 "No major celebrations as Telangana and AP complete one year of statehood")
“Whatever they have done is only incremental — adding a new scheme or tweaking the old one. What more can we expect in one year?” says K Nageshwar, a political analyst and professor at Journalism department of Osmania University while responding on the performance of the two governments.
Contentious issues involving sharing of river waters and power and division of organisations and assets listed out in the 9th Schedule of the AP Reorganisation Act, 2014, including that of government staff, are yet to be resolved.
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According to the officials, de-merger proposals had been submitted for 43 out of 90 companies in the 9th Schedule to a committee headed by retired IAS officer Shila Bhide (appointed by the Centre). Though it has been a smooth sail for the committee so far, division of big corporations such as state road transport corporation (APSRTC) and power companies would be a big task and is expected to take more time.
While the equity holding of erstwhile Andhra Pradesh in local coal miner Singareni Collieries Company Limited (SCCL) has been completely transferred to the Telangana state, both the states are staking claim over AP Heavy Machinery and Engineering Limited, which is a subsidiary of SCCL located at Vijayawada in Andhra Pradesh.
The allocation of staff remains an open ended issue as a part of the officer level cadre hailing from coastal Andhra is to be deployed in Telangana while a part of the fourth class staff, including drivers and lift operators, hailing from Telangana in AP even after distribution of staff in the ratio of 58:42.
However, employee associations as well as organisations associated with the separate statehood movement want to be accommodated in their respective states of origin.
On the performance front, the AP government led by N Chandrababu Naidu had announced several sector-specific industrial policies besides signing dozens of MoUs for new projects, including a Vizag-Chennai Industrial Corridor project with $1 billion funding by the Asian Development Bank (ADB).
However, the government is yet to conclude the contentious land issue pertaining to the new capital city for which it had proposed to mobilise 33,000 acres of farm land in Guntur district as a section of farmers has moved court against acquisition of their land under land pooling or the land acquisition Act.
A grand master-planning is being done for the proposed capital city and for the designated capital city region by a consortium of Singapore companies and a foundation stone laying ceremony is scheduled on June 6. The actual work on ground is expected to start only in October, according to the government.
Though the AP government had said the departments of essential services would be shifted to Vijayawada, no makeshift arrangements have been made even after one year. This delay is partly being attributed to the government staff, who are reluctant to shift their base from Hyderabad, and lack of infrastructure, among other things.
On the other hand, in Telangana chief minister K Chandrasekhar Rao unveiled a host of grand plans, including an 11,000-acre pharma city, skyscrapers and other Hyderabad-focused infrastructure initiatives as well as a ‘corruption-free’ industrial policy after forming the government on June 2 itself.
Industry observers believe a couple of these initiatives would have helped the government in building confidence among the investors early on had they taken a practical shape by now, according to the industry observers.
While heading the first government of the Telangana state, the ruling party is coming under the scrutiny from several quarters as compared with that of AP.
“People of Telangana have lots of hopes and expectations as the state of Telangana and its government are born out of the politics of struggle unlike the truncated AP, which was created by accident. Though Congress president Sonia Gandhi staked her personal reputation in creating the new state, people of Telangana chose TRS thinking that as a party of political struggle it would better understand their aspirations than the Congress,” said G Haragopal, academician and human rights activist. “But what we see is just a huge gap between people and the government symbolised by the gross inaccessibility of administration to common citizens in the state secretariat,” he adds.
According to him, the government has failed to broad-base the participation of people and organisations as part of a collective effort to meet the people’s aspirations. However, he cited initiatives such as rebuilding of tank network and focus on irrigation projects as some of the positives from the TRS government in the first year.