the business of telangana

kancha ilaiah offers some advice to 'hyderabad capitalists':

“We will not allow your business in Hyderabad”, they say. “We will not allow your cinema industry to run; we will not allow even your cricket match to take place”.

You have pacified them by bribing them. Of course, you have also aided and abetted a united Andhra movement alongside.

What worries me most is the way the leaders growing around such movements have become richer day by day.

Thanks to this, your economic activity has been going on without hurdles. After each such threat, it is the threat giver’s wealth and health that is increasing. But the general health of Telangana — the economic health of its aam aadmi — has been deteriorating.

In the late 60s and early 70s the Telangana movement was conducted mostly on legs and bicycles. The bigger leaders of the movement were moving in jeeps, and even the biggest ones could only boast Ambassador cars.

Yet they conducted agitations that shook the Centre, inspired the youth to brave bullets and also won elections — 11 out of 14 parliamentary seats were in the pocket of Praja Samithi.

Of course, that movement also caused loss of lives and disrupted education. Lot of public property that Telangana people would have used for their advancement was damaged. The agitations also pushed the region backwards in the field of education. And no great moral leader or intellectual emerged from the movement. And most importantly, Telangana did not become a separate state.

But the fact remains that no leader made money out of that movement. Only Mr Chenna Reddy made political capital.

Now look at the present Telangana movement and its drivers. All you see is money, money and more money. Where is it coming from? Obviously much of it is coming from you. You see this movement as an inevitable evil and want to handle it as carefully as possible.

There is a saying that Capitalists like corrupt Communists. Not only can the corrupt Communist be bribed, his presence also gives a bigger moral licence to the capitalist to exploit workers more and more.

apart from politicians, too many other people from other classes seem to have developed an increasing interest in the telangana industry over the last several years. out of work film actors. directors. hardly working government babus and teachers. lawyers looking for prosecutors', magistrates' posts. thousands of aspiring legislators and corporators. you name them. if the road to telangana itself holds such huge business potential, think about the hold of the destination for them.

look at kcr himself. in the beginning, it was only kcr. and then a couple of his nephews joined the 'agitation'. one of them became an mla twice. somewhere along the way, he managed to lose his hawai chappals and managed to buy himself more trendy footwear and much else. and then kcr's son left his job in the information technology industry in the u.s., and decided the telangana business was much more lucrative. he was soon followed by his sister and brother-in-law. and numerous cousins and other relatives are also hanging around..what does all that illustrate?

and then there are more smart people waiting in the wings, like lots of successful telanganis working abroad. like a few in the telangana development forum for instance. it's difficult to say how many of them will be chosen as candidates by mainstream political parties in the next elections for the andhra pradesh or telangana assembly (it doesn't matter which, really) but many of them are saving money to buy tickets, i'm sure.