From protest leader to dissent crusher, KCR has come a long way in Telangana
From a protest leader to dissent crusher, KCR has come a long way in Telangana
Between 2009 and 2013, the Telangana Rashtra Samithi (TRS) was on a 24x7 protest mode, coming up with innovative methods to draw attention to its call for a separate state of Telangana (from Andhra Pradesh). TRS activists stopped trains, cooked food on rail tracks, organised a march by a million people to Tank Bund by the Hussain Sagar Lake in Hyderabad, called umpteen number of bandhs and got government employees to boycott work for days at end.
That was the DNA of the Telangana agitation and it was obvious from K Chandrasekhar Rao's slogan "Ek aur dhakka, Telangana pucca" (one more push and we will get Telangana for sure).
But now the shoe is on the other foot and the same TRS frowns upon protests. So much so that it does not even want the Dharna Chowk, Hyderabad's equivalent to Jantar Mantar, to be anywhere inside the city.
The chowk located near Indira Park is the designated spot since 2005 for holding demonstrations. What is ironical is that the TRS, including KCR himself, has used Dharna Chowk liberally during the Telangana struggle. KCR now clearly does not seem to believe that protest, especially of the peaceful kind, is democracy at work.
A few weeks back, the government made it clear that it favoured Dharna Chowk to be shifted 40 km away from its central location. The argument it gave was that local residents around the area were put to inconvenience.
KCR himself reasoned a trifle sarcastically that since TV crews would go where the protests happened, the purpose of the protesters would be served. Basically, KCR wanted the optics of any protest to be reduced to a few visuals and soundbites on TV, away from the Hyderabad public glare.
Over the past 24 hours, what would have been a mere local issue has become a commentary on the attitude of a ruling party. It reflects an intolerance towards dissent and a belief that the TRS is here to rule for ever.
The manner in which the TRS government and its police force reacted to efforts by organised political groups to occupy the protest site to make the point that it should not be shifted out, was unbecoming of a state government. While the Hyderabad police allowed both groups — those who wanted Dharna Chowk to stay and those who wanted it to be moved out — to protest at the same place, the presence of policemen and women in plainclothes in the anti-Dharna Chowk camp raised eyebrows. Though the police brass tried to salvage the situation by transferring out one policewoman — Lake Police Inspector K Sreedevi — after she was found holding a placard opposing the protest site, the act of the police not taking a neutral stand does not bode well.
The police decision to allow both groups to demonstrate at the same place also seemed with an eye to stoke trouble. As expected, things went out of hand, with both groups clashing with each other while the cops had to resort to lathicharge, leaving protesters injured.
Various political parties smelled a conspiracy that the visuals of the violence will be used to justify the decision to shift out the protest site.
Congress leader V Hanumantha Rao also suspected the opposition by local residents was a creation of the government. "All these years, none of these residents' welfare associations around this place said a word. Where have they emerged from now?'' he asked. Kumar, a local resident, however, claimed they have been demanding the removal of the protest site for long.
Hyderabad's civil society, like always, has kept mum, not lending its voice and carbon footprint to the opposition bid to ensure that the democratic space for dissent is not taken away. That is a big mistake because if the government of the day tastes blood by pushing out organised parties, the common man will not get the physical space should he desire to lodge a protest tomorrow.
Look at what happened in Chennai in January when lakhs of people from the city and even outside converged at the iconic Marina, converting it into their theatre of protest. The show of strength in the form of a sea of humanity helped it get its way on Jallikattu. But now wiser from the experience, Chennai police makes sure it does not allow any form of protest at Marina. Does Hyderabad want to go down the same path?
TDP leader Revanth Reddy points out that KCR is making the same mistake of the 1960s. "Because the government of the day suppressed the Telangana agitation then, a lot of youth embraced Naxalism. Don't youth need to give vent to their frustrations democratically? If you do not give that space, they will only go to the forest and pick up guns,'' says Reddy.
Animal Husbandry minister Srinivas Yadav, one of the early defectors from the Telugu Desam to the TRS, measured the protest by the number of people it attracted. He said, "The TRS too could have mobilised 10 lakh people to counter the opposition's protest, but refrained from doing so.
The problem with this kind of an attitude is that it fails to recognise that just like there is space for a government, there is as much need and space for an opposition, both political and apolitical.
The other issue is that any criticism of the government is labelled as anti-Telangana by the government. The TRS needs to realise that the state is three years old now and every citizen of Telangana is a stakeholder in its progress, with full rights to demand and question both the government and the opposition of the day.
What the government has ended up doing is to give an issue to the opposition. Reddy points out how different parties with opposing ideology have come together on this one issue. Without a doubt, in terms of popularity, the KCR regime is at the moment far ahead of its political rivals. But it is committing a political blunder by indulging in efforts to muzzle criticism.
"It only reveals a feudal mindset, that has no place in a democracy. I call it democratic feudalism,'' says K Nageshwar, political analyst.
But interestingly, the Dharna Chowk has legal sanctity since a government order was issued by the then Andhra government, headed by YS Rajasekhara Reddy, to create it. So unless KCR issues an order overruling the previous one, he cannot make Dharna Chowk history.