Rationale behind Telangana State?
The Indian National Congress is aware that in some large states the persistence of intra-regional imbalances in development has given rise to the demand for separate states. While it has introduced several programs to redress these disparities, recognizing the legitimacy of these concerns and acknowledging that the solution may vary from one state to another, the Indian National Congress will find pragmatic solutions to deal with these demands.
This promise in the UPA’s 2009 election manifesto is about to be realized. Following Telangana Rashtra Samiti (TRS) Chief, K. Chandrasekhar Roa’s 11 day hunger strike, the UPA Government was ‘forced’ to concede to the demand of a separate Telangana state, carved out from the ten districts of Andhra Pradesh. Rationale for the demand is a simple one: Telangana’s economic development has been neglected in favor of the richer and more powerful Andhra region - and that a new state is the only solution.
While Telangana as a separate state is yet to become a reality, the ‘decision’ has raised some vital concerns.
First and foremost, is the Government of India amenable to public demands through hunger strikes and similar techniques of moral persuasion? From Rajiv Goswami’s self-immolation attempt in 1990 to 40 women parading naked in Imphal in protest against alleged rape of a 32-year old woman by personnel of the Indian Army, it is difficult to recollect any instance of moral pressure or persuasion that has forced the Government to take specific political action.
Perhaps the demand for Telangana state was either very urgent or backed by genuine grievances. The simple logic for accepting the demand for Telangana state is that rest of Andhra Pradesh (coastal regions and Rayalseema) receive more patronage from the State government and thus are more developed. The Telangana region, comprising of ten districts, is under-resourced and under-developed.
I attempted to examine this claim on the basis of some simple statistics, hoping that the Central Government would also have based its decision on empirical facts rather than simply moral persuasion. Here is a representative sample of the data that I am analyzing:
1. Number of villages (inhabited) without Post Office in Andhra Pradesh as on March 31, 2007: for the 13 districts of coastal Andhra Pradesh and Rayalseema the number is 6,801 and for the 10 districts of Telangana region the number is 5,113.
2. Simple average of literacy rate in 2001: for the 13 districts of coastal Andhra Pradesh and Rayalseema it is 61.3% and for the 10 districts of Telangana region it is 57.1%
3. Money allotted (in lakhs) for maternal health care in 2007-2008: for the 13 districts of coastal Andhra Pradesh and Rayalseema it was 3,825.22 and for the 10 districts of Telangana region it was 2,277.23
4. Money allotted (in lakhs) for child health care in 2006-2007: for the 13 districts of coastal Andhra Pradesh and Rayalseema it was 218.56 and for the 10 districts of Telangana region it was 134.75
5. Total area (in hectares) irrigated by various sources in Andhra Pradesh in 2006-07: for the 13 districts of coastal Andhra Pradesh and Rayalseema it was 2,743 and for the 9 districts of Telangana region it was 1,473. Note: Hyderabad in Telangana is excluded because it is an urban center with no land dedicated to agriculture.
6. Additional statistics if someone is interested in having an idea of population density in the different regions of Andhra Pradesh. Average of density of population per square KM for coastal Andhra Pradesh and Rayalseema is 255.15 while for the Telangana region it is 1,997.8. Before someone concludes that Telangana is much more densely populated than rest of the state an important fact needs to be taken into consideration. The population of Hyderabad alone is 17, 649, the whole of which qualifies as urban population. If we exclude Hyderabad then the average density of population in Telangana falls to 258.77.
The indicators cited do not show any glaring difference for Telangana and rest of Andhra Pradesh in terms of the selected variables. Creation of Telangana can be justified on other grounds (geo-economic factors, social differentiation, political considerations) but discrimination in resource allocation and development does not appear to be a plausible explanation. Demand for Telangana state in the recent years has been a political movement rather than a mass movement. The Indian National Congress may have fulfilled the pledge made the election manifesto, but it cannot be claimed to a pragmatic solution. The rationale for creating Telangana and the manner in which the decision was taken are neither credible nor convincing.
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thanks for the statistics. I have some suggestions
1. look at the variables(health care spending) per capita instead of totals. per district i see about 30% higher spend in Andhra and Rayalseema.
