Meanwhile, south of the Krishna river, the prosperous Vijayanagar kings held sway. Their kingdom, in present-day northcentral Karnataka, controlled large parts of what is now Andhra Pradesh. The kings were great proponents of culture and built magnificent temples such as Lord Balaji’s in Tirumala. Thus, they spawned a distinctive way of life. “The two cultures were poles apart,” says Bharat Kumar who recently wrote a book on Telangana. From the 18th century, much of the area under Vijayanagar came into British hands. Madras was their regional headquarters. This brought English education to the region. As well as an irrigation system. All of this accentuated the differences with people in the Deccan region.
Unfortunately, the Nizams ran a military-feudal system, focused on revenue collection rather than mass education and development. Soon, the economic and cultural gap between the two peoples was enormous. “There was no common meeting ground, except for the Telugu language. But in Telangana the Telugu spoken was different and had no script. The Telugu in parts of the erstwhile British dominion was Sanskritised and classical,” says a former state chief secretary.
Post-Independence, Sardar Patel used military action to ensure Hyderabad state was integrated with India. Eight years later, his successors ensured that parts of the erstwhile state were dismantled and amalgamated into newly formed Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka and Maharashtra. Andhra Pradesh itself was a union of the Telugu-speaking area of Telangana and the other part that was under the British. Interestingly, the creation of Andhra Pradesh ran counter to the recommendations of the States Reorganization Commission. It advised separate states. “But those were the heady days of integration and states on linguistic basis. Language was considered the basis of culture. So nobody thought that things could go amiss. Although things did not go awry in that sense, it was an uneasy alliance between two unequal economic partners,” says the former chief secretary.
Problems were compounded by mounting differences over the years, not least Telangana being an arid, resource-poor and landlocked region, perched in the highlands. It has no minerals and its coal is of dubious quality. The Godavari cuts through the area but it is difficult to funnel water from the river to the fields. In recent years, most Andhra farmers’ suicides have occurred in this region. The area has two major power and irrigation projects, at Srisailam and Nagarjunasagar on the Telangana-Andhra border. But most of the water and power goes to the non-Telangana part of Andhra Pradesh. Land holdings are concentrated in the hands of the few, not the many, so the Maoist movement has deep roots here. Activists for Telangana say it is “an internal colony of the rest of Andhra”.
They may have a point. Telangana has no native entrepreneurs but carpetbaggers from the coastal parts of the state have moved in. Right now, Telangana may never grow and develop unless the Centre pumps crores into developing it. It is worth noting that Andhra Pradesh’s most productive areas, investment-rich Vishakhapatanam and the K G Basin, will stay with Andhra. Which would leave a new Telangana with just one asset — Hyderabad. But Brand Hyderabad is not about the manufacturing sector. It is about IT and ITeS. Both require human capital and are more mobile than manufacturing units. Such sectors are sensitive to the slightest change in the ecosystem. If Telengana comes into being, the image of Brand Hyderabad is bound to be battered. “Telangana is not economically viable. But we can’t say that on the record,” laments a Congress leader from Telengana. Clearly, small may not always be beautiful.
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