Power and the Substance of Democracy

Let me start with an anecdote here. A few days ago I was asked to go for a recording of a discussion programme on Maoist Extremism and if and how it is a detriment to the developmental process. My co-panelists in this discussion were a retired professor of economics from another university and a professor of communication and journalism from a university which is in the neighbourhood of my university. The moderator was someone who does these programmes as a contractor. I had suggested to the moderator and the other panelists that we have a plan of action in place so that the discussion would be relevant and meaningful. I was told that it would be okay even otherwise, so I let it be. Then the moderator started of the discussion by shooting a question at the communications professor about how extremism can be an impediment to development. To my utter disbelief the professor started off by saying that the proposition was wrong and went on to speak for a staggeringly long time about police atrocities. Then the economics professor let loose about various developmental schemes launched by the government for an almost equal amount of time. By the time my turn had come to speak I was already in a petrified trance, since I had no clue whatsoever as to what this was all about. Before I could say anything meaningful I was told that my time was up since it was time for a break. I was shocked since this was a recording and how could anyone stop me for a break. I was told that the channel preferred not to edit the programme and therefore recorded it as if it were live. Then the second round started. The moderator asked the professor of communications about the role of the media in taking information to the people (what information was not specified) and the good professor rambled on for sometime and then another question was asked of the professor of economics about how the Tatas moved their car factory from Singur to Sanand. He rambled on about a few welfare schemes in Maharashtra and in the districts of Adilabad and Khammam in Andhra Pradesh. Then there was the signal to wind up the discussion and I was asked to briefly speak about why there was unemployment in the country. In the twenty five minutes of discussion that we had, Maoism was never mentioned by the moderator or the other two speakers. Everybody spoke about what they knew and the moderator was quite happy to let them continue since he had no questions. Police atrocities, development schemes of the Union Government, Tatas and Singur and unemployment at the National level were all discussed. If this is how teachers are, it is no surprise that our students write what they know in exams irrespective of the questions asked. But that is not the reason why I started this post with this story.

What came out clearly in this episode was that no one had an idea as to what the State is, what is development and the role of the people in the developmental process. I had a similar experience when I was once asked to speak to research scholars about the role of people in a democracy and the participants were fairly shocked by my starting off with the responsibilities that people have to fulfill in a democracy. They were of the opinion that it is democracy if we just vote and then attack the State for not doing what is expected of it. I simply asked a question there. I asked them as to who was responsible for people breaking traffic laws in Hyderabad when they drive and was told that it was the State. The substantiation behind that was the traffic police were not stopping the law breaking motorists. I said would it not be better if the people did not break rules in the first place and the response was that it is still the responsibility of the State to ensure that people did not break rules.

Put the two episodes together and you can see what I am driving at. We don't seem to have an idea as to what the State is and what its responsibilities are. We also seem to treat it as the 'other' that is distinct from the people and that which is responsible for the miseries and misfortunes that we as people suffer. Institutions such as the police which are seen as enemies are not seen as those which are empowered and legitimized by the State which is itself legitimated by the people. Most people are happy to identify democracy with just procedures such as voting and no more. People do not seem to understand the idea that democracy is self governance of the people in substance, with the procedure of voting put in, to simply identify representatives of the people, who will work for the welfare of their constituents. In my previous posts I have been saying that what is missing in Indian democracy is the deliberative component, which is obviously the key requirement. We do not seem to be able to connect institutions such the Parliament and State Legislative Assembly to the notion of deliberation. We don't seem to realize that these institutions are provided with the idea that they will serve as platforms for people's representatives to discuss the problems and prospects of their constituents, and also to find mechanisms of problem resolution. Contributing to this lack of understanding is the behaviour of our politicians who use the Parliament or the Assembly (if and when they go there) to behave boorishly. My question then is where is the substance of democracy in India? Only in procedures? Add another variable to this and it becomes even more confusing. Could we possibly have societies without power relations in them?

Power is one of the crucial variables that we need to understand when looking at the functioning of society. Otherwise why would we require authority? Authority should be seen as the official and legitimate empowerment of offices and officials so that these can deter naked power. The existence of authority is the acquiescence to the existence of power relations. Democracy seeks to overcome naked power and jungle law through a deliberative process and hence deliberation is at the centre of all democratic thinking. But it seems when judging the functioning of institutions and offices it seems as if we see authority abstracted from the context of naked power in which it exists and hence our disbelief in police and the State. Contributing to this are politicians who use the authority vested in them by their constituents as naked power rather than legitimate authority. How else does one explain the distancing of elected representatives from their people?