2. total area irrigated as a % of total area would be better metric. i see a huge difference in absolute numbers and i don’t think Telangana is proportionally smaller
some other interesting metrics to look at: gdp per capita, revenue from 3 regions, budget spending, number of junior, degree, engg, medical colleges, airports, length of highways/sq km, villages without power (if any)
good luck
PS: population density. u probably just took the average of ten districts to arrive at 1997. it’s incorrect. u need (total population/total area) for telangana. else u’ll end up giving way too much weightage to hyderabad. anyways am not sure it gives much insight.
[...] more from the original source: Rationale behind Telangana State? | The Trajectory Share and [...]
I believe that this will spark further division of states elsewhere also and the Congress led government might just change the geographical map of India (divided India i must say).
Lets wait ans watch.
Good work in collecting statistics
[...] came across an interesting blog post that can you read here, which pulls some statistics comparing Telangana with the rest of AP (the [...]
your stats is skewed and wrong.
take a look at highways in google maps. you will see more of then concentrate in coastal districts.
look at the revenue and expenditures, comparing regions and not districts.
look at the huge discrepency in irrigation expenditure, the govt should have been spending more on irrigation in telangana, but it infact is spending far far less.
and why various agreements and laws favourable to telangana have not been implemented.
-J
see the facts
a. There are 10 districts in Telangana, 9 in Andhra and 4 in
Rayalaseema. Out of these 7 districts in Telangana, 3 in Andhra and 1
in Rayalaseema are considered severely backward districts which means
70% of districts in Telangana are backward while in Andhra it is 35%
and in Rayalaseema it is 25%. Apart from these there are some areas
in all parts of the state which are also backward.
b. 45% of the state income comes from Telangana region. When it
comes to utilization of funds, the share of Telangana is only 28%.
c. Normally canals are dug to supply water to the crops from
rivers for cultivation. The amount of land cultivated through canals
in just Guntur district is more than the land cultivated with canals
in entire Telangana region.
d. Nagarjuna sagar dam is built in Nalgonda district which is
in Telangana but majority of the water from the dam is used for
Krishna and Guntur district. The original dam was supposed to be
build much ahead of its present location but the location was changed
so that it falls in the Telangana region. Due to the construction of
the dam several hectares of Lime stone mines vanished as part of the
dam back waters. Everyone know that lime stone is used for producing
cement. Even the natural resources were not allowed to remain.
e. Fluorinated water problem is only in Nalgonda district
which has not been resolved since decades.
f. Two major rivers Krishna and Tungabhadra enter the state
of AP in the district of Mahaboobnagar(the biggest district in
Telangana) but the district always remains the worst draught hit
areas along with Anantapur because there is no project and process
with which the water can be utilized. The plans for utilization has
been pending for decades.
g. RDS (Rajolibanda Diversion Scheme) is build in Mahaboobnagar
to provide water to 85000 hectares of land in the district. The
leaders of Rayalaseems blasted the gates of RDS and water is supplied
to KC (Kurnool-Cudapah) canal while only remaining water, if any, is
supplied to the lands in Mahaboobnagar.
h. 3 TMC of water from Gandipet is sufficient to supply
drinking water to our city. Every year 1700 TMC of water is wasted
and is flown into Bay of Bengal from river Godavari. Starting from
Nizambad to Bay of Bengal there is no project allowed to build on
Godavari. If it is built leaders in Godavari districts fear that the
fertile lands in the area may fall short of water. If the Godavari
water is utilized properly, there will be no scarcity for food grains
in our state.
i. In Telangana regions, only few areas cultivate one crop a
year and very rarely two crops a year while most of the land doesn’t
even cultivate single crop. In both the Godavari districts, Krishna
and Guntur district, two crops a year is common and there are times
where even 3 crops a year are cultivated. The only reason is WATER.
j. Government issue G.O.’s for implicating its decisions. G.O
number 610 is the longest non implicated G.O in the history of AP.
The G.O was issued in 1986 by late NTR who was then the CM of AP,
which is not yet implicated. The G.O speaks about the share of
Telangana employees in Government jobs in Telangana region.
k. 33% of the population in Mahaboobnagar district have left
the district for livelihood to different parts of the state due to
draught and majority of them are working as daily labour. No other
district has so many people who fled the home place due to lack of
livelihood and working as daily labour.
l. There are 25 plus government degree colleges in Krishna,
Kadapa and Guntur district while there is not even a single
government degree college in Ranga Reddy district.
m. Dairy development corporation of AP purchases milk from
farmers across the state for distribution. For the same milk, in
Andhra, the government pay Rs. 24 to the farmers and in Telangana
they pay Rs. 22 per litre. Partiality is shown even in milk J
n. In between 2005-2008 government sold lands worth Rs. 20000
crores in and around Hyderabad which was utilized to build projects
in Rayalaseema and Andhra.
o. Not even a single project was completed in Telangana in the
last 5 years while several projects were completed in Andhra and
Rayalaseema.
