SakalajanulaSamme

An extraordinary general strike for Telangana

Sakala Janula Samme (extraordinary general strike) in the ten districts of Telangana has entered the tenth day. Miners in the Singareni Collieries, private college teachers and students, road transport employees unions, school teachers, university staff, lawyers in the lower and high courts, the electricity employees union—in short almost all employees (who usually refuse to see beyond their immediate benefits) and contract workers (who under normal circumstances cannot afford to lose wages) needed by the state to “govern” its people—have gone on strike. Government in this region, already seriously impaired and facing severe challenges from the movement since 2009 has come to a standstill. In an extraordinary “do or die” battle for the formation of a separate Telangana state, the various joint action committees promise to continue this strike till a separate Telangana state is formed. 

In terms of popular support, the outpouring of literature and internal contestations/critiques of the movement for separate Telangana has been unprecedented (except perhaps for the Madiga Dandora movement) in the recent political history of the state. Attendance at numerous meetings in the ten districts of Telangana has ranged from 5,000 to 50,000, peaking at 10 lakh people (some estimates put it at 15 lakh or more) in Warangal in mid 2010. A profusion of movement literature has disseminated the demands of Telangana to the reading public: proportionate share in allocations for irrigation and employment, protection of farmland and self-rule.  The wide-ranging public debate has opened up commonly accepted notions of Telugu language, history, culture and development in the state to intense critical scrutiny. Other hitherto nonpolitical issues ranging from evaluation of exam papers across the region to recruiting police constables have become intensely controversial.  This movement has sucked into its wake grass root struggles for drinking water, and for a share in irrigated water; against distress migration, against farmers’ suicides and mining projects that lay waste their land.  Writers and other cultural activists as well as those working for tribal and Dalit rights continue to feed this storm, making it the mother of all struggles in the region today.

In the era of electoral democracy, rapid globalization and identity politics, such a demand (sometimes called ‘regional nationalism’) has attracted ridicule, dismay and cynicism among the dominant sections of the middle classes and the intelligentsia. It has been deemed illegitimate, illogical and dangerous where an aggressive leadership is leading gullible and emotionally vulnerable youth down a blind alley; at which point a significant few commit suicide. The movement has been dismissed as belonging to the realm of bhavodvegaalu (emotions and sentiments) rather than to the realm of the political. While one section of the critics have concluded that it is politically impossible to carve out a separate state, the other section deems the state’s formation totally inadequate to meet the challenges of sharing political power and economic resources in the current times.  

Steeped in skepticism the elite remain anxious about incidents of potential or actual violence against the coastal Andhra migrants settled in the ten districts of Telangana. They anticipate withdrawal of popular support for the numerous calls for bandhs and strikes and expect the students to go back to their studies. They also hope that the Telangana people would see through the selfish motives of their leaders, move onto other tangible goals and repose their faith in the status quo. Alas, none of these hopes, expectations or fears has materialized so far! Instead, the steady opposition to the demand for the state seems to have gradually resulted in firming up the proponents’ resolve for it. 

Since Telangana Vaadam turned into a movement, it has pushed the leadership with serious differences among themselves to work in tandem with each other (an alliance they would not have otherwise dreamt of). There has emerged a “contested” consensus about the modes, strategies, leadership of the movement.  Thus while the TRS leader K. Chandra Sehkar Rao (KCR) has the unquestioned ability to galvanize people into action, he is clearly seen as a person with limitations (corruptible, compromised and doubtful as a choice for a future leadership) who is meeting the need of the moment.

A more serious objection has been that strikes affect the livelihood of the common daily wage earner, and that therefore they would be against it. This indeed has been the government’s criticism of the Sakala Janula Samme. Its announcement of the one rupee per Kg of rice schemes, the creation of one lakh jobs, and several other schemes are political strategies to address this category of the ‘most oppressed’ as an electoral constituency.  However, there are some potential weaknesses in this analysis.  Firstly, while the metropolitan and big city wage laborer would be most affected by the strikes, (and that too, specific groups: construction labourers, hamalis, auto-rickshaw drivers, etc.), the laborers in the small towns and rural areas would perhaps not be so severely affected. Secondly, the migrant worker to the city from the surrounding Telangana districts is often the small farmer and laborer displaced by the underdevelopment of the region.  In addition most of the students who are participating in the movement belong to similar families.  Thus, it seems as if, the broad consensus for Telangana includes support of the most disadvantaged sections of society, to the extent possible.  The fate of the Congress strategy to woo the ‘most oppressed’ would depend on the extent to which this economic condition feeds into the political consciousness of the Telangana demand.

The government at the state and central level exhibit no ability to make a coherent and articulate response to the demand of the separate state itself. What we get instead are meaningless and vague statements by assorted AICC spokespersons (Gulam Nabi Azad, Manish Tiwari, Abhishekh Singvi, Renuka Chowdhary); negative ones by the group of most influential MPs from the state (Rayapati Sambasiva Rao, Lagadapati Rajagopal, Kavuri Sambasiva Rao, J.C.Divakarreddy etc.) and hysterical ones by the myriad Congress leaders at the local level. Chidambaram’s Dec 2009 statements in favour of Telangana and the Srikrishna Committee’s observations notwithstanding, the Congress governments, at the centre and state have adopted the favourite strategy of “wait till the movement turns against itself”. The inability of most Telangana elected representatives to visit their constituencies from 2009 and their eventual resignation under peoples’ pressure do not seem to matter. The language of the ruling party and of the government continues to be that of ‘managing the sentiments’ or ‘administering it through regional committees, special development schemes and special anti-Naxal packages’. Given that the Telangana representatives are in a minority in the state assembly and (in the parliament) and the near total split within the of Congress and Telugu Desam parties on the issue of Telangana, the possibility of taking any political or administrative steps towards the formation of the Telangana state have grown increasingly bleak.

While it is no surprise that the region which has been sought to be “administered” and “managed” through various “agreements”, “committees”, “special packages” and “development” over the last fifty years has launched a general strike, the precise dynamics of the political upheaval are yet to be fully understood.  In a mirror image, it is the silence of the “national” media and the intelligentsia that is inexplicable to those of us who have followed the passionate discussions around Anna Hazare’s anti-corruption movement.  While the Telangana movement is a regional one, its criticisms of development biases and its comprehensive refusal to submit to a government that is widely perceived to be against the regional interest are worthy of note. It is our considered opinion that the Telangana movement represents a far more advanced and democratized political understanding than the moralistic opposition to corruption which took centre space in English newspapers, television and the world-wide web.  It is perhaps indicative that underdevelopment and acute organic political insight are also handicapped by the lack of a voice that will be heard in the national public sphere.

A. Suneetha, Vasudha Nagaraj, R.Srivatsan, Gogu Shyamala, Sarath Davala and R.V.Ramana Murthy

https://kafila.online/2011/09/28/an-extraordinary-general-strike-for-telangana-a-suneetha-vasudha-nagaraj-and-others/#more-9654