This is pretty much the case in Andhra Pradesh today. Politicians have by and large misused the trust of the people to get into manipulations that have very little to do with the interests of their constituents. The interest of the constituents is used as a facade for the pursuance of the politicians own ends, which rely heavily on the politicians ability to extend their naked power. When what should have been legitimate authority begins to act in the manner of naked power, there is a cascading effect that extends to all other institutions as well. We therefore forget that the police and bureaucracy are at one level people like us but those who can go against the dis-empowered people by serving the interests of various contending paradigms of naked power. Separatists movements like the separate Telangana movement or at another level secessionist movements like the onetime Khalistan movement and the present Kashmir movement or extremist movements like Maoism are all conjured by politicians by pitting people against people for the furtherance and fulfillment of their (politicians) own goals of power mongering. In response to one of my previous posts (the one pertaining to Caste at the root of the great divide) my friend Pramod has written a few comments (you can find them at the bottom of the post in the comments section) where among many other things he talked of how it is disheartening to see some people at the bottom of the society having no access to any social and economic goods. In spite of him and I not agreeing on the separation of Telangana into a new State, we have both seen eye to eye about the plight of the truly common and dis-empowered people. His solution seems to be that if the numbers are smaller than the possibility of justice is greater, whereas for me since the problem itself is the making of politicians we need to work at making democracy truly deliberative. That can happen only when we sit down to speak rather than shout at each other. What is urgent now is first the restoration of deliberation at the centre of democracy rather than harping on procedures. People are capable of rational speech and that is the need of the hour. After that if there is still a demand for separation, so be it; that is acceptable since it will be enlightened.

Time for some clarifications!!

The last thing that I want to do is make this blog too personal but under some unavoidable circumstances I am having to make it. My father and some friends of mine who have read the blog are of the opinion that I must spell out a few things. So here goes.

So far I have been discussing the issue of a separate Telangana among many things with my father but never have I specifically mentioned to him as to what my stand on the issue was. My father has only just had a look at my blog and has revealed a detail which I did not know about thus far. He tells me that during the first separate Telangana agitation he was the leader of the Telangana Gazetted Officers Association and later when a formal organization was created he became the President of the association. He later on went on to become the President of the Andhra Pradesh Gazetted Officers Association. He tells me that at that time he supported the idea of a separate Telangana and even now believes in it but his passion is reduced because of his advanced age. He says that the ideal should have been the original Nizam State but in its absence he thinks Telangana is alright. He believes the dislike to Andhra people came out of many factors and most of them boiled down to a superiority complex that the Andhra people had vis a vis the Telangana people. He says that this could be seen even in officers from the Andhra region who treated Telangana people with huge contempt and lost no opportunity to poke fun at them, even if issues were personal. He narrated an incident to me where his superior officer commented on my fathers clothes (which I believe were a little expensive) by saying that he (my father) and many other Telangana people were nicely 'fattened' by the Nizam when in reality they were worthless. He clarified that his position on Telangana was not based on just this one incident but on many. He also says that most of the Andhra officers when they first came to Telangana took the blazer cloth that was used to cover tables and made coats out of them!!! That apart I too am aware of the jibes at Telangana people made by Andhra film makers who cast comedians and villains as Telangana people speaking the Telangana dialect. In fact, they only stopped this after a threat was issued by the naxals who asked them to desist from such fun making. For those of you who are wondering as to why I am narrating this bit, here is the clarification. I have been saying that though I belong to Telangana but I stand for a united Andhra Pradesh. It would be a tad hypocritical on my part to not reveal the fact that my own father does not subscribe to this point of view. I have not revealed it earlier since I did not know about it. I would like to point out that I still stand by my view that in the larger interests of the country there should be no more divisions. I believe that even the separation of Chattisgarh, Jharkhand and Uttarakhand from Madhya Pradesh, Bihar and Uttar Pradesh respectively should not have been carried out. This is not to deny that they had problems then and Telangana has problems now. I believe that if one reads the Indian constitution the concerns of the founding fathers of the nation was the possibility of the nation fragmenting itself again. And I believe parochialism only contributes to this. To me arguments based in sons of soil or people saying 'we want to govern ourselves' are not valid in the context of the larger Indian nation. I believe there can be power devolutions and other remedies but to accede to something which tries to treat an Indian as a foreigner in any part of the country is down right fraught with all kinds of dangers. There is never only one solution to a problem and all possibilities will have to be properly explored. To me everything should be subordinated to conditions that create a spirit of unity and oneness. Beyond this I will not say much else since I am not a person of consequence in decision making.

