The Song Of Telangana - Fifty-seven years on, a people’s dream takes shape - Part 1

Colour of joy Telangana supporters at Gun Park, Hyderabad

Joy erupted at Osmania University’s Arts Block in contrasting ways. It shone out of the triumphant, gulal-smeared faces of hundreds of students, and flowed freely through tears of joy. As the poker-faced Ajay Maken and Digvijay Singh announced the Congress Working Committee’s nod for India’s 29th state—Telangana—it was greeted by shouts of ‘Jai Telangana’ and enthusiastic hugs, and celebrated with motichoor laddoos, crackers and zooming bikes. This was the same battleground which has seen angry sloganeering, lathicharges, teargas shells, dharnas, stone-peltings and suicides. Today, it’s rife with hope, even if tempered with a large dose of caution. “The economics of a new state will of course have to be worked out,” says Manne Krishnak, an Osmania University Joint Action Committee leader. “But at last we have self-respect and self-rule.”

Respect restored. That’s the predominant feeling among the people of the region. “The people of Telangana have spent years at the feet of Rayalaseema and Andhra people,” says BTech graduate M. Rajnikanth Goud, who hails from Rangareddy dis­trict. “It is our day of independence.” The 23-year-old, who works in a small IT firm in Dilsukhnagar in Hyderabad, says among the 50-odd employees, he is the only one from Telangana. “My language and culture were a source of office jokes. Even in interviews, Andhra employees would guess where I was from and insult me. Now, the IT sector will have more people from Telangana.”

More jobs, plum posts in the government and private sectors and better education. All this will now come their way, feel the Telanganaites, given that the region’s most developed city, Hyderabad, will be the joint capital for both states for 10 years, by which time Andhra Pradesh has to build one of its own.

And herein lies the heartburn.

“The people of Telangana have spent years at the feet of Andhra, Rayalaseema people. It’s our day of independence.”

Hyderabad’s transition to Cyberabad took place under the chief ministership of Telugu Desam Party supremo Chan­drababu Naidu from 1995-2004. It began with the IT boom and today HiTec City is home to IT giants like Google, Microsoft, Dell, Oracle, TCS, as well as other biggies like Deloitte, Accenture, HSBC, Bank of America, Facebook and Amazon, among others. With the booming IT sector came high salaries, highrises, shopping malls and multiplexes, fuelling the real estate and retail sectors. A boom in the biotechnology, pharmacy and health sectors followed, leading to rapid growth between 1999 and 2008. With its superior infrastructure and thriving climate of opportunity, the 650 square kilometre metropolis came to be the dream job destination for youth from rural areas of both Telangana and Seemandhra.

Ravindra Goda, a government bank employee in Vizag, just cannot understand why Hyderabad should be gifted to Telangana when both “Seemandhra and Telangana have hel­ped develop it”. Niranjan Reddy, MD of advertising agency AIM Vyapti Advertising, hails from Kadapa (in Rayalaseema), studied in Vijayawada (coastal Andhra), and opened up his business in Hyderabad. Calling himself an “all-region” man, he says it is impossible to develop another capital in 10 years. “Investors wouldn’t know where to invest once there are two states. It’s like hitting the restart button.” He predicts a fall of at least 20 per cent in the retail and real estate sectors in the coming years.

Part 2
Part 3

Source: http://tinyurl.com/mk7qdsk