The state of unity

Raj Thackeray must be rolling on the floor laughing. Congress, which lambasted him until a few weeks ago for his divisive tactics, has gone ahead to announce the creation of Telengana. Worse yet, it had no clue of the simmering discontent within its own ranks, and the issue has become a comedy circus now. If anything, Raj stands vindicated. His actions may be condemnable, but his reasoning that one state cannot subsidize corruption and underdevelopment in other states merits consideration. The independent states movement is simply a corollary of this observation - that one part of the state cannot receive all the development and focus at the cost of others.

I was born and raised in Hyderabad, so I can definitely say that Telegana is the poorer of the three areas that form AP - the other two being coastal Andhra and Rayalaseema. The coastal Andhra is definitely richer in natural resources with fertile plains and rivers whereas Rayalaseema is traditionally wealthy and also has the temple town of Tirupati helping its economy. The Telengana area is part of the Deccan Plateau with mostly barren lands except for some cotton farming. By some freak chance, Hyderabad was made the capital of AP, else this area would have been written off totally. Of course, now, the demand for a separate state is purely a political manoeuver. And it has sparked demands for a bunch of other states. How long before we end up with 500 odd princely states we started with...