My second clarification pertains to an observation made by my father and some friends that I have been politically and socially incorrect in naming castes while talking about power relations in Andhra Pradesh. I would like to clarify here that naming of the castes was not for vilifying any caste or person but simply an academic exercise that saw the roles that various castes played in the creating the nature of society and politics in this region. I would like to point out that I have friends and well wishers from all castes and when I say all I mean all, and it is not my intention to derogate anyone or their history. My request to all is to kindly treat this exercise as perspective building not aimed at anyone or anything for any personal gain.

My many thanks to all people reading my blog and encouraging me. I only wish to clarify that the purpose of this blog is soul searching and opening a possibility of dialogue (not argument) among all the stake holders in our politics with the view to promote larger integration of society so as to keep the nation, the Indian nation intact. I shall continue with my posts not just about this issue but others in politics as well and thank you all for tolerating this rather personal interlude.

Really, what is democracy? A problematique?

I read a piece in the "Times of India" of today, written by Manoj Mitta, an old friend of mine (regrettably with whom I am not in active touch like with many people). I thought it was an eloquent piece which juxtaposed the question of economic growth with that of democracy and the will of the people. He said this in the context of the ongoing Telangana agitation and seemed to have surmised that even if there are problems of the economic variety they should perhaps be set aside for the democratic expression of the will of the people. I had read a similar argument when the UPA was voted into power in the year 2004 and when the Sensex crashed by then unprecedented four hundred points in one day. This crash happened because of the combine of Communist parties had sixty two seats in the Lok Sabha and the fate of the Congress led UPA was felt to be very much in the hands of the Communists. The then Finance Minister, Mr. Chidambaram had to speak to the captains of the industry and allay their fears. Then this piece appeared on one of the websites where the writer claimed that the will of two billion Indians was less significant than the economic activity in a two kilometre radius in Mumbai. My friend Manoj is not saying something like this at all. But if the situation was akin to this, he is clear about where his loyalties are. They are with the people, their will and democracy. How I wish the argument was so simple. Let me tell you a story here. In the year 1998 when I was much younger and hot headed I got into an argument with Prof. Gurpreet Mahajan of the Centre for Political Studies, JNU. I had gone to do a refresher course and Prof. Mahajan was speaking about John Rawls, Multiculturalism and Democracy. She concluded that the definition of democracy should be "fairness". I challenged this notion of hers and when she explained why she felt it was what it was, I accused her (very uncharitably and in a most rude manner for which I apologized to her) of performing mental gymnastics. She told me then that to always stick with the definition of democracy as will of the people was untenable.

Over the years (there have been almost thirteen of them now) I have time and again pondered over this question without getting anywhere close to an answer. The question came back to me again today when I read Manoj's article. Really democracy in operation does not lend itself to any easy definitions. Prof. Mahajan had pointed out to me that it was not easy or possible to establish what the will of the people was. Is it unchanging and always well deliberated? Is it the majority will and in that case what about those who do not subscribe to that majority will? Difficult questions indeed and that is why I have asked myself if democracy is a problematique (as in a source from which a number of problems emanate). And to me it seems that it is. Within the boundaries of a nation state is it possible for one set of people to claim the original sons of soil position and on the basis of it, demand rights for separation? What about the other side? To me this seems like a divorce settlement. If both parties agree, then it can proceed further to things such as settlement of the monetary variety. But if one of the parties refuses, then there is no progress. There is no court that can impose a divorce even if one of the partners refuses it. I suppose the Telangana separation issue will have similar problems.

And to conclude this I have another question (not to Manoj, none of my questions are aimed at him. They are aimed at myself and no one else). It is nice to believe that in the determination of societies, economics should not have a role. But then to me it seems as if the political is generating itself out of the economic, and when it is so, is it possible to separate democracy from economic considerations? Aren't the Telangana people saying that they want economic benefits of their own region accruing to them? And in that case if separation will lead to worsening of the economic condition, is it worth it? It is nice to believe like in the Eagles song that "love will keep us alive". But the question is, really can it? Even in the face of economic adversity? Many questions, many thoughts but no satisfactory answers.

Caste at the root of the great divide

This post of mine is a continuation of what I had written yesterday. If land is one of the reasons behind the divide, then caste is the other and more deeply entrenched variable making the divide so wide. In one of my much older posts, I had already written about how the divide between Telangana and Andhra is also overpoweringly a question of caste; Reddy-Velama combine in Telangana vs the Kamma of coastal Andhra. The Kamma is seen as the usurper of position of power by the Reddys mainly and the Velamas to some extent. I have also quoted the revolutionary balladeer Gaddar who said Telangana should be of the people and not of the feudal lords. In Telugu he said "prajala Telangana kavali, dorala Telangana oddu". The revolutionary zeal has also settled itself into the question of caste, because for Gaddar and the Maoists, caste is something that cannot be overlooked. But that is old hat now and everybody knows about it. However as an academician (a poseur perhaps) I find it necessary to inquire into what makes the caste variable so powerful in Indian society and politics.

