Telangana or No Telangana, Congress Has Already Lost Andhra

Fact no. 1 : The Congress will not bite the bullet on Telangana
Fact no. 2 : Even without biting the bullet, the Congress has shot itself in the foot and is dying a slow death

The ruling party may well write off Andhra Pradesh, when it sits down to do its calculations for where its MPs for UPA 3 will come from. In the previous two editions, the state led from the front, sending 29 and 33 Congressmen and women to the Lok Sabha.

But if you have your ear to the ground, you can predict that the Congress tally from Andhra Pradesh will be reduced to single digits in the general elections next year.

The general impression is that indecision on Telangana will spell the Congress party’s doom. Yes, its procrastination will certainly contribute to its discomfiture but I suspect it won’t be the only reason.

The Congress will lose out because its ministers are either busy making trips to prison for earlier misdemeanors or are at each other’s throat.

It will lose out because the government in Hyderabad is remote controlled from Delhi and suffers from a serious governance deficit. Industry, agriculture and the domestic sector are all fed up with the long power cuts and Rahul Gandhi will realise that lack of power is also poison.

Make no mistake, the Andhra Pradesh voter is not a fool to be blind to what is happening around him/her.

He/she gave a warning to the Congress led by Y S Rajasekhara Reddy in 2009, when he/she returned only 156 of its candidates to the state assembly, a comedown from 185 in 2004. It meant that the ruling party had a wafer thin majority of just seven above the half way mark.

Interestingly, the voter also displayed an ability to distinguish between assembly and Lok Sabha polls when 33 

Congress MPs were elected on the same day of polling. If the party had indeed managed to win all the assembly seats under those Lok Sabha constituencies, it would have crossed the 230 mark in an Assembly of 294 with ease. But it was not to be.

The message was loud and clear : While the voter was willing to trust the Congress to rule the country in 2009, the party was on notice in Andhra Pradesh. The pity is that the Congress did not see the writing on the wall.

Now its inability to untie the Telangana knot has only compounded its misery. But the problem also is that the Congress is not looking to resolve the Telangana tangle by taking a firm stand on whether it is good for the people in Andhra Pradesh and also the country.

It is looking at the issue through the prism of 2014. Which means if an `arrangement’ with Jaganmohan Reddy’s YSR Congress will fetch it better electoral dividends in the next Lok Sabha, it will decide to maintain status quo on the state’s boundaries. But if Jagan plays truant, it could redraw Andhra Pradesh’s borders closer to the elections.

Strangely for a ruling party, Congress today is in a situation where it has nothing to lose and everything to gain. Over the next few months, efforts will also be made to ensure that if Telangana is given, the credit does not go to any non-Congress player. The non-Congress Telangana votaries realise that and as elections draw nearer, every politician will indulge in a lot more posturing to project himself as the true champion of the region’s interests.

To ensure the other two regions are not a washout for the party, Seemandhra leaders are also being encouraged to raise the decibel levels. Congress MP U Arun Kumar’s anti-bifurcation conclave in Rajahmundry a couple of days ago was an effort in that direction.

There is also a short-term reason to Ghulam Nabi Azad and Sushil Kumar Shinde’s jugalbandi seeking more time. The party wants to hold the carrot of statehood to its MPs from the region to ensure the Budget session of Parliament does not hit the Telangana speedbreaker. They do not want its Telangana MPs to play truant like they did during the FDI vote, which forced Shinde to call an all-party meeting on Telangana on 28 December.

With all indications that Andhra Pradesh will turn out to be Andhera Pradesh for the Congress, someone needs to hire emergency lamps quick. Or just put out a board saying : `Power Cut’.