Not just Telangana but areas of Northern Andhra, Prakasham and parts of
Rayalaseema are still backward. The state needs to progress as a unit.
People are suffering across the state and they need a solution.
Can you saum up all that was spent and earned(region wise) since last 40 or atleast 20 years??
I have seen several stats being brandied about by Telangana Separatists showing how this region ended up getting a raw deal because of Andhra centric leaders at helm. Everytime I tried to investigate the truth in these numbers, I always found them to be lies or at best half-truths. One common trick is to exclude Hyderabad when it serves the purpose and include it when not.
I recently saw a pamphlet making rounds in Hyderabad. A colleague in our office put it up on the office notice board. The pamphlet was given to him by a school principal (who got it from “Telangana Vidyavanthula Vedika”) and had a title “Why we need a Telangana state?” (in Telugu). This put up a table with Andhra, Rayalaseema and Telangana with various stats on education and jobs in these regions.
Every one who saw that pamphlet (including some Integrationists) immediately agreed with its conclusions that Telanaga got a raw deal. It was so convincing. I spent about 4 hours downloading data from various government websites to verify the information. I found that the data was wrong IN EVERY INSTANCE (for the points I completed my research so far).
I can post both the original pamphlet and the data I gathered if someone wants it. But, the point I am trying to make is that none of the claims of the Telanaga Separatists will stand based on any reasoned arguments and data. When one repeats half-truths for years together and one is able to get media time on TVs where one can project half-truths convincingly, it is sufficient to create a vague feeling in people who are passive listeners that they have been exploited and taken advantage of.
Hi Srinivas,
I am glad people like you are taking your worty time out to get to know the REAL facts.
Please do share them with other on various platforms availble. Especially the Internet.
I would be glad if you can post them to me to my mail-id : jaitelugodu@gmail.com
I will try to get it as much attention as possible through all the sources I have.
Jai Telu’godu’
jaitelugodu@gmail.com
I am working on a very comprehensive article which highlights the issues related to stats brandied about by the separatists and how just a little research and plain logical thinking is sufficient to bare the lies and half-truths. I will definitely send to anyone who is interested. But let me show another instance of educated people who form opinions based on a prior vague notion and not on reasoning.
In the comments above, a person by the name Jane posted a note saying “take a look at highways in google maps. you will see more of then concentrate in coastal districts.” evidently to show how the coastal Andhra people have exploited state revenues and got major share of roads. Now, here are the facts.
Data as of 2006-2007
TOTAL LENGTH OF ROADS (in kms)
Telangana: 81,469
Rayalaseema: 41,374
Coastal Andhra: 68,949
You would see that there are more roads in Telangana. But then, is google lying? Is what our friend Jane saw an illusion? No.
ROAD DENSITY (length per thousand sq kms)
Telangana: 710
Rayalaseema: 614
Coastal Andhra: 743
As you will notice, Coastal Andhra has a greater density of roads. Does this mean they have exploited the state revenues and got lion’s share of money for building roads? May be. But is there a different explanation for the same? Yes.
TOTAL INHABITED VILLAGES
Telangana: 10,258
Rayalaseema: 4,165
Coastal Andhra: 12,190
TOTAL POPULATION DENSITY
Telangana: 270
Rayalaseema: 201
Coastal Andhra: 342
What this shows is — there are more people living in a smaller area in Coastal Andhra than in the Telangana (density). There are more villages in Coastal Andhra for a much smaller area (village density).
This explaination, at least to my thinking, is sufficient to explain what was noticed by our friend Jane in google maps. Most separatists and separatist sympathizers are eager project an imagined victim hood for political and eventually financial/economic gains.
Hi Srinivas,
Please do send me the stats. Telangana Leaders are just giving the wrong figures to make the things complex. This moment has created bad relationships within the telugu people living all over the world which is a big worrying point at this time. any how please do send me the report to rayapuramcnu@rediffmail.com
Regards
sreenivas.
dear srinivas,
kindly send me the stats which you have worked on for me to counter with seperationists. my mail id is gv_murali2001@yahoo.com
plz send me total statistics which u had worked on.I have to counter the seperationists.my mail id is ravikiran.kodali@rediffmail.com.
