With Telangana Assembly elections just a year away (if not sooner), political parties in the state are trying to finesse their regular politicking towards something that might eventually resemble a manifesto. Except for the ruling TRS, that is, which never seems to have its eye off the ball, the ball being a win in 2019, of course.
This new focus has been directed specifically at what the Telangana government has termed a “historical” move to provide 24/7 power to farmers across the state free of cost. Now, this is certainly historic in the sense that it marks one of the positives of the Telangana project - a state which was born in 2014 with a power deficit, is now power surplus.
The political point of contention is, of course, over who gets credit for this success. The Congress, the main opposition party, claims credit on grounds that the state is reaping the benefits of power projects that previous Congress government had had the foresight to invest in. In the same breath it has claimed that farmers do not actually need 24/7 power as it may affect ground water levels (more on that later). This debate led to an amusing standoff in the past few days. The Congress demanded a public debate on the matter.
The TRS said sure. A bunch of Congressmen then waited for two hours at the Martyrs’ Memorial in Hyderabad on Friday, waiting for the TRS to show up to debate, a move that made for some fun photos. The TRS responded by ‘purifying’ the memorial the next day, to cleanse it of any residual Congress aura. Such is political discourse.
The line one wishes the Congress or any opposition party would pursue with the government - and all government- rather than squabbling over credit, is on the matter of groundwater levels. While experts such as MS Swaminathan have welcomed the scheme, there has also been concern raised as to potential over exploitation of groundwater, especially in a state where water is a scarce resource. In fact, the scarcity of water for agriculture was one of the arguments in favour of creation of a separate state. It is also the reason that the government invests heavily in irrigation projects. And yet, government officials themselves have told The New Indian Express that they haven’t the equipment to monitor groundwater levels in real-time.
This seems like a problem that ought to have been addressed before and at least alongside the roll-out of a scheme, that no doubt has its uses. But this is a tendency of Indian governments in general: to not think things through. They would much rather invest in a hundred flyovers that only postpone a traffic problem momentarily rather than invest meaningfully in public transport that can move more people more efficiently. This malaise of short-term thinking cuts across all parties can be seen in the Congress adoption of another of the TRS’ methods.
The TRS believes in wooing every community in the electorate with tailor-made gestures, sips and promises. The more problematic of these efforts is directed towards its efforts at ‘empowering’ backward communities. It has sought to do this by offering those of barber communities salon training with people like Jawed Habib, or washing machines to members of the washermen community, sheep to shepherd communities or on a more surreal level magic lessons to certain other BC communities.
These are efforts that might have immediate benefits but that also go towards reinforcing caste as an occupation-based social reality. Is the government not enabling the persistence of caste on the basis of occupation rather than its erosion? (And no, this cannot be compared to Reservation policy). Unfortunately, the Congress is a party of limited imagination and principle, so instead of questioning such schemes - and risking alienating communities, ostensibly - it has decided to jump on the bandwagon and promise its own community-specific schemes, if it were to come to power.
The twist in what otherwise seems likely to be a predictable poll tale in 2019, is the announcement of civil society leader M Kodandaram that the Telangana Joint Action Committee - that fought for a separate state alongside the TRS - will launch a political party in February to challenge the ruling party. Kodandaram and TJAC have raised the lack of Democratic spirit in the state in recent years and alleged that the current government — which has repeatedly thwarted civil protests and even arrested or detained protestors — is behaving in an autocratic manner. What traction this new political party gets will be eagerly watched in the coming months.
Ranjitha Gunasekaran
Assistant Resident Editor, Telangana
Email: ranjitha@newindianexpress.com