In its origins the caste system was cosmological (I have talked about this too in the past) and slowly transformed into a social variable with the passage of time. This is also time when the caste system transformed into a jati system from a varna system. Endogamy, as Ambedkar rightly pointed out became the ruse through which the jati system was evolved and maintained by the Brahmin caste over centuries, giving Indian society its very unique character and identity. The sad and interesting part of this evolution of the social system is that only the top and bottom castes were clearly defined. It should also be noted that from "chaturvarna" the caste system became a "panchama jati" system. The panchamas were the chandalas or the untouchables condemned for ever to live on the peripheries of life, society and village (literally) and only performing abhorrent tasks such cleaning of lavatories, taking care of smashan or burning ghats and working with animal hides. Both in the chaturvarna system and in the panchama jati system the Kshatriya is the second in the hierarchy with the Vysya being the third. Here I would like to introduce M.N. Srinivas and his theory of Sanstkritization of castes which allows for caste groups to claim higher positions in the caste hierarchy even though individual upward mobility was not possible.

It is not too difficult to see why Sanskritization was possible. Rarely in the history of India have the Kshatriyas been identified indisputably. The Vysya caste group too was not as clearly defined as the Brahmin and the Chandala. If one looks at the history of India most of the big dynasties have been either Brahmin or Sudra. With the exception of the Rajputs there is no obvious example of another Kshatriya caste. This looseness in the middle of the caste system is what facilitated the upward movement of entire caste groupings. The Sudra, unlike the Chandala was not too castigated. The evidence of that can be seen in the big dynasties like the Nandas, Mauryas and in Andhra Pradesh the Kakatiyas all which were powerful and belonged to the Sudra category. In fact, in the last few decades one sees an attempt on the part of the Reddys and more specifically the Kammas drawing their past to the Kakatiya dynasty while the Velamas have steadfastly claimed that they are rulers or Rajus and therefore Kshatriya. All these castes are more or less confined only to the Andhra Pradesh region and their origins are relatively new. All of them managed to find themselves in the upper caste category, but the way in which they derived their power was different. The Reddys derived feudal power from the Nizam's legacy and the Kammas derived a power from capital in the Madras presidency region. Though they started off as an agricultural community (not caste) they were able to use the surplus from agriculture to invest first in the film industry in Madras, then in Hyderabad, the hospitality industry and finally the software industry. It is well known that capitalism by nature seeks to expand its constituency for purposes of profit making. In this fanning out process the Kammas inevitably came into the Telangana region and into conflict with the Reddys.

The other castes, especially the ones that are called the backward castes, like the Munnuru Kapus, the Yadavs and the Gouds were incorporated into this arraignment of power in order to take the fight to electoral politics. The proximity to power has made the backward castes power centres in themselves capable of making or breaking leaderships. It is this confidence that has pushed the issue of a social justice Telangana or a Telangana to be led by the members of the backward castes to the forefront of the separate Telangana agitation. By now caste has undergone yet another transformation. It is no longer a simple social variable; it turns political. This transformation is crucial because the social factor now fades into insignificance and political power comes into the open, with different leaders of different groupings posturing. The variable that had cosmological origins and therefore direct consequence to life goes through a mutation that makes it a sociological one that is also the determinant of social power. This power was mainly held by the Brahmins and in that instance it was the hegemony of one collective over others. But when caste takes on a political colour, there is a change in the nature of power. Instead of groups exercising power like the Brahmins did, it now becomes more individual in nature. Individuals are able to leverage various things such as muscle power, political patronage and history and turn into leaders of consequence. It therefore becomes a dialogue now between the posturing leaders (in this case a break down of the dialogue) where the terms and conditions of the dialogue are no longer in the hands of collectives. So the issue of Telangana vs Andhra unsurprisingly is very much rooted in the question of castes among others. What is important is that the question of caste is the one question that defies logical answers and continues to directly or indirectly divide people of this region in particular and the country in general. Sometimes (in my desperation) it seems as if this is a curse that more and more generations will have to suffer. But my heart and mind both cry out to the possibilities of end to posturing and creating a community based in the virtues of communication and dialogue as possible means of solving problems collectively. When shall we learn the truth of the old adage "together we stand, divided we fall"? I shall always live in hope, long live India. We shall overcome, some day. And soon, very soon, I hope.

