS will sweep the Telangana state post the division of Andhra Pradesh and that the Congress will be routed out in the Coastal Andhra and the Rayalaseema region. This is nothing but underestimating the power of politics and the potency of the games that politicians play. The Chief Minister of  Andhra Pradesh has suddenly discovered his principles and now says that politics are not important but the lives of people are. Ministers at the state and union levels have sent in notional resignations. Not all only a few, while others like Chiranjeevi have been desperately clinging onto their chairs. Their logic? They need to be in the government to fight the government.

The chief of the TRS, Mr. K. Chandrashekhar Rao is the comedian who comes out occasionally to make terrible statements about the culture of Andhra or about how he is going to kick the Andhras out of Hyderabad and Telangana. Suddenly all attention gets diverted to his comments. While most people see this as a comedic sideshow I suspect is something far more sinister. The MIM and its silence is another thing that is baffling. The only thing that it really contends against is the making of Hyderabad into a Union Territory, for that would mean that the MIM party whose base is mainly in Hyderabad will suddenly become irrelevant. No wonder then that the MIM has been saying that it will reach out to more areas in the country.

The TDP and Mr. Chandra Babu Naidu have become clueless. I am reminded of the line from the Dire Straits song "Once upon a time in the West" which goes "Sitting on the fence is a dangerous course, you might even catch a bullet from a peace keeping force".  Everybody knows what Mr. Naidu stands for. So why not stand by one's own convictions and beliefs and face the people boldly? Mr. Naidu's image as an efficient administrator, as one who stood for some principles have all got eroded with time. I admired him when he famously said "I don't mind losing the elections and sitting in the opposition. It will not be my loss; it will be the loss of the people". Ratan Tata also said of him that "While other people are thinking about the next election, Mr. Naidu is thinking about the next generation". Now these are things only archivists like me remember and for most people he is no different from the regular politician; perhaps only worse, since he has to get into power by hook or crook.

The BJP is one party that has been singing the Telangana tune from the day it lost the 2004 elections. The day after the results came out, Mr. Arun Jaitley said that the reason why the BJP lost is because of the fact that it stood with the Telugu Desam and denied Telangana. And this in the nation wide general elections. Nobody searched their souls to see if the pogrom that they had initiated in Gujarat had any effects on the election results. Today the mastermind behind the pogrom is the party's candidate for Prime Ministership next year. And the candidate that is being pitted against him from the Congress Party's side is Mr. Rahul Gandhi, someone who says politics are so omnipresent that they are there in everybody's pants and shirts!!!

One thing is clear; any which way the fate of the people of Andhra Pradesh has been sealed by the short sightedness and blindness of politicians. Bifurcation or no bifurcation is not a matter anymore. The leadership and its abject lac of vision is the problem. The same political game that has been played out in Andhra Pradesh for the last nine years or so will be played at the national level from 2014 elections onwards. The issues may differ but the players are the same and their tactics in dealing with issues will remain the same, so what you see in Andhra Pradesh today is what you will see pan India starting with the next elections.

Why this mindless violence?

It has been a very long time since I made a blog post. I have been rather busy with a lot of work and so I have really not had the time to make blog posts, though there have been plenty of subjects on which I could have written.  But most of them could have been repetitions of the themes that I have already written about.  This blog post is also a theme that I have written about in the past, but somehow my conscience tells me that I should take time out and make a blog post about this.

This blog post concerns itself with the bomb blasts that took place in my home city of Hyderabad.  Last evening two bombs went of leaving several people dead and many injured, some of them critically.  In all probability some more will join the list of the dead.  The people who died are those who have nothing to do with anything about communal violence or with communalism itself. These are innocent people who were going about their daily life and have families that were waiting at home for them to return back in the evening after a day's work.  There were also some who came to Hyderabad to attend job interviews and thanks to the blasts, have died.  Instead of them going home alive, only their corporeal remains will go back.  Families will be devastated. And the situation could be that some of the people who died may be the sole bread winners of the family.  Some of them could have little children who will get deprived of a father and the love that the father would have given to them.  Some people may have left behind young widows with children and now the life of all of them will become a huge mountain to climb.  Time will heal their wounds, but the question is to what extent?  The grief may come down with time but the hatred for those who have perpetrated this crime will grow.  

The perpetrators have claimed that they are the Indian Mujahideen.  And this means that among the public those who lost people and those who are stunned by the random act of terrorist violence, there will be a growth in hatred for the religion to which the terrorists belong. Since violence begets violence this will reinforce typical stereotypical notions of that community and outfits from the other group will want revenge. So one may see that there is an increase in communal violence at various different levels. Does Indian society require this?  I know for a fact that most people, irrespective of their religion, live their life by being indifferent to other people and their religions.  However, these kinds of terrorist acts will make people notice each other, but in a suspicious way and that will contribute to the overall growth of intolerance in Indian society.

What baffles me is that what do the terrorists think they can achieve by killing people violently?  Acts of terrorism have been and are being perpetrated in India and other countries for many years now.  Have the terrorists ever looked back to see if these random incidents of violence have achieved any results in terms of what they want? How does their cause get helped by these actions?  That is the reason why I say this is mindless violence.  If people were to think about the consequences of their actions, they will see that other than devastating a few families and ensuring that general hatred for people belonging to one religion and making them vulnerable to similar attacks, nothing else is achieved.  As a peace loving person (and most of Indian society consists of people like me) and one with concern for the future of the country, I am dismayed that we are perhaps travelling back in time to the medieval period where religion based intolerance was at its peak.

I am deeply distressed by the fact that India is increasingly witnessing different kinds of violence on a daily basis. There are divisions in Indian society based on caste, religion and region. The caste division is something that is increasing exponentially with the passing of each day and this rate this division will only grow and not get wiped out. Region based intolerance is something that has been afflicting Hyderabad for a few years now. Due to this students who have been drawn into the movement have lost any chance of having some kind of a career. Religious intolerance which has always been the substratum of Indian society is breaking out increasingly into the open and the levels of intolerance have reached alarming levels. I shudder to think of the society in which I live becoming one where one does not know if someone who has gone out for work in the day will come back alive or dead.  Will the people who wait for their loved ones to return find that they have become victims of anxiety since they do not know if their family members will comeback alive?

I am fully aware that writing a blog post does not really change anything.  But I am hopeful that those who read my posts will at least start thinking about this issue as not an inter-religious issue but as something that is only connected with a few people who refuse to think and act as robots for the blood thirsty people whose minds are perhaps convoluted.  I find it ironic, that in the land of the Mahatma (Gandhi) who strove for peace and tranquility, violence is becoming a norm.  What legacy are we going to leave for the generations of the future. Are we going to leave a society in which violence and communal war will become the norm? Will we ensure that lives are lost over causes which are as empty as the heads of people who want to perpetrate violence? I would like to believe that there is hope, but you my dear reader decide if I am right in being optimistic about the future or if I am just living in a fool's paradise.

P.S: Not proof read.  Errors of syntax and any other may please be excused.  Thank you.