Everybody is talking about consesus, is it necessary to seek conses among the brothers who want to devide from a joint family? when one of the brother wants to seperate from family it is done and no questions asked. Incidentally I may add even if anyone has doubts about consensus of the public, I feel consensus should be sought from the people of Telangana only and not from the public of Andhra and Rayalaseema.
can u give me the source from where u got the information that canal irrigitation in guntur dt. is greater than total telangana region??
guntur dist. consists of 2 parts 1)delta and the other palnadu…
irrigation through canals in delta areas dates back to british regime….it was during the Sir.Cotton time canal irrigation started in delta region..state goverment has done nothing to us…palnadu area came under canal irrigation only after NSP came into existence…
geographyically….
telanga is on plateu.. the rivers godavari and krishna are flowing in lower level than of the feilds of the regions… for eg: some of the towns in TG are almost 2000mts. above sea level…where as in delta region of Guntur or Godavari dt.s it’s about a few meters…..
sanjay,
after indiependence all the projects built by british were in a devastating position. Govt. spent millions in rebuilding the barrage and infrastructure after independence. i think no one knows about this. The actual acreage that was irrgated by the projects built by britishers came down to 40% of the original due to breaches and leakages. Govt. yearly spends several crores to modernized the project and canals. Since more canals are built in andhra lion share of irrigation money goes to andhra. Recently 9000 crores were released for Krishna-Godavari delta modernization. But the gov. yearly releases few 100 crores of money for SRSP and this only supports salaries and small repairs. It never spends large chunks in short period just because they do not want this project to develop, but on records money is spent. That is how 40 crores now went upto 1600 crores and still the project is in phase I.
And the govt. I do not know why delays every project in telangana. Result the cost of each project in telangana rises 10 times the actual planned. For example SRSP(foundation stone 1962 by nehru) was planned to cost 40 crores with more than 10 lakh acres of IP but by today 1600 crores were spent and it irrigates 2-3 lakh acres only. It is the only major project that is completed in Telangana.
Do not try to fool people by putting up twisted facts man.
Not the expenditure nor the stats will explain how telangana was neglected. You have to just reel through the Machiavellian politics of andhra in the past decades to see how the money was spent but all the measures taken not to develop any project on godavari, keep the population uneducated and brutally encounter and kill innocents if at all they see any voice raising.
And the money spent is whose share? The telangana share of money.
Sravan, Excellent explanation. Please forward these factsto everyone that you from the below link.
These are 108 facts against a million lies by S+A shits.
http://ourtelangana.com/content/108-facts-against-million-lies-santosh-vemula
Do not fool Telangana people by kaki lekkalu. You need to compare apple to apples. When everything is clearly evident in reality when you travel in both Telangana and Andhra region, what is point of making some cooked up stats. If on paper it is showing then where is it reality. If you take secratiate in Hyd, each and every employee now there is a andhra region guy. ..do you understand now that why the facts on paper are twisted. Look at the reality not the cooked up stats with no actual source and research on the stats vs reality. I personally got cheated by 3 andhra people whom I trusted on the basis of friendship. When I shared this with my Telangana friends they said they experienced the same. Then thier fiends said the same. Whole region now saying the same. It is a fact. Jai Telangana. Jai separate Andhra. Let us live separately …and maintain unity in diversity. Unity does not mean we stay under the same govt. We need to rule our own region with our suitable policies for our own people. You do the same. Let us be separate and develop mutually not by domination. With domination no reion will develop..times have changed now. Nobody even within a family tolerating domination now a days. Again Jai separate Telangana and Jai separate Andhra.
I am a medical person, and i noticed this discrimation even in medical field as wel,
for eg they centralised all medical colleges under one university called univeristy of health sciences.long back, which was very good.
my point is can any one give a single reason why the university was based in Vijayawada when almost 50% of medical realted students are based in hyderabad( i mean all medical realted students not just MBBS, which all comes under same univeristy)
hyderabad got all the big hospitals than any other place since ages dating even back from Nizam period
almost 50% of total medical related students just leave in hyderabad, it got maximum number of medical colleges than any other place in AP.
its only place whare uni, ayurvedic, homeo, dental agriculture, pharma all colleges at one place if it is so is it not convenient and failr to built a univeristy in a place where every one can get access easily or is it fair to built in a place where students from all places need to plan a 2 day trip even for small certificate to sort small issue.only one medical college with ad ental college exisits.
on what basis they did that — can any one give a single reason for that.