The problem perhaps is still deeply entrenched in the land

In a casual conversation with some old friends a few days ago, I found myself being asked this question as to why Telugus cannot be one state while every other linguistic state seemed to be doing so just fine. Its not a question that ever came to my mind I must admit, and while in the group I dismissed the question as not significant. I also felt that there wasn't any summary proof of other linguistic states doing just fine and I left it at that. But in the last couple of days that question has comeback to me again and again. Not only that, I myself had written in one of the posts that we Indians have tendency to divide ourselves without any outside help. Einstein called India the cradle of mathematics once. In the cradle we seem to have perfected two things - multiplication and division. We are obviously very fecund so while anything else maybe multiplying or not, our population certainly is and has been for a very long time now. The more the population the greater the possibilities of division since we have one of the highest densities of population in the world (excluding Monaco and the Vatican City) that is consuming resources faster than it is generating them. This isn't just a wise-crack because our natural resources are under great pressure due to the ever burgeoning population requiring more and more land. Marxian economics may talk about the extraction of surplus value from labour - the variable capital - in a capitalist society and not so much from land, but in India it does seem as if land is still an important variable even in the age of capital (and I do think that now is the time when we are definitely in the capitalist era). I will not speak too much about this in the context of the whole of India but only about Andhra Pradesh since my investigation here is about why Telugus are unable to live together.

The hotly disputed statistics put out by the Sri Krishna Committee claim that the lion's share of economic productivity and development is centred on Hyderabad and that the city is now more connected to the national and international economy more than to the local economy. The report also says that most of Hyderabad's workforce is in the service related IT and ITeS sectors. It also cautions that Hyderabad itself will have to be careful because it faces the danger of becoming the worlds service house rather an industrially developed city. But for the moment that is an area that I will not visit. Most of the development figures that have been taken into consideration by the Sri Krishna Committee seem to be from the agriculture sector and that too in the last few years when the state has had bountiful rainfall. It is therefore no surprise that the figures without involving Hyderabad in the developmental process of Telangana, are still comparable with those of the ones from coastal Andhra. But we do know of the saying 'lies, white lies and statistics' and therefore we shall proceed with caution while looking at those figures (here I would like to say that I am not questioning the integrity and honesty with which the Sri Krishna Committee did its work. I am and will always be suspicious of statistics and statistical methods since statistics can be used to speak any language).

Hyderabad which is not so dependent on agriculture is therefore sought after by people on both sides of the divide. The coastal Andhra folks will and have been claiming that they developed Hyderabad with the Telangana people rightly disputing those claims. I apologize for again bringing my father into this but he also gave me an insight when he said that the onus of developing Hyderabad was on the Nizam and that he. the Nizam, was mainly responsible for developing the city and what happened after was only building on that firm base that had already been built. He also claims that the real coastal Andhra presence in Hyderabad increased only during the time that NTR and the Telugu Desam came into power and they only invested in a city that had already been developed. Film industry and much later the IT industry seemed to have been their real initiatives. Before anyone hurriedly celebrates let me point out here that Chandra Babu Naidu only' initiated' the development of the Hitech City which grew from investments from abroad and all parts of India and not just from coastal Andhra. What is more important here is the fact that his administration introduced a new model of corruption based in acquiring lands through benami transactions or through private individuals and then putting projects around those lands and selling them at exorbitant prices. The coastal Andhra people benefited from these transactions. That is one of the problems. In this process the traditional land holding of the Reddy's came down significantly and they realized that they were also losing their traditional power which came from holding of the lands (I confess that the story here is a little over simplified but I assure one and all that this simplification does not alter the true nature of the story). KCR as the insider of the Telugu Desam knew this plot quite well and when he split with the party, he came out with all guns blazing against the coastal Andhra people. In my post yesterday I had said that people had been 'unhappy' in Telangana and that there was a dormant Telangana sentiment. Chandrashekar Rao exploited that sentiment and the rest of the story is there in my post of yesterday. I shall therefore spare you the agony of rereading the same again. However, the intent of todays post is that despite claims (by statistics) to the contrary, doubtlessly, Andhra Pradesh is one of the backward states of India. It is as such not as progressive as Punjab or Maharashtra and therefore in spite of capitalism coming in, the people of the state did not completely lose interest in land. Therefore the Telangana-Andhra divide still has a very strong land component to it. Political leaders will and have made careers out of opportunism in the absence of any ideology and therefore the issue has reached where it has. In my next post I shall talk about another dimension that has been politically exploited for nefarious purposes and that is caste.

