http://www.deccanchronicle.com/dc-comment/dear-capitalists-call-telangana-bluff-940
Dear capitalists, call the Telangana bluff June 25th, 2010 Kancha Ilaiah Dear Hyderabad capitalists, The city is as much your home as it is mine. I have been living here ever since I came to write my MA entrance examination in 1974 with a broken suitcase, bought from a local Sunday market of Narsampet by my late mother. Now I am a professor with status and salary. Some of you came to this city much earlier than me and some later than me, but by all means you are far richer than me or any average employee, doctor or engineer. You have made your money on the labour power of your employees and also from the profits you accrued in the market. You have accumulated your wealth by combining labour and capital. Yet that wealth is yours, no doubt. Now the movement for separate Telangana state is threatening your very survival in Hyderabad. Your response has been to pump money to the leaders of the Telangana agitation since they have been issuing threats to your economic interests. “We will not allow your business in Hyderabad”, they say. “We will not allow your cinema industry to run; we will not allow even your cricket match to take place”. You have pacified them by bribing them. Of course, you have also aided and abetted a united Andhra movement alongside. What worries me most is the way the leaders growing around such movements have become richer day by day. Thanks to this, your economic activity has been going on without hurdles. After each such threat, it is the threat giver’s wealth and health that is increasing. But the general health of Telangana — the economic health of its aam aadmi — has been deteriorating. In the late 60s and early 70s the Telangana movement was conducted mostly on legs and bicycles. The bigger leaders of the movement were moving in jeeps, and even the biggest ones could only boast Ambassador cars. Yet they conducted agitations that shook the Centre, inspired the youth to brave bullets and also won elections — 11 out of 14 parliamentary seats were in the pocket of Praja Samithi. Of course, that movement also caused loss of lives and disrupted education. Lot of public property that Telangana people would have used for their advancement was damaged. The agitations also pushed the region backwards in the field of education. And no great moral leader or intellectual emerged from the movement. And most importantly, Telangana did not become a separate state. But the fact remains that no leader made money out of that movement. Only Mr Chenna Reddy made political capital. Now look at the present Telangana movement and its drivers. All you see is money, money and more money. Where is it coming from? Obviously much of it is coming from you. You see this movement as an inevitable evil and want to handle it as carefully as possible. There is a saying that Capitalists like corrupt Communists. Not only can the corrupt Communist be bribed, his presence also gives a bigger moral licence to the capitalist to exploit workers more and more. Similarly you capitalists do not like the Telangana movement. But since it is a reality, you would rather deal with a corrupt leader, who asks money for everything. Whatever money you pay him you get from the sweat of the aam aadmi of the region. And as the wealth of the leader grows the resources of the aam aadmi dwindles in the same proportion. This is bad capitalist morality, to say the least. Now you have a Telangana tiger that needs red blood every day and a group of paper tigers who need some “white water” every day. The relationship is perfect. But where does that leave the ordinary people of Telangana? They are not given drought relief and their children do not get English education. For all the demands there is one answer — wait till Telangana comes. Meanwhile, Telangana’s brand ambassadors are moving around in brand new Innovas and Maruti Swifts. Should this be the quality of the movement? We are scratching our heads for an answer. Assume that you had spent the same kind of money to give English education to the children of the poor people of Telangana after the 1969 movement, perhaps by forming charity trusts or by establishing at least 10 schools in the villages. Do you know what would have happened? You would have produced a world class intellectual from this region. The whole region would have appreciated your culture of charity. Many of you praise Mahatma Gandhi but hate his trusteeship theory. Where did we get this capitalist culture from? That is the difference between Warren Buffett, Bill Gates and you. So long as you do not change your culture, any number of leaders and professional agitators will be squeezing money out of you. India cannot survive with this culture of capitalism and politics. It is time to start thinking. ------------------------------------ ---- INFORMATION OVERLOAD? Get all ZESTCaste mails sent out in a span of 24 hours in a single mail. Subscribe to the daily digest version by sending a blank mail to zestmedia-dig...@yahoogroups.com, OR, if you have a Yahoo! Id, change your settings at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ZESTMedia/join/ PARTICIPATE:- On this list you can share caste news, discuss caste issues and network with like-minded anti-caste people from across India and the world. Just write to zestcaste@yahoogroups.com TELL FRIENDS TO SIGN UP:- If you got this mail as a forward, subscribe to ZESTCaste by sending a blank mail to zestcaste-subscr...@yahoogroups.com OR, if you have a Yahoo! ID, by visiting http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ZESTCaste/join/ Also have a look at our sister list, ZESTMedia: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ZESTMedia/Yahoo! 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