Framing Telangana, Framing Your Own by Himadeep Muppidi - a critique of SKC report on Telangana
suneetha achyuta
The Srikrishna Committee Report is an exercise in framing Telangana. Though it begins by setting a lofty standard (“the only real victory [is] one in which all [are] equally victorious”) for resolving political disputes, the Report works with a limited understanding of politics and economics. As a result, issues of social and political justice are sacrificed on the altar of “development” and political expediency.
The Report reveals its limited understanding of politics and economics in a number of ways. I wish to highlight two of them here and briefly flag a couple of their implications:
1. Blinding the public, seeing like the State
Explicitly, after consulting, analyzing and studying the issue of internal security, the Report shrouds this whole area from democratic deliberation. Chapter 8 (“Law & Order and Internal Security Dimensions”) is rendered invisible to the public while being forwarded to the Central Government. However, we are also told “the Committee has kept these dimensions [“immediate law and order problems,” “internal security implications, including the growth of Maoist/Naxal activities”] in view while discussing the various options included in … “The Way Forward.””
What is the significance of excising this crucial issue from public scrutiny and deliberation? Is the Srikrishna Committee an intelligence gathering organization constituted to ferret out data unavailable otherwise to the Central Government?
The “way forward” is now dependent on our willingness to accept, uncritically, what are presented to us as “apprehensions” about “law and order” or “internal security.” One does not have to dismiss or accept these apprehensions as much as ask how and why they are seen as problems of “law and order” and “internal security” rather than as issues emerging from uneven socio-economic development or large scale dispossession.
Is it an article of national faith now that “Maoist/Naxal activities” are primarily “security” problems? Are we all agreed that they have no socio-economic causes worth deliberating on or that there is no politics here but only pathogens committed to violence or fanaticism? Isn’t it a similar removal of crucial political issues from public deliberation that is the characteristic mark of authoritarian regimes? Are Maoists now the Indian equivalents of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt or the Falun Gong in China?
Uncritical acceptance of those tenets would justify allowing the Committee to pass onto the Central Government, unhindered by the public eye or public reason, its secret analysis of Maoist/Naxal activities. The Committee and the Government are, through that article of faith, placed in an unequal and unaccountable position to judge “the way forward” in ways that the public cannot.
Can we all now be “equally victorious” or do we have to concede that the Central Government already has a “better” basis for deciding what is or is not a political issue? Why, in the name of consultations, bother to conduct a yearlong study and pretend to consult with the public? Why not trust the higher “rationality” and “goodwill” of the Government and let it “go forward” for the rest? Is this how a democratic state differentiates itself from authoritarian ones (China, Tunisia, Egypt anyone?), states that have routinely used such apprehensions to deny political freedoms internally for long periods of time?
2. Unequal petitioners, irrationally driven
Implicitly, the Srikrishna Committee Report works with a deeply problematic rational/emotional binary and, consequently, repeatedly portrays one side to the discord as highly “emotional,” somewhat distant from the “rational” and the “real” and with a propensity towards “violence.”
Emotional
In discussing Option 5, the Committee notes that this “option implies accepting the full demands of a large majority of Telangana people for a separate state that will assuage their emotional feelings and sentiments as well as perceived sense of discrimination and neglect.”
One cannot but wonder at the over determined emotionality of Telangana people here.
Emotional feelings and sentiments?! Does the Committee mean to distinguish “emotional feelings” from “non-emotional feelings” (feelings that are somehow not affected by emotion) or from “rational feelings” (feelings that are somehow affected by reason alone)? Why overlay that doubly determined feature of Telangana people (people whose “feelings” are “emotional”) with yet another affliction of “sentiments”? And then top it off by presenting their case as one of a “perceived sense of discrimination and neglect”?
Are you really treating this side to the dispute as an equal participant in this consultation, someone who, by the end, has a reasonable chance of being “equally victorious”? What would it mean to think of responding to this side not in terms of “assuaging” their “emotional” and “sentimental” “perceptions” but of taking seriously their “real” (“rational”and “emotional”) demands for justice?
Parochial
But even an “emotional perception” can be dismissed only so much when more than a few hundred students have killed themselves and lakhs of people have been agitating peacefully and publicly.
Forced to make some meaningful sense of such moving protests, the Committee concedesstingily that “the continuing demand has some merit and is not entirely unjustified” and that it is “of the view that given the long history of the demand for a separate Telangana, the highly charged emotions at present and the likelihood of the agitation continuing in case the demand is not met (unless … [a very ominous unless that I will take up below]), consideration has to be given to this option.”
Consideration has to be given to this option…
What sort of consideration does the Committee then give to this demand?
Let us focus first on its “most calm and dispassionate” part:
The Committee argues for the United Andhra Pradesh option (with some statutory decentralization measures to the Telangana region) as its first preference.
Why is that? This is because the Committee believes that “development aspect was of utmost importance for the welfare of all three regions and could best be addressed through a model that includes deeper and more extensive economic and political decentralization.” (There is a naïve way in which the Committee produces its reading of what the world of “a normal economy” looks like but let us leave that for the time being).
What if the Committee’s first preference is not agreeable to one side to the dispute? Can all parties to the dispute still be “equally victorious?”
