A Conflict Over Statehood in India

Protesters upset with the prospect of Telanganan statehood, including local utility employees, have forced periodic outages for power and other services to some parts of Andhra Pradesh for more than a week, much to the detriment of the city of Hyderabad, one of India's most vibrant local economies and a center of the country's information technology sector. India's ruling Congress Party supported Telangana's bid for statehood July 30 despite the controversy surrounding the issue. The government hoped the backing would earn it some votes in the May 2014 elections and that it would dispel long-held notions that it was feckless and corrupt. According to the government's decision, Hyderabad will serve as a joint capital for 10 years before transitioning to a union territory. The city will lie outside a future Telanganan state and the future Seemandhra state, which will be composed of the remnant Rayalaseema and Andhra districts of Andhra Pradesh. In theory, the Telangana decision will help the Congress Party retain control of the government and counter the growing influence of the rival Bharatiya Janata Party.

New Delhi apparently miscalculated the degree of opposition the decision would incite. Certainly, the Congress Party realized there was internal dissent within its ranks -- indeed, it has been criticized by some of its otherwise stalwart supporters -- and it has not forgotten the protests and demonstrations against Telanganan statehood earlier in 2013. But the government did not anticipate this kind of public backlash. Tens of thousands of protesters from southern and eastern Andhra Pradesh and from areas outside the more prosperous Hyderabad have taken to the streets over the prospect of losing the economically robust city. The power outages risk impeding not only the Hyderabadi economy but also the economic activity of southern India, including the economic and manufacturing hub of Chennai in Tamil Nadu state. The threats to Hyderabad and southern India's power grid, as well as to Chennai's industrial sector, already have prompted New Delhi to begin negotiations with protest leaders. But with India's contentious national elections only eight months away, supporters on both sides of the Telanganan separatism issue will continue to leverage Hyderabad's significance to the Indian economy in their attempts to gain concessions from the government.

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