Should TRS merge with congress?

Telangana state formation is round the corner. The die is cast now. The final configuration is put up through formulations. Congress has a handicap of not having any solid intermediate caste’s support in Andhra. Chiranjeevi, although he can attract these masses, does not have any leadership qualities to keep his flock together. The mutual inadequacies are mopped up by the merger. Chiranjeevi is an intellectual light weight. His samajika Telangana or Samikya andhra are mere gimmicks for his survival. He has no firm conviction on anything. How can a person who has never read a newspaper have one. Erosion of congress caused by jagan will be adequately filled by this chap, though.

Now the heat is turned on to KCR to merge TRS with congress. The congress pygmies of Telangana are commenting on variously. KK says in his jumbled voice that KCR had promised merger a while ago and he will abide by it. MP, Sarve satyanarayana, in safari suit trying to look youthful finds KCR selfish and greedy now, by saying that, TRS is a party of single objective but is now selfishly thinking of ruling Telangana.

Let us see how we should analyse this situation.

First, let us compare chiranjeevi with KCR and his party. KCR goes down in the democratic nation’s history as a person who achieved a socio-political goal of formation of Telangana by relentlessly and adroitly designing a movement ,calibrating and advancing it in an ingenious way. It deserves some PhD dissertations in political and psephological studies. I found a paper written in an American university in California on him. Psychologically speaking, he must have tried to actualise himself and his region in the broader frame work of NTR’s Telugu desam where he was disillusioned by the high handedness of Andhras. He set out for himself and a handful of other people to get Telangana state like Castro and his men did in Cuba. In the last one year he brought the beat to a crescendo initiating it with a fast. He is exclusively calling the shots now. He has set the ball rolling for the finals from 17th Feb with non-cooperation movement. Centre and the state leaders of congress are scurrying for safety and solution before that deadline. Telangana state is inevitable. There may be some fireworks at the closing time though. Comparing him with chiranjeevi is stupid. KCR is a man with a mission. Chiranjeevi is a man in search of a post retirement profession. Then why is congress comparing KCR with chiranjeevi ?

KCR, although not complete and little naïve, has some ideas and understanding on how Telangana has to be reconstructed; but it was not forceful enough. Today, congress is trivialising the existence of TRS as it has not talked enough on how it is going to build Telangana state. He never cited for instance, Mahathir Mohammed who built Malaysia from a wretched backward nation to a front runner. See how David Cameron, Obama visualise the future for their countries. KCR’s repeated utterances of free top class education for every Telangana child and Ganga Jamuna tehhaseeb for Hindu Muslim unity are not sufficient. He has to be more aware of developmental politics and reconstruction politics. He has to learn about how Russia’s ‘Peter the Great’ toured Europe incognito, working as carpenter, to know about the advancement of Western Europe. He might be uttering about making an SC the first chief minister and a Muslim the first deputy chief minister to nullify his upper caste image but that is not enough for the development of the Telangana state. We need fiery youthful leadership from entire community of Telangana with a great sense of urgency and opportunity.

Those who might say that Telangana state is the first priority and development is next are sadly mistaken. Movements have to be built on the dreams of future. We have to show how different Telangana will be if it is an independent state. It is the safeguard agaist native Madhu kodas and jagans emerging in Telangana. One has to talk about the plans and projections of how we are going to create jobs for the millions of Telangana youth and tell about how numbers add up. Keep talking and dreaming to act on something like building a grid of super-fast trains connecting all regions of Telangana and make the rest of Telangana a suburb of Hyderabad reachable in an hour’s time. Through this, make massive economic expansion by making it an industrial, software, agricultural, horticultural and orchard giant. Once I was talking to a Malaysian in line of my job. I asked him what is so special of Mahathir of Malaysia. He said that he thinks big and thinks like a Whiteman.

KCR should learn more; read more, reflect and meditate more about developmental politics, leadership in development; and set bench marks for the future leaders of Telangana state. He should develop policy and models for health, education and welfare, which will depoliticise these areas so that no one will use them as populist measures for vote gathering, as congress and YSR has been doing all along. He should state Telangana state’s position on mines, forests, millions of beedi workers, minimal reservation for the natives in private sector. He should develop fine band of leadership in the cultural and historical ethos of Telangana for the future. There are cooperative socialist models of Chinese market socialism; welfare models of Scandinavia, there are models which prevent crony capitalist’s kleptocratic bureaucracy. As KCR never spoke on these lines but only on electoral calculus to corner congress and force it form Telangana, today congress is asking it to close shop as the mission is going to be accomplished shortly, asking him to follow suit of Chiranjeevi.

No one in congress is capable of realising the dreams of Telangana. It has not grown in the culture of the Telangana movement. It has no stake in Telangana state or its development. TRS merging with it, is like saving Telangana from one set of wolves to give it to another set of wolves. If TRS merges with congress, all the values and dreams of the movement will go down the drain. Today’s TRS is different from pre 2009 dec TRS. KCR and TRS should develop and remain as watch dogs for Telangana as he himself has mentioned. It can do more service to Telangana state by remaining independent than merging with congress. Today, TRS is in a position to swallow congress in Telangana. If it merges with congress the alternative political space will be filled by Telugu desam as time goes by; which will dampen the very spirit of Telangana and keep up the influence “Andhra Babu” and Andhras.

If congress re-announces Telangana before 17th February it will get a bit of credit to move about in Telangana; if it does it after 17th it will be forgotten. Either way Telangana should not care about them, let alone merging with them.

TRS’s existence itself, with more broad-based representation, benchmarks assertion of the nativity of future parties in Telangana as the Dravida Kazagam has done in Tamilnadu. It is important that KCR, be advised on the historicity of TRS and this moment.

On the contrary, if KCR decides to merge TRS with congress it will be a historical blunder similar to merger of Hyderabad state into Andhra.

take by: simplytelangana