Attitudes and agitations

A couple of years ago, I watched an interesting programme on National Geographic Channel. There was a lady anthropologist whose name I cannot remember who conducted an experiment on children of human beings and chimpanzees of a comparable age (with chimpanzee years equated to human years like in one human year is equal to seven dog years). The experiment consisted of putting two blacked out glass boxes one of which had a small opening. Inside the box with opening was a candy bar. What the lady did was to give a small stick to children in the age group of 8-11 years and teach the children a sequence of poking the stick in four different places before poking the hole which would make the candy available. The same sequence was taught to chimpanzees of comparable age. Ten children and ten chimpanzees went through the routine and found the candy bar. The lady anthropologist then proceeded to peel of the black paper which was covering the glass. There was only one aperture for all to see. Then she called the same set of ten children and asked them to take the candy bar. Incredibly all of them went through the four steps of poking before finally poking the aperture and taking the candy. She then called the same set of chimpanzees and even more incredibly all of them just poked the only aperture and went straight for the candy bar. They did not bother with four pokes that were simply not necessary. The anthropologist's conclusion was that this was the most important reason why human society is different from chimpanzee society. Though the chimpanzees displayed greater cleverness in reaching for the candy bar, they displayed a greater amount of individualism. The anthropologist claimed that human children by following the order that was originally set even when the black paper had been removed demonstrated an attitude of compliance with what seemed like a set rule. This for the anthropologist the reason why human society is so successful. If you are wondering what this story has to do with my post, I will only say that it has everything to do with human behaviour including follow the leader. The anthropologist who set the rules was the leader and the children followed her rules without questioning and with alacrity.

Let us now come down to the reality about which I have been blogging. Agitations. Most of the time it is made out that agitations emerge from within people and that it is they who make movements happen. I disagree. People will complain about their condition and become unhappy, but rarely do they spontaneously agitate. Agitations are organized by individuals who rally others around them. There is a reason for this too. Eric Fromm argues that people are afraid of freedom because it brings a certain responsibility with it. The fear of failure and unwillingness to own up to that failure is what keeps people from experiencing freedom. Wilhelm Reich argues similarly when he talks about why fascism was so successful. He gives the example of a Europe caught in the throes of the Great Economic Depression where hunger reigned supreme and yet the poor never thought about breaking glasses of bakeries and other eateries that were displaying food and grabbing that food. The fear of punishment and retribution that comes out of owning up to actions kept people away from food. For Reich this is not only the reason for the success of fascism but also the failure of Marxism. Both Reich and Fromm argue that the idea of class consciousness where every single individual was enlightened about his own place in society and that leading to a revolution was simply erroneous according to the two writers, because it does not take into account the fear factor, even that of freedom. They say that this is also the reason why great dictators such as Hitler and Mussolini succeeded. They point out that most of the Russian peasantry was happy to participate in the Bolshevik Revolution because of the faith that they had in Lenin as somebody who would work for their good. In short all populations look for leaders to take care of their problems. Leaders emerge from valid situations but can go on to become whatever they want, as was demonstrated in history by Napoleon, Hitler, Mussolini and Stalin, not to talk of the several dictators who flourished in Pakistan, Bangladesh and almost every African nation. The wisdom of the ages has said that in a war, finishing off the leader was more important than killing a huge number of soldiers.

This concept of leaders setting agendas for people is also quite common in India. Mahatma Gandhi could hold huge sections of people to ransom by fasting. Chauri-Chaura is an illuminating example. He could suspend the entire freedom movement when it was at its peak. That is because people without a leader are like a body without a head. All agitations therefore have a leadership that sets the agendas and goals. They maybe peaceful or they maybe violent. If one looks at what is happening in Andhra Pradesh today, what we see is not people vs people as it is made out to be, but leaders vs leaders. During the Indian Freedom Struggle many such as Rabindranath Tagore, Sardar Vallabhai Patel and even Nehru agreed to a number of things that were suggested by Gandhi even though they did not always see eye to eye with him. That was because the enemy was an obvious outsider and everybody stood to benefit from driving out the common enemy. In the situation that we see in Andhra Pradesh, this struggle for a separate Telangana is happening when everybody's rights are intact but there is a displeasure in the way in which the state is being governed, leading to the advantage of some and the disadvantage of the others. In all this, it is the leadership that decides on what will be the course of action and what will be the settlement of the problem.