Even the employees in health university u cant see a 1% from telangana, why the discrepency does it mean telangana guys cant manage medical related paper work.
jai telagana
koti rathanalaveena naa telangana.eavadina chuste kalchesi bondapeduta kabardhar. jai telangana,na telangana
jai telangana.jai andhra.the regions of telangana and andhra are having mutually different cultures(social way of life).the scientific way of forming new states should be basised on ‘regional cultures’.as the regional cultures are modern form of ancient way of human life.people belongs to same culture always live peacefully and harmoniously, irrespective of difference in their caste,languages and religions ect.(ex.’deccan or hyderabadi culture’,where hindus of south and north india,muslims-sunni,shia of india,arab,turkey etc.,sikhs,jains,buddists,christians,and parsis;’multi linguistic’with presence of telugu,hindi,urdu,marati,kannada,marvadi,gujarati,tamil,parsi,arabi,tarky,etc.,).as we all know that, ‘man being is a social animal’,he has better brain than beast,but,still he prefer to live in small groups like animals does.in ancient times these groups scattered at various places, known as tribes or sub-tribes of different races.each such tribe is having its own habits,customs,belief,fears etc.with distinctive social life different to others.they never wish to live with other tribe or sub-tribe nor they accept the dominance of others.always the strong use to rob the weak and finish them.in the modern times these ancient way of life is transformed in to ‘regional cultures’ wherein economic life is part of their social life.in the last 1000-500 years the telangana region has emerged in to multicultural region known as “deccan or hyderabadi culture”‘ by the presence of various castes,religions,languages,cultures, here for centuries.this region is multi linguistic region as urdu was state official language till 18-9-1948.non-telugu people were 52% in 1940″s.even today 1/3 of telangana population are non- telugu only.the telugu of telanga with a mix of urudu words and having its’own dialect,is different to telugu spoken in other regions.further,the region has a history of 1000 years, as an independent princely state(even in british- india rule).telangana was a seperate state till conditional merger in 1956.culturally and economically richer than seem-andhra till,1956.wherein during that period seem-andhra was dependent on tamil madrasis for several centuries.seem-andhra is highly caste based society with south indian hindu drawidian culture(mono culture)and purely ‘telugu’ linguistic (mono linguistic) region.though,’telugu linguistic,’ ’state of andhra’ with capital kurnool was formed on 1-10-1953,it is due to incompetency of their gentleman leaders to rule their state and build their state and its’ capital with dedication,hard work by optimum utilization of funds available,they showed their back to andhra people.infact, it took 400 to 500 years to develop cities like delhi,mumbai,calcutta,madras and hyderabad in the history of india.these andhra leaders mislead their people once again and showed them the path of destructing its’rich neighbouring ‘hyderabad state’which is culturally and linguistically different,knowing this fully fraudulently raised an impotent slogan of vishalandhra (presently samaikhyandhra) under the pretext of telugu,shamefully, choose to lead life of “parasite”(depend on the wealth of telangana).in democracy people of telangana should rule their own state of telangana and andhras their own state of andhra.but,what kind of democracy is this that, telanganites dont have democratic rights on their own region and it is ruled by ‘alien’ ‘andhras; for the last 54 years.telanganites are not claiming any lands of andhra nor it is division of andhra.infact, andhraprdesh is an unwanted,unnecessary and un-natural, fictitious state formed only to benefit andhras to loot telangana resources,destruct their broad based multi-culture ,linguistic status and violate human rights and democratic rights of 4o millon telanganites.to hell with impotent samaikhyandhra slogan.it is an imperialistic expansionist aspiration,unfair wish in a democratic nation like india.pl.note that though iam a telanganite,my origin is andhra(in the past my ancestors did their best to develop andhra in pre-independence).
@karun i dont know the real stats of medical colleges, but based on your explaination it seems that telangana region have more medical colleges than andhra region, so how can you claim discrimination if one university has been setup in the andhra region(based on your comment). so please dont even try to participate in discussions when you dont have a basic knowledge of how things work and i am not supporting united andhra, just dont want people like you to go on ranting without even knowing what they are talking about(like TRS leaders).
I¡¦m not positive the place you’re getting your info, however good topic. I must spend a while learning more or figuring out more. Thanks for great information I was on the lookout for this info for my mission.