The Committee acknowledges that this option, its first preference, will be met with “total rejection” by “some political leaders” and “a majority of the people from Telangana region” since it does not respond to their demand for a separate state (“The Committee expects that the first reaction to this option will be of a total rejection by some political leaders, other groups and organizations and a majority of the people from Telangana region, since their long standing demand for a separate Telangana would not have been met.”)
In the face of this “total rejection” by “a majority of the people from Telangana region,” it claims a higher/better rationality. It asserts that its first preference model is in “the best interest of all the people of the state.” And, without stopping there, it proceeds to parochialize and denigrate the arguments of those who might not be convinced by such a claim.
So, students and unemployed youth might disagree (“not feel satisfied”), it adds parenthetically, because they have been “promised lakhs of jobs”; non-gazetted officers might disagree (“not feel satisfied”) because, it adds parenthetically, they are “anticipating accelerated promotions”; it runs out of appetites and feelings to attribute to lawyers and farmers but throws them into this group anyway, this group of particularistic interests seemingly unable to appreciate or feel satisfied by what is in the common, i.e. public (not private) interest.
Emotionally determined, parochially driven and not easily satisfied, these agitators for Telangana!
Violent
Having asserted that those who would reject the Committee’s formulation of a United Andhra Pradesh have only particularistic concerns, self-aggrandizing motives and not easily satisfied feelings (and hence, unlike them, not engaging a broader national interest rationally), it predicts how they might respond to this most preferred option viz. violently (“Although the model recommended is considered to be in the best interest of all the people of the state some segments of Telangana population, such as students and unemployed youth (who have been promised lakhs of jobs), non—gazetted officers (who are anticipating accelerated promotions), lawyers and farmers etc. may not feel satisfied and may resort to violent agitations.”)
How does the Committee move from a reading of partiality, self-aggrandizement and dissatisfaction to an expectation of violence from these sections?
It is one thing to accuse various Telangana groups of being focused on their own specific/”narrow” interests (and claim a broader and more virtuous basis for the Committee’s own thinking). But why claim that the lack of satisfaction on this front would mean that they “may resort to violent agitations”? Why would these groups that have led a peaceful agitation for so long not continue that process? Isn’t it because this sort of “irrational” behavior is exactly what you would expect from “highly emotional” people who cannot be expected to see (or feel) beyond their own selfish interests?
Political Implications
1. Crisis for the Party = Crisis for the Public?
If, as the Committee sees it, representatives of different political parties would be “pressurized to resign in order to create a political crisis,” why is this not a crisis for the political parties and/or the ruling Congress party alone? How does the crisis of a political party or two turn into a security crisis for the Nation?
Who does the Committee have in mind when it reads this political crisis as “pos[ing] a serious challenge to the leadership”? Is the Committee a panel studying an issue of national importance and hence responsible for transcending partisan politics or is it merely a handmaiden of the ruling party (serving its “leadership” even in its own eyes)?
In other words, not only does the Committee denigrate (as emotional, particularistic, and violent) those sections of Telangana people who might disagree with its formulation of what is in their best interest but it also interprets, for the ruling Congress party, various political crises that might follow and helpfully provides advice on how these should be dealt with, summarized very conveniently, in that chapter kept hidden from public deliberation (“It is possible that the MLAs/MLCs and MPs belonging to different parties in Telangana may be pressurized to resign in order to create political crisis. It would indeed pose a serious challenge to the leadership to deal with this immediate backlash and the agitations which are likely to continue for a period of time. This aspect has been covered at some length in the chapter on law and order and internal security implications.”)
Who exactly is serving parochial interests here? And based on what “anticipated” perks/pelf?
The Committee’s orientation to the dispute thus mocks its seeming impartiality. It reflects poorly on its capacity to understand a movement that has come together, over a decade in its most current phase, to non-violently voice its demands for justice in a democracy.
But the absurdity does not stop there.
2. Disciplining democratic politics
Though the Committee predicts rejection and violent agitations in response to its first preference, it also holds that the “empowerment model” it proposes might be understood (by “the people”) eventually, under certain conditions.
What are those conditions?
It argues that “with firm political and administrative management it should be possible to convey conviction to the people that this option would be in the best interest of all and would provide satisfaction to the maximum number of people in the state.”
What exactly does “firm political and administrative management” mean here? How can “firm political and administrative management” “convey conviction” to those (emotional, parochial and violent) people who believe/feel otherwise?
It is here we come to the ominous “Unless…”
The “firm political and administrative management” advice emerges from what was censored from the ordinary public and made unavailable for democratic deliberation. It is the gift of “intelligence” to the State, a gift that deals with the handling of those unconvinced by the Committee’s arguments.
“Firm political and administrative management” is code for using force to convince those who think/feel otherwise than the Committee on this issue. Rather than relying on the force of its arguments, the Committee has now reached a stage where it recommends force to “convey conviction.”
What the best option, as recommended by the Committee, ultimately comes to mean is this: Handle these “emotional,” “highly sentimental,” “parochial” and “violent” people “deftly.” Manage them (and their feelings) “firmly” till they come to (are conveyed to) reason, a reason that sees continued “development” (however uneven) as its fundamental goal.
Behind the Committee’s labored “reasoning” lies an iron fist.
Shrouding both and drowning out legitimate cries of injustice are ritualistic chants of “development.”
How obscene that such a framing of Telangana is presented as allowing everyone to emerge “equally victorious”!
A.Suneetha
Senior Fellow and Coordinator
Anveshi Research Centre for Women's Studies
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