Over to Indifference : Escaping from the T-turmoil

A Troubled Conscience: Due to plans of career switch, I was staying full-time at my home in the remote corner of Nizamabad, in Northern Telangana, for the last month. I love the land like my own life. I am pained at how the Telangana movement has been hijacked by the goons who claim to be running the movement. Innocent folk of the region buying their lies is a painful bonus. These are the people to whom I preached with intense passion, about five years back, that this movement is legitimate and is key for progress of the region. Now they ask me questions in confused tone and find myself with a troubled conscience. Here is a sample of the bundle of contradictions that people here have to deal with :

1. Their kids have not gone to school for close to a month. But promises of a bright future come from people without a degree. ‘Itla aite etlane baapu?’ (How come, sir?) is the question that leaves me baffled. The so-called ‘professor’ Kodanda Ram asks all educational institutions to stop operating.
2. State Employees do not want to work but want salaries. They are ‘working’ for a nobler cause. People wonder how they get free money and for what ‘work’. The competent and passionate worker sits at home with fear, the incompetent and unmotivated one believes ‘to go on strike’ is his right. Both are paid for the non-work, though.
3. Youth find themselves unemployed and see every scope of enterprise and employment being blocked. ‘A bright future beckons’ the local pink-gangster screams. I cant answer the college kid who asks me ‘Is it true that hiring is on hold in Hyd’. This is a touchy issue for me. I even put a brave face telling them ‘nothing hinders a competent person’. I never sounded more shallow.
4. Local merchants, theaters, schools have to contribute funds to the local ‘JAC’/'TRS’ while NOT running. Gangsters have a kinder mode of operation : at least they allow you to create value before asking protection money for not looting it. Joint Atrocities Committee and Telangana Rowdy Samiti are more apt names for these groups. And of course wine-shops and other entertainment sources are exempt from non-operation. Jana-Shakti era redux.
5. A person questions the sense and reason in the method and gets labelled as a ‘Telangana Drohi’. He is made to publicly apologize to the ‘peaceful’ protestors at the point of threats. A voluntary ‘Gandhian Movement’ for you.
6. At a by-election rally (for Banswada constituency), the leader of the pink-goons, KCR, speaks : ‘Seemandhra people of Banswada should cooperate with our candidate’. For context, he was referring to a group of villages (including mine) where people have not known another land for over a century. Its an orchestration of class-divide which leaves most of us confused as to what this movement is about. The classes here are determined based on arbitrary whims of self-declared T-leaders.
7. ‘Velama Dora KCR Zindabad’ screams a lunatic bringing in another flavor to the confusion. Nizamabad, traditionally a strong-hold of backward classes gets a rude jolt when this angle is brought forward. The burden of caste is the bonus our holy traditions gave us. Not special to this problem, but hell, its not helping.
8. The recommended channels ‘T-news’ and ‘hmtv’ harp on ‘Seemandhra Kutra, Seemandhra Channels’ etc. Then they applaud the support of ‘Seemandhra Settlers’ for the movement. Talk of a way to incite hatred. Everyone from the state government, central government, channels, neutral parties .. actually anyone who disagrees with the TRS (and the JAC which is its puppet) is a born-enemy of Telangana.
9. A non-TRS contestant is hounded by the pink-clad goons while campaigning. People wonder why there is an ‘election’ if choice is non-existent.

.. the list is endless. I dont want to go to double digits. As it is, this is ammunition to the Samaikya Andhra fanatics who latch on to everything available to discredit the underlying cause of this movement. But I had to write this to expose way the TRS-goons have hijacked this movement.

Defense of the Indefensible: As a person who at least tries to be rational I cant put up a defense or even be apologetic. Now there will be tons of guys who will dig in to each of the above points and present thousand arguments on how its justice/payback/sacrifice etc. Most of them turn out to be the likes of a jobless youth hell-bent of blaming the system (they need to look at scores of T-guys in the silicon valley and try to be more competent), or an unpublished writer who could not produce a decent work in his native language but wants to harp on suppression of culture (they need to look at Dasarathi and Suravaram Pratapa Reddy and come up with a decent work to celebrate the T-culture) or the uninformed white-collar worker who is high on the revolution-drug in his AC-room (they need to use common sense or study a bit of history or economics or sociology) or the misguided communist who is still dreaming of collectivist utopia (they just need to get real and get a real job, probably). Whatever some might feel at my stereotyping, I did it on purpose to rudely present reality to defenders of this dastardly and retarded nonsense. It will anger a lot of genuine T-wellwishers. I am one too, and one with pride. I apologize to the this class if they are hurt. But the immutable facts are, well, immutable. A is A :

1. A political problem is brought into private lives of individuals at the point of gun, without their sanction and they are forced to fight for one political faction. Any dissenter is manhandled, beaten or threatened into submission. All this, despite clear political mandate being given to them and despite the T-legislators having a near-choking power in the legislature. Goondagiri cant get more open than this. The illusion of a non-violent movement is soon to disappear.
2. The problem is painted as a life-and-death one, precisely when life is actually flowing into the veins of this region. People are being asked to be non-productive and incompetent in a fast-moving age by telling them that a mere political demarcation will end all their problems. People who dared to question the assumption or ask for a road-map are automatically T-drohis.
3. The movement is being run at the point of gun by the TRS, under the garb of JAC, using blackmail, extortion, pull and corrupt state machinery which acts with political interests. They make exorbitant and irrational promises with the sole goal of coaxing people to their side.
4. In the entire span of recent movement, NOTHING came good for the region, except a sickeningly dark image at the national level. One has to hear what the non-telugus in Hyd have to say about the region, its work-ethic, its culture and of course, the leadership. This weakened the prospects of the formation of new state rather than helping it.
5. Most opposition to the formation of T, is because of KCR/TRS who have clearly conveyed to other stakeholders that apart from political demarcation, the formation of T means a right to loot and convert it in to a private estate of theirs.

Indifference is bliss: I dislike ending my rants without suggesting a solution. But this one has got to be an exception. I am tired of listing down solutions. Because simply nobody cares or dares to speak against these goons. To do so and still be a friend of T is impossible according to them. In many ways these guys have become unconstitutional dictators of this land. All this, when our constitution permits a hard-core Samaikya Andhra supporter to have right to live in the heart of Telangana. Oh, well .. what I am smoking to talk of rights here!!Whether this land moves ahead or sinks to the levels of yesterday’s Bihar or even lower .. I really no longer care. Indifference is the only escape for my conscience. Let their guns and muscle rule the minds of people. I have made peace with it. If a populace chooses to be unthinking, uncourageous and irrational then they do deserve what they get. I have decided to pay the price for my own indifference by silently shedding a tear for my homeland. Or did I outline a solution? For myself, if not for the problem?

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