Let us go back a few years into the history of the state. Even after the failure of the first separate Telangana agitation and when the state looked steady, there were people who pasted stickers that said Jai Telangana and My Telangana on their vehicles. There were some newspapers in Telugu as well that tried to highlight the problems of the region. So it is not wrong to say there was a Telangana sentiment. But that sentiment did not cry out loud for an immediate splitting of the state. N. Chandra Babu Naidu becomes the Chief Minister and begins a new chapter of manipulations in politics of the state. He denies K. Chandrashekhar Rao a ministerial berth (for reasons unknown to me) and the latter raises cudgels and revives the dormant Telangana sentiment. Initially it is all about electoral politics and stays that way till the December of 2009. Outside appearance is that K. Chandrashekar Rao is keen on keeping the Telangana Rashtra Samithi as a party that is also like a trade union. Use your strength to bargain things for betterment. Over the years his approach loses credibility because of people perceiving that the bargaining that he was doing was benefiting only a few, to the detriment of others. This culminates in his fast, which he was quite relieved to break in a couple of days, but the pressure came piling on from students groups who said he was a fake, and this put pressure on him to resume his fast. This was happening since casteism was coming to the forefront with different Telanganas being demanded by caste groups. For reasons unknown to me the Union Govt/Chidambaram panic and make the now famous statement on 9-12-2009. Then came the backlash from the other side and the appointment of the Sri Krishna Committee on the 5-1-2010.

A year later today there is a rejection of the report of the Sri Krishna Committee by almost everyone. The statistics pointed out in the report are not being disputed, they are being dismissed as fake. The agitations are on again. The Telangana leader have all driven themselves into a corner from which they cannot back out and therefore will have no option but to insist on the bifurcation of the state. In the one year that the Sri Krishna Committee was doing its work, the politicians were trying to be more loyal to the cause than the other. What began as TRS, found its way into the Telugu Desam and the Congress because the Telangana leaders were afraid that their bases will be eroded. The death of YSR and a disinterested Rosaiah ensured that the Congress legislators from the region could start their posturing. The Telugu Desam President found himself in a corner with nothing to say since anything that he said could be used against him by both sides. So the Telangana group in the party tries to drown out the TRS and the Congress. The Praja Rajyam started off grandly by throwing their support behind a social justice Telangana but ended up saying that they wanted a united state. The party has no leadership and therefore no followers as well. So now we are back to where we were in Jan, 2010, only this time the leaders are all now in the holes into which they backed themselves in the last one year. There is no leadership worth talking about even in the central government or in the UPA. The BJP is not believed by anyone. Hence now the saying that anything is possible gains a new credibility. The tragedy is that before that anything happens, lives will be lost, careers will be destroyed, the entire region of Hyderabad, Telangana, Coastal Andhra and Rayalseema will go back by a few decades. Instead of building on what we have today, we will first have rebuild that which we have destroyed and pay for the mistakes of our political leaders who are not even short sighted, they seem to be sightless without even a perception of light. I will quote Roger Waters here, from the song Two Suns in the Sunset from the Pink Floyd album, The Final Cut.

"Finally I understand the feeling of the few,

Ashes and diamonds, foe and friend,

We were all equal in the end". - Roger Waters

And now back to agitations

Now that the contents of the Sri Krishna committee are out, it goes without saying that Hyderabad is abuzz with discussions about Telangana, about what is, what could have been, and what should be. My father is an old protagonist of the Nizam State and believes that when India had its independence the erstwhile Nizam State should have been assimilated into the Indian Union as it was, but with a new name. He tells me that identities in those days were of no importance in spite of the many that existed. He says Hyderabad was then a true cosmopolis with Maharashtrians, Kannadigas, Tamilians, Gujaratis, Sikhs, Muslims and Christians all living together in the same localities and not in different groupings. He says India's integration was best seen in the old Hyderabad and that if that province had not been changed, then that would have been ideal. He is opposed to linguistic states because for him that is the beginning of parochialism. In my numerous discussions with my colleagues at the University I have argued on similar lines saying that the articulation of a Separate Telangana was not really the best and that I would be the first to agree to a reverting of the old situation. Yesterday was a continuation of the same discussion with my father. My father also tells me that the Nizam is unnecessarily vilified and that all development that was seen in Hyderabad which was always one of the big cities of India, was only due to the efforts of the Nizam. He assures me that he knows what he is saying since his grand father was the Chief Auditor of the Nizam's treasury and took care of most of the developmental activity such as the Railways and Roadways etc. I cannot disagree with him on all that but I was thinking about what might have been, had the new state just continued with the old contours? I know that social scientific knowledge or for that matter any kind of knowledge is incapable of dealing with conjectures, but still I am drawn to that question. I ask myself if parochial and separatist tendencies would have existed in such a composite state. I am not too sure that they would not have. Some how the unity that we showed as a nation during the freedom struggle is being gradually replaced by a competitive spirit and jealousy. If this is true then does it matter what the contours of the state are? Maybe people would have agitated on some other lines, but then that is only a maybe so we will leave it at that.

