Meet the Politicians

For this post of mine, I draw inspiration from a song that Roger Waters wrote in his last record with Pink Floyd  which was called the Final Cut. The song I refer to is actually called "The Fletcher Memorial Home" which is about how all the tyrants and kings were confined in an imaginary home that was named after Eric Fletcher Waters, Roger Waters' dad who died when Roger Waters was three months old, in the Second World War. In this song there is a brief spoken word section where Waters makes fun of politicians and I have felt that the same lampooning can be done about our own politicians who are bent on destroying Andhra Pradesh first and later the country itself. So that you get the sense of what I am doing here is the spoken word section that Roger Waters wrote:

"Ladies and Gentlemen please welcome,
Reagan and Haig, Mrs Thatcher and Paisley,
Mr. Brezhnev and Party, Mr. Begin and friend,
The ghost of McCarthy and the memories of Nixon,
And now adding colour, here are a group of anonymous Latin American meat packing glitterati".

This song and the album were created after the Falklands War which was seen as a betrayal by Waters of the post second world war dream that England would fight no more wars. I am just going to paraphrase the lyrics with the names of all the great politicians who are doing their best to destroy Andhra Pradesh. Needless to say the names are too many to add into those 5 lines, so I will selectively pick up the ones that I think will make the most sense.

"Ladies and Gentlemen please welcome,
Sonia and Singh, Kiran and Ashok (NGO leader)
Mr. Naidu and party, Mr. Jagan and friend,
The ghost of Indira Gandhi and the memories of Channa Reddy,
And now adding colour here are Prof. Kodand and his group of anonymous state splitting literati".
Do they expect us to treat them with any respect?

I am not going to go into the twists and turns that this sordid drama is taking. All I know is that politicians from both sides are least bothered about common people and all that they want is something to satisfy their power for hunger, which I suppose is this city called Hyderabad. Today all those warring for this city and against each other see Hyderabad as a combination of gold+diamond+coal+mica mine that can be harvested to their advantage. What I see is that while they do this for their own benefit and satisfaction of their greed, for common people who live here the city is slowly turning into a big landmine that will blow up sooner or later and take their lives. How many more twists and how many more terms before anything concrete comes out of this imbroglio. My estimate is that they will be infinite in numbers. One side waits for the other side to get some assurance and then they will start playing their games. First when Telangana was burning, Coastal Andhraites were fiddling, now that Coastal Andhra (including Rayalaseema) is burning, the Telanganaites are fiddling.

I think this is an issue that is being kept alive. It is like a relay race where the baton is passed on to the next member of the team. Here it might appear that there are rival teams that are passing the baton on to each other. That is the chicanery of it all. In reality they are all aligned on the same side and are making hay when the sun is shining. And this is an endless relay race with newer members becoming part of the team. Now that YS Jagan claims that he stands for status quo, it is quite clear that there is a deep strategy here between his party and the Congress. In fact, there has been an allegation for a very long time that it was he and his father YS Rajashekhar Reddy who instigated the movement for a separate Telangana as a strategy to defeat Chandra Babu Naidu and the Telugu Desam Party that seemed invincible. Even now the Congress is using a strategy by which it will not lose too much in the new Telangana state and the residuary state of Andhra Pradesh.

Look at it this way, the Congress has a tie-up with the TRS here in Telangana. So they will sweep the polls in the Telangana region together. By granting a separate Telangana the Congress will have alienated a number of people in the Coastal Andhra side. There Jagan Reddy and his YSRCP have emerged as a strong force since it was Jagan and his mother who did the first volte face and pledged loyalty to keeping Andhra Pradesh undivided once Digvijay Singh made the announcement of a separate Telangana. The law courts have been very cooperative with Jagan Reddy once he has been given bail. He was first told not to leave Hyderabad and later it has come down to he can go anywhere as long as it is in India. So what did the courts now see that they did not in the past? Why did the CBI not oppose bail and all that followed vehemently. It is perhaps ironical that the High Court of Assam has held that the Central Bureau of Investigation is an unconstitutionally constituted body!!! Does this mean that Jagan and company are now free birds? I am waiting for some other court to say that the police in India is an unconstitutional body.

But to comeback to what I was saying, since the first about face was done by Jagan and YSRCP they are now favourites in the coastal Andhra side to perform well in the polls that are just a few months away. So here is the picture. The Congress is not likely to get too many seats from the cow belt. It will have to rely upon Andhra Pradesh to give it enough seats for it to head UPA - III.  We have seen that the Congress thinks that it will do well with the TRS in the Telangana region. Now if Jagan Reddy does well, slowly the cases will all be dropped and he will get a certificate of being squeaky clean, and to fight the communal forces and anti-national forces, he will sink his differences with the Congress party and give the party support either from outside or by merging with the Congress. And who knows he may even get that post of Chief Minister for which there are no great leaders available within the Congress. So the question is why do this? Just for this election?

I think there is another dimension to this as well. The Congress is trying to finish off the Telugu Desam Party and Chandra Babu Naidu in a big way. Chandra Babu Naidu and the TDP have no strategy and have been out of power for 10 years. If they are shut out in this election, it will be very difficult for Naidu to even run his party. Fifteen years of not being in power can hurt politicians very badly and where it matters most; their pockets. That could be the beginning of the end for the Telugu Desam. The MIM is another interesting case. They do not want a separate Telangana but if it is inevitable then Hyderabad should be an integral part of it; not a joint capital or a Union Territory. The reasoning here is simple. The MIM owes its existence to Hyderabad and its surrounding areas. If this becomes a UT or a Joint Capital in the control of the Central Government, where do these people go for their living? So that is why they have now revived the call for a Rayala Telangana so that they will have some constituencies where then can be in politics in the Kurnool and Anantapur districts. And so they are looking after their own interests.

The BJP is the biggest casualty in this. They have shouted themselves hoarse about how they will give Telangana if they come to power. Nobody heard their shouts. Now they have been saying that they will give full support to the bifurcation bill. This was until yesterday when finally someone switched on the light in their office. What does BJP gain by supporting the Congress? Nothing. On the other hand it will facilitate the Congress' strategy and its victory. So the BJP is now dithering on how to make things difficult for the Congress without appearing as if they are doing this deliberately. And ironically enough Sonia Gandhi went to Bastar in Chattisgarh and told the people there that the BJP was dividing them for its (BJP's) own gains. Now what was that English saying. Something about the pot calling the kettle black. Enjoy these games now. But remember they will comeback to bite us all and at least for that let us be ready.