Souring of a dream called Telangana

The increasing disillusionment with KCR and his government has been more than clear in the past few months. The first mass outrage expressed was over the government’s cheap liquor policy.

The government had to beat a hasty retreat. Licking its wounds, evidently the government had to show its muscle. And it did in Warangal by targeting the Maoists.

This, however, brought about a hitherto unseen phenomenon of as many as 400-odd political parties, various platforms of people’s rights,

activists, academics and students organisations coming together to express their anger against a government that seemed to have turned against the very people who supported the TRS and sacrificed much to see it in power.

Basking in the glory of political power, new rulers of Telangana seem to believe that they are above the people who sent them there in the first place.

They have no tolerance for criticism, they cannot bear to hear the unpalatable truth that they have let down the people and dashed their hopes

Could events have been any more ironical than those that we have witnessed in the last two days in Telangana? Overnight, the twin cities of Hyderabad and Secunderabad, several districts such as Nalgonda, Warangal and Khammam turned into police fortresses.

Overnight, the Osmania University campus got electrified as police swooped on the student hostels, blocked the exits from the hostel and confined them within the campus.

No, the police force was not deployed by the anti-Telangana movement government to suppress people’s aspirations for a separate statehood.

The scenes that we have seen on TV screens were no replays of the peak of the statehood movement of 2013 and 2014. No, these were ‘our own’ policemen and women, obeying the orders of the ‘our own’ Telangana government to prevent people from registering their protest against the torture and killing of two youngsters, who police said were Maoists.

For the first time ever, more than 400 political parties, people’s organisations, groups of activists got together to protest against the encounter, the first in the newly-formed state of Telangana.

They gave a call for a ‘Chalo Assembly’ on Wednesday and applied for permission to hold the protest. The permission was not granted and the full force of the state might was unleashed on the people,

making arrests in the night, policing the entry points to the city, sealing off the university campuses, confining the leaders to their homes a day prior to the protest planned for September 30.

And when those who could manage to gather to march to the Assembly, the police arrested 100s of men and women and confined them to police stations across the city.

Welcome to the police state of Telangana! And let us now give a fitting burial to all the hopes and aspirations of all of those who had struggled, fought, got their limbs broken, came out in the streets for days together,

the outrage of our grassroots poets at the injustice heaped on the people of Telangana by the Andhra rulers that got transformed into heart-wrenching songs and militant dances, seeking end to the enslavement of the people of Telangana and those who gave their lives so that we could as free people, our own masters.

The new rulers of Telangana seem to have gotten high on power that was given to them by the people. Basking in the glory of political power, they seem to believe that they are above the people who sent them there in the first place.

They have no tolerance for criticism, they cannot bear to hear the unpalatable truth that they have let down the people and dashed their hopes.

The government does not want to face the truth that the people’s patience is wearing thin and their expectations of a bright future as was promised by KCR in ‘our own Telangana state’ have been trampled into dust.

It therefore is reacting the only way an anti-people government will do: suppress dissent, and send out a message to all its critics that they will meet the fate of Shruti and Vidyasagar if they persisted in questioning the government, demanding that the promises it made to the people be fulfilled.

What kind of fate did Shruti meet? Her body that was handed over to her family after postmortem showed signs of brutal torture including burns by cigarette.

Well-known revolutionary poet Varavara Rao even alleged that she was raped that acid was poured on her private parts.

Almost everybody who has been following political developments for the past three decades like I have been as a journalist, the story put out by the police is typical: that they got a tip-off of a squad of Maoists moving in the area,

that when they combed the area and came upon them, the Maoists opened fire on them so the police returned fire in self-defence and killed the Maoists. They also discovered arms, bags, literature,

all pointing to their allegiance and ill-intentions. This has been the story of every single of hundreds of fake encounters that have taken place in the earlier Andhra Pradesh, of Maoists, of undertrials, of suspected terrorists and notorious criminals.

While no one questions that the two youngsters were Maoists, what we are asking is if they committed a crime against the state or the people? If they did, are they are not citizens of this state who are constitutionally bound to be get a just trial? Is it the duty of the police to take on the role of judge and jury and executioner?

It was not too long ago, when the then anti-Telangana movement government raised the fear that if Telangana State came into being it would revive Maoism,

since they supported formation of Telangana state, and that the Maoists would endanger the country’s democracy, KCR dismissed it as a bogey and a desperate ploy to scare the Centre.

And he grandly announced that the Maoist agenda – of eliminating poverty, of justice to the oppressed and liberation of the common person from exploitation of the capitalists – would be the agenda of his government.

The irony is that the KCR government, far from implementing the Maoist agenda, is not implementing even the Constitution and the rule of law that our nation is bound by.

The deliberate murder of two youngsters by the KCR government is evidence enough of the agenda of the Telangana government which is to suppress people’s voice, all dissent, all expression of people’s rights, and demands that the government fulfil its promises.

More evidence can be found in the words of the State Police Chief Anurag Sharma who in no uncertain words told the media that the State would not allow them to gain ground and should they try and resurface, they would be effectively foiled.

The increasing disillusionment with KCR and his government has been more than clear in the past few months. The first mass outrage expressed was over the government’s cheap liquor policy. The government had to beat a hasty retreat.

Licking its wounds, evidently the government had to show its muscle. And it did in Warangal by targeting the Maoists. This, however, brought about a hitherto unseen phenomenon of as many as 400-odd political parties, various platforms of people’s rights, activists,

academics and students organisations coming together to express their anger against a government that seemed to have turned against the very people who supported the Telangana Rashtra Samiti and sacrificed much to see it in power.

The government, however, has dismissed this formation of umbrella organisation as inspired by the two Left parties, apparently to mean that their opposition is political.

But ask a Telangana youth on the street and he/she will express disappointment that not a single promise of the TRS government has been fulfilled.

Some will point out that only Medak district seemed to be getting some attention as that’s where KCR won the Gajwel Assembly seat and Medak Lok Sabha seat.

The hopes of the people were raised high by promising them land, government jobs, water for the unirrigated areas and so on: in short, people were waiting for a new dawn promising them a golden future.

All they are now assured of is a bloodied Telangana.

By:Dr Akhileshwari Ramagoud

(The writer is a journalist and an academic)