But we know what is today and let us get back to that. The Sri Krishna Committee report is something on which I will not comment too much because I have not read the full report and what I saw are various snippets selectively put out in various newspapers. Now we know that the vernacular press (I don't read Telugu newspapers since I am not fluent in reading) and papers such as the Times of India and the Deccan Chronicle are mischievous and in order to increase circulation will take recourse to various forms of sensationalizing. So what I have seen is mainly in the Hindu which is in spite of a big decline in standards still the best available option. A couple of things caught my eye there. One thing pertains to Hyderabad and the figures quoted in there are indisputable and what they say about it becoming a one crore population city in this year and the nature of the economy here needing a non-disruption of the existing Andhra Pradesh are factually sustainable. On one of the pages there was this piece that said that the separate Telangana state would be economically viable since the per capital income of the Telangana region is significantly higher than the national normal. That is a very good thing indeed. But then the question of why the talk of Telangana backwardness arises. I Telangana really backward and does it need to separate itself for further progress? What yard stick will be used to say Telangana will develop more rapidly without Andhra? Like I said, these are bits and pieces of information which should not be taken too seriously since they may have been taken out of context. But still my curiosity is piqued, that I must admit.

It was one year ago approximately that the Sri Krishna Committee was constituted with the explicit purpose of finding out what the people may want and what would be a realistic solution to the problem. The wheel has turned a full circle and we are back to where we began. Agitations. Why did the political parties agree for the appointment of this commission if they were not going to relent their positions? Is it not a waste of time and precious national money to go through an exercise which is now being dubbed a charade? One of the arguments that I have heard on discussions on various television channels is that the constituting of a separate constitutionally valid and empowered Telangana Developmental Council with statutory powers is not the solution to the problem. The reason cited is that a similar thing was tried after the first separate Telangana agitation and that it did precious little for the region. The instance of Gorkhaland is also being cited where this experiment is a failure because the Gorkhas are still demanding a separate state.

A couple of questions here

1. If Gorkhaland autonomy is a failure then are the states of Jharkhand and Chattisgarh successful? Evidence points to the contrary. Then why selectively use the example of Gorkhaland?

2. If a similar experiment was conducted in the past and it failed what could be the reasons? The person who started the separate Telangana movement in the first place, Dr. Marri Channa Reddy, went on to become the Chief Minister of the State of Andhra Pradesh twice. And there were other Chief Ministers such as T. Anjaiah and J. Vengal Rao, also from Telangana. What did they try to do for Telangana and what stopped them from doing what they could do or wanted to do? Some answers here are necessary.

Unfortunately the whole Telangana question is wrapped in layers and layers of political rhetoric and with politicians and journalists misusing the freedom of speech to spread information that is convenient to them there does not seem to be any possibility of any rational deliberation, which as I have said in another post is the only forward. But in all this posturing and fighting for political one up man ship I don't see that happening. KCR and his family (meaning son and daughter) are making Telangana their family heirloom just as the Nehru-Gandhi family is doing with India. Those who oppose KCR are trying to establish their own hegemony. The politicians on the Andhra side are no better. Therefore I will come back to what I said in an earlier post. It does not matter what is said in the Sri Krishna Committee report. It does not matter if there is a United Andhra Pradesh or a Separate Telangana. This is a game of the politicians, for the politicians and by the politicians. Common people are mere pawns who have nothing but sacrificing their own future to do. If a separate Telangana does happen, the Chief Minister and the rest of the ministers will have security, gunmen and posse of cars. The person will be as inaccessible as the present Chief Minister or other ministers. The common man will have to visit and revisit government offices with officials not being available or not doing what he wants. The corridors of political power will have the same power brokers brokering deals for the corporates and other moneyed organizations. The common man will also be the same. The situation will be the same in the United Andhra Pradesh as well. Let me quote the Urdu and Hindi poet Sahir Ludhianvi

"Jalado ise phook dalo yeh duniya, yeh duniya tumhari sambhalo yeh duniya

yeh duniya agar mil bhe jaye to kya hai?" - Sahir Ludhianvi

The poet could leave it at that. I cannot. I therefore hope that there is a fundamental change in the nature of politics of this country. I hope that the enlightened will come to power and guide the country through good and morally sustainable politics. Otherwise demagogues like Hitler can hijack anything and everyone onto things which are very personal and ultimately dastardly. I live in hope and look beyond the Sri Krishna Committee for solutions. Meaningful dialogue is what I think is necessary. That I hope will happen one day and soon.