When perception pretends to be the reality, insinuation masquerades as incontrovertible evidence and emotions overtake practical common sense, it’s time to sit back and reflect. And let us sit back and reflect on the year 2012 to perceive on whether the New Year 2013 would be any different.
The year 2012 ended on a very “bizarre and more ambivalent note’ for the denizens of the Andhra Pradesh. Indicating that The New Year-2013 will bring along with it more “miseries than cheers” to the confused lot in the circles of AP public school of thought and the people as a whole. While it would be a “party time” for the whole nation, the “party” would be over for the people of AP, as it would be no “cheers” but “bottoms up”, while the dawning of New Year would witness them in “hangover” mode. Thanks to the “tomfooleries” of the polity that is leading them.
Just as 2012 is fast drawing to a close, the outcome of the All Party Meeting on Telangana signaling more confusion and confounding the matters further, has added a tragic and ambivalent prologue to the New Year.
In life, as in allegories, there are good and there are the greedy, there are those who smile and there are those who are greedy and stab while smiling.
In the contemporary politics of India, if there is any party which has the tendency to shoot from the lip to help incite controversies, then Congress fits the bill perfectly. Its wily games were on the display during the just concluded All Party Meeting on Telangana.
In the wily game of political bargaining witnessed in the just convened drama called All Party Meeting (APM) on Telangana counting winners and losers may not be that easy.
It may sound ironic that the far-reaching implications of the outcome of ambivalence on the issue concern in APM, have not been the central concern of any of the parties in this political tug-of-war. But then issues of governance and development always take a backseat in political competitions exploiting social cleavages based on separatist ideologies.
Like it has been doing for the last two years, the Central Government has floundered again in finding a solution to the Telangana issue by postponing it by another month.
The fact that the AICC had directed its two representatives to air their views according to the aspirations of the people of their respective regions indicated that the Congress is against finding a solution to the vexed issue and both the reps presented themselves at the APM as per the prepared script. The way they conducted both inside the APM and outside of it also mirrors that bifurcation was unlikely as there was no consensus in the Congress on the issue.
The Centre’s dilemma has come in as godsend for the separatist TRS which was looking for an issue to bounce back on to the Centre stage and the Congress provided it on a platter.
This also appears to be a deliberate move on part of the Congress to check the growing influence of YSR Congress and TDP in the region. Now the Centre has, more or less, helped TRS which will intensify the agitation for separate state. The Congress has not only endangered its position but also put the TDP and YSR Congress on the back foot in the region. “After me deluge” seems to be the attitude of the ruling party.
The Congress high command may be of the view that the tempers will cool down with passing of time and its leaders will do a re-think on leaving the party as the elections are unlikely to be advanced.
While postponing the decision is definitely not the trump card of the Congress, it has to be seen what is up in its sleeve after one month.
To make things more disconcerting to the parties like TDP and YSRCP which have announced at APM that they would support any decision the Centre might take to solve the issue, the Centre might announce a financial package and a regional development council for the region. Such an announcement might put these parties in more discomfiture whether to accept since an acceptance might put them as betrayers of Telangana and opposition to it might put their credibility on doubt in other regions.
On the other hand, More trouble is brewing within the TDP, the principal opposition party, following party president N Chandrababu Naidu’s decision to support Telangana, or so as it is claimed to be, at the APM.
Whether the TDP supported the formation of a separate Telangana through its letters is still debatable and is being dissected by its critics, more so by the TRS, the rhetoric by Telangana TDP leaders is landing the party on the other side of Andhra in more problems. The decision to cure one “eye” is leading to more infection to the other for the TDP.
Many party leaders, who are unsure of their own political career or the prospect of the TDP, which has repeatedly been taking a drubbing, are said to be looking sideways, mostly to ride on a winning horse. The answer to which side is anybody’s guess. While Naidu’s plan was to arrest the desertions in Telangana region as several MLAs and constituency in-charges left the party in the last three years, it is snowballing into a major crisis for the party in the Seemandhra region where the TDP leaders are agitated on the issue.
And this what appears to be the tactics behind the Congress to convene APM, to cause more problems for both the TDP and YSRCP than solve the issue at hand. The Congress and TRS conspired to see both TDP and YSRCP is neither here nor there.
While future will decide which party stands to gain in this game of unabashed vote bank politics, one thing is certain. The people of Andhra Pradesh will be the ultimate losers. The people of Telangana, who has witnessed highly contentious identity politics since 2009, have already paid a huge price. They are among the poorest and the most gullible in India. If politicians continue to pander to the lure of vote-bank politics for immediate gains, a similar fate awaits people in the year 2013 to make it no different from that of previous years.
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