Telangana Elections 2023: BRS trips on north-south geographical and developmental divide 

Telangana Elections 2023: CM K Chandrashekar Rao. (File image)

Even as Telangana is set to face the third assembly election since its formation in 2014, the growing south-north divide in the state stares at K Chandrashekar Rao’s 10-year rule. Ironically, it was long years of feeling of utter neglect that fuelled the Telangana statehood movement, of which KCR was the biggest proponent.

Hyderabad as the state capital with 14 assembly segments is located at the centre of Telangana. A region situated in the north of Hyderabad is called North Telangana while the area in the south is South Telangana.

A North-South Divide

Geographically, North Telangana falls in the Godavari river basin at one extreme end while South Telangana in the Krishna river basin is diametrically on the opposite side. The fate of a particular region in terms of development depends on the bounty of the river on which it is located. That way, North Telangana by default has been far ahead of its southern counterpart, thanks to the perennial Godavari river.

Mir Osman Ali Khan, the last Nizam of Hyderabad state, built the Nizam Sagar dam in 1923 on the Manjira River, a tributary of the Godavari. Subsequently the Kadem Project on the Kadem river, another tributary of the Godavari, followed in 1949. In addition, the Sri Ram Sagar Project was built on the Godavari during the period of Neelam Sanjeeva Reddy as the Chief Minister of the united Andhra Pradesh.

Incidentally, north Telangana played a pivotal role in the statehood movement with its son of the soil KCR at the helm. The north has maintained its political dominance over the south after formation of the state, taking away a major slice of development at the expense, some argue, of the traditionally deprived south.

The constituencies represented by KCR (Gajwel), his son K.T. Rama Rao (Siricilla) and his nephew T Hareesh Rao (Siddipet), are all in the north. They have emerged as development hubs with clusters of premier educational institutes like IITs and IIITs, a good road network, etc coming up in and around these areas. The mega Kaleshwaram Lift Irrigation Project, billed as the pride of Telangana, also came up on the Godavari river with a focus on North Telangana, during the tenure of KCR.

Recurrent droughts leading to frequent crop failures and irrigation facilities have prevented South Telangana from escaping its backwardness. This has also triggered a massive exodus of the workforce. Nature’s vagaries have also played its part apart from the skewed development priorities of the successive governments, including the incumbent KCR government. Though the Krishna river meanders through the southern parts, the area hardly benefits from the river due to its poor inflows.

Could KCR Have Done Better?

KCR is alleged to have failed to complete the irrigation projects in the south on the Krishna river, which have been pending for long, at the same pace with which he expedited Kaleswaram in his home turf. In his first term, KCR lobbied with then Maharashtra’s Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis to resolve the inter-state disputes with Maharastra over utilisation of the Godavari waters, making way for his brainchild, Kaleswaram project.

When it comes to the South, he allegedly failed to demonstrate a similar alacrity in preventing neighbouring Andhra Pradesh, headed by YS Jaganmohan Reddy whom KCR declared as his foster son, from “over-exploitation” of the Krishna river through the Pothireddypadu head regulator.

From the very beginning itself, the new state had set out on its journey with muted grievances over distinct cultures, skewed irrigation and development priorities, between its two regions.

An assembly session on November 21, 2014 – hardly four months after the state formation – was witness to such fissures. A former minister G Chinna Reddy, a Congress leader from the south, accused the KCR government of launching a “cultural invasion” on his region.

Bathukamma festival, which, in fact, is regarded as a festival of the north was being promoted by the government as a symbol of pan-Telangana’s culture and identity. Though the festival was alien to the south, it is being imposed on it, Reddy said.

The purported discrimination being meted out to south Telangana under the BRS rule could be ascribed to its proclivity to patronise the rival Congress party in elections. Strikingly, KCR’s bête noir, A Revanth Reddy of the Congress hails from south Telangana.

KCR’s party, though touted  as the achiever of statehood, ended up with 63 seats in the 119-member assembly, just three seats more than the simple majority, in 2014. That was due to the people of south

Telangana rejecting his party, as the region has been a traditional bastion of the Congress.

Will the election on November 30 ensure a level play, bridging the north-south divide? One has to wait and see.

Gali Nagaraja is a senior journalist, formerly associated with The Hindu, The Times of India, and Hindustan Times for over three decades. Views are personal, and do not represent the stand of this publication.