One of India's most experienced journalists Tavleen Singh on Telangana. This article is dated but still relevant today.....
Blackmail that works fast
By Tavleen Singh
(Originally written in Dec 2009)
If you do not hear from me next week it will be because I am on hunger strike on a cold pavement near Jantar Mantar. I want Sheila Dikshit’s job and will fast unto death for it. I need to lose three kilos anyway but my motives are political. Ever since Mrs Dixit let Manu Sharma out on parole, I have been thinking of taking her on. I am well qualified. I am from Delhi, better educated, younger, more dynamic and see no reason why she should keep her job. Not only was it amoral to release Manu Sharma the way she did, she is slipping on the infrastructure front as well. The broken roads in my neighbourhood have not been repaired in more than a year and those stadiums for next year’s Commonwealth Games remain un-built. Since neither the Congress Party nor the BJP will consider letting me run on their behalf I have decided that a hunger strike is the way forward. All I have to lose are my kilos.
Besides, if K. Chandrashekhar Rao could get a separate Telangana after a few days of fasting, then why should we not all try to get what we want through political blackmail? Right? By the time you read this Yasin Malik, a Gandhian since he threw away his machine gun, could already be fasting to death in some icy Srinagar square. In Darjeeling there could be some unknown Gorkhaland leader similarly inspired and Ajit Singh who wants to become Chief Minister of a Harit Pradesh has already appeared on television to announce sulkily that he is going to change his tactics. Now there is no way that the Government of India can ignore Irom Sharmila who has been on hunger strike for ten years. All she wants is for the Armed Forces Special Powers Act to be repealed in Manipur. Considering the ‘special powers’ to rape and murder that the armed forces have appropriated in Manipur, Irom Sharmila’s demand is just and should have been conceded long ago.
That really is the point. If a demand is just there should be no place for political blackmail and if it is a stupid demand then no amount of hunger strikes should work. The Telangana demand has long baffled me. As a veteran political pundit I have been asked about Telangana many times. People stop me at airports and in crowded bazaars to ask if I can explain what is behind the demand. I confess that I had to Google up the historical background to Telangana and still understand no more than that it is a backward part of Andhra in which people are ‘proud Telugus’. Are there un-proud Telugus in the rest of Andhra? And, if K. Chandrashekhar Rao was such a hero why did he do so badly in the last general election? Could it be that all he is after is a job for himself to pass on one day to his son who has already entered the ranks of our political princelings.
The manner in which the Government of India succumbed to political blackmail is frightening if you keep in mind that we live in bad times. Not only do we live under the constant threat of Islamist terrorism but now there are signs that the Islamists are winning in Afghanistan. If the Americans need 100,000 troops to defeat the Taliban the war could already be lost. If I were advising President Obama I would have told him to get out of Afghanistan before he accepted his Nobel Peace Prize last week. In any case the Americans will leave sooner than later and we will have to rely on our own government to protect us from the rabid Taliban. What hope is there for us if an obscure, regional leader can bring the Government of India to its knees by a ten-day hunger strike?
What is more annoying than the political blackmail is the reality that Telangana will make no difference to the lot of the Telanganian citizen. Many small states have been carved out of big ones in recent years and the people of these new states remain in exactly the same appalling conditions as they always were.
The fight against poverty and deprivation can only be won by improved methods of governance. The politicians know they cannot deliver on this front so they encourage expensive distractions like changing the names of cities and cutting big states up into little ones. If the ‘aam aadmi’ is fooled into believing he benefits then there is nothing we can do about it. What we need to worry about is the shameful weakness the Government of India exhibited under pressure from a smalltime regional leader who lost nearly all the seats his party contested in the last election.
http://www.tavleensingh.com/article_detail.php?aid=54
Blackmail that works fast
By Tavleen Singh
(Originally written in Dec 2009)
If you do not hear from me next week it will be because I am on hunger strike on a cold pavement near Jantar Mantar. I want Sheila Dikshit’s job and will fast unto death for it. I need to lose three kilos anyway but my motives are political. Ever since Mrs Dixit let Manu Sharma out on parole, I have been thinking of taking her on. I am well qualified. I am from Delhi, better educated, younger, more dynamic and see no reason why she should keep her job. Not only was it amoral to release Manu Sharma the way she did, she is slipping on the infrastructure front as well. The broken roads in my neighbourhood have not been repaired in more than a year and those stadiums for next year’s Commonwealth Games remain un-built. Since neither the Congress Party nor the BJP will consider letting me run on their behalf I have decided that a hunger strike is the way forward. All I have to lose are my kilos.
Besides, if K. Chandrashekhar Rao could get a separate Telangana after a few days of fasting, then why should we not all try to get what we want through political blackmail? Right? By the time you read this Yasin Malik, a Gandhian since he threw away his machine gun, could already be fasting to death in some icy Srinagar square. In Darjeeling there could be some unknown Gorkhaland leader similarly inspired and Ajit Singh who wants to become Chief Minister of a Harit Pradesh has already appeared on television to announce sulkily that he is going to change his tactics. Now there is no way that the Government of India can ignore Irom Sharmila who has been on hunger strike for ten years. All she wants is for the Armed Forces Special Powers Act to be repealed in Manipur. Considering the ‘special powers’ to rape and murder that the armed forces have appropriated in Manipur, Irom Sharmila’s demand is just and should have been conceded long ago.
That really is the point. If a demand is just there should be no place for political blackmail and if it is a stupid demand then no amount of hunger strikes should work. The Telangana demand has long baffled me. As a veteran political pundit I have been asked about Telangana many times. People stop me at airports and in crowded bazaars to ask if I can explain what is behind the demand. I confess that I had to Google up the historical background to Telangana and still understand no more than that it is a backward part of Andhra in which people are ‘proud Telugus’. Are there un-proud Telugus in the rest of Andhra? And, if K. Chandrashekhar Rao was such a hero why did he do so badly in the last general election? Could it be that all he is after is a job for himself to pass on one day to his son who has already entered the ranks of our political princelings.
The manner in which the Government of India succumbed to political blackmail is frightening if you keep in mind that we live in bad times. Not only do we live under the constant threat of Islamist terrorism but now there are signs that the Islamists are winning in Afghanistan. If the Americans need 100,000 troops to defeat the Taliban the war could already be lost. If I were advising President Obama I would have told him to get out of Afghanistan before he accepted his Nobel Peace Prize last week. In any case the Americans will leave sooner than later and we will have to rely on our own government to protect us from the rabid Taliban. What hope is there for us if an obscure, regional leader can bring the Government of India to its knees by a ten-day hunger strike?
What is more annoying than the political blackmail is the reality that Telangana will make no difference to the lot of the Telanganian citizen. Many small states have been carved out of big ones in recent years and the people of these new states remain in exactly the same appalling conditions as they always were.
The fight against poverty and deprivation can only be won by improved methods of governance. The politicians know they cannot deliver on this front so they encourage expensive distractions like changing the names of cities and cutting big states up into little ones. If the ‘aam aadmi’ is fooled into believing he benefits then there is nothing we can do about it. What we need to worry about is the shameful weakness the Government of India exhibited under pressure from a smalltime regional leader who lost nearly all the seats his party contested in the last election.
http://www.tavleensingh.com/article_detail.php?aid=54
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