Telangana now officially 29th state of India

Telangana formally became the country’s 29th state of India and Telangana Rashtra Samithi (TRS) chief K Chandrasekhar Rao (KCR) took oath as Telangana’s first Chief Minister. Telangana consists of the 10 north-western districts of Andhra Pradesh.

Backgrounder:

In the history of India, it happened for the first time that outside Hindi and Bengali speaking areas, 2 states speaking the same language have been created (Telangana and AP are both Telugu speaking states. In addition to more than one Hindi speaking state, there are two Bengali speaking states: West Bengal and Tripura.

This essentially challenges the roots (the linguistic basis of states in which language being believed as the measure for a similar culture) on which during the first decade after Independence, the internal map of the Indian Union was re-drawn. This essentially now leaves a space for an additional exercise to redraw the internal map of India.

Albeit there was a request for a combined Telugu state even previous to our Independence, the Nehru-led regime formed AP (Andhra Pradesh) owing to vested political interests of the Congress leaders. Now, History has completed a circle.

The Congress faced a hard electoral contest from the Communists in the Andhra state that was in 1953 sliced out of the Telugu speaking regions of then Madras state. Thus, it was settled to combine Andhra with the Telugu speaking parts of the territory of the ousted Nizam of Hyderabad, so as to form a bigger state where the communists could be whitewashed.

The next unspoken motive of the Nehru regime was that, after being humiliated by the experience of the integration of Kashmir it, didn’t desire to let away the regions of the Nizam as they were. Consequently, whilst the Telugu language parts went to Andhra Pradesh, the Marathi and Kannada language parts went to Bombay and Mysore provinces.

This workout proved good for the Congress as it shaped a monopoly for the Congress in the 1977 post-Emergency elections. Albeit at the national level the Congress was badly beaten yet it won 41 of the 42 seats in Andhra Pradesh. The subsequent year, Indira Gandhi sailed back to the Lok Sabha from Medak.

But the Congress CMs (Chief Ministers) did nothing to encourage rural empowerment. The only CM (Mr. Narasimha Rao) who tried something, confronted resistance from vested interests and was sacked. Thus, rising rural anger led to Maoism in these areas.

In 1983, the Congress was substituted by the NT Rama Rao’s TDP (Telugu Desam Party). The son-in-law of Rama Rao, Chandrababu Naidu, became the first CM all ever in India to hold on to economic developments. Chandrababu Naidu soon turned capital city Hyderabad into an IT hub. But the rural areas were ignored and suicide by farmers rose. Shortly an isolated drive started in the state with the people of Telangana supposing that they would be well off as an independent state. Thus in 2004, Chandrababu Naidu was substituted by Congressman Y.S. Rajasekhara Reddy. Reddy began a rule of “free-ships” (viz. free electricity, fee refunds to students, free houses, free medical care et al). Albeit these efforts taxed the exchequer but transformed into significant electoral gains for the Congress, permitting it to make a government at the centre. Subsequent to the sudden death of YSR, the Congress went into a panic state. In 2014, in order to benefit on apparent political gain, Congress passed a bill to split the state. Unluckily for the Congress, the attempt proved futile to gain it political bonus and it was deeply rejected in both areas.