Prof Kodandaram, Aravind Kejriwal: both these leaders coming from the background of civil society movements led distinct political experiments in diverse politico-geographic terrain. Both these instilled a hope for new political culture. However, the success so far on the electoral landscape is quite contrasting.
Kejriwal trounced both Congress and BJP and continues to take a strident anti-Modi position, but, refuses to clearly identify with Congress.
On the contrary, Prof Kodandaram, the Chairman of the Telangana Joint Action Committee(TJAC) which spearheaded the movement for separate state differed with KCR to launch his own political outfit Telangana Jana Samithi(TJS). Failing to steer the party into a third alternative to ruling TRS and opposition Congress, Kodandaram got subsumed into Mahakutami led by the grand old party. His party TJS is now a marginal player confined to contesting half a dozen seats only as part of grand alliance.
The TRS has been accusing that the professor had a clear bias towards the Congress even during the movement. KCR, describing Kodandaram as a nonentity, said that former professor of Osmania University was handpicked by him to head the joint action committee and the latter has no independent role in running the movement. Soft-spoken, yet, sharply critical of the KCR regime, Kodandaram, on the other hand, claims that his new political party is only to fulfil the dreams of martyrs who laid down their lives for achieving a separate state of Telangana. The people of Telangana are yet to achieve the new Telangana which they have fought for, opines the TJAC chief in his interaction with this author. He further alleges that KCR accommodated many of those who bitterly opposed the formation of new state. Leaders who have attacked the Telangana activists and filed cases against them are included even in the cabinet while the true Telangana loyalists were left in the lurch.
Arvind Kejriwal was successful in defeating both the Congress and the BJP in the Delhi polls. Leaders in TJS hoped to emulate AAP model. But, there are several missing links that makes such a possibility remote for now.
The TJAC was a potpourri of different political parties, mass organisations with the TRS occupying the lion’s share of its strength. But, with the TRS coming to power, the TJAC got reduced to people who are either averse to KCR or could not be accommodated in the power apparatus in the new state. During the statehood movement itself, the Congress and the TDP were thrown out of the TJAC. The BJP and the Left parties chalked out their own course of political action subsequent to the bifurcation. KCR has skilfully co-opted most of the civil society activists who were hitherto part of the TJAC into the power parivar. Not just weakening the opposition parties through politics of defection, TRS engineered desertions even within the TJAC too. All this further weakened the Prof. Kodandaram.
Kodandaram in fact, failed to demarcate himself from the politics of TRS during the movement for separate state. The TJAC was more or less worked as the allotropic form of TRS and zealously carried out the political agenda of KCR during the movement. This seriously undermined the independent credentials of Prof Kodandaram thus consigning TJS , the party he floated, to a crisis of credibility when it assumed anti-KCR avatar.
Meanwhile, nearly four years since bifurcation was a too long period for the Prof. Kodandaram to enter politics. This period saw KCR emerging as an unassailable champion of Telangana cause. The opposition with all its might is finding it difficult to wipe out this iconic image chief minister has among the masses. On the other hand, Congress could consolidate to an extent as the option for those who are disenchanted with KCR rule. As the BJP blew hot and cold about KCR rule, Left parties remain not so important political players, Congress could consolidate its space within the opposition camp. Prof. Kodandaram did precious little to expose Congress as Kejriwal did in Delhi where he chided both the ruling and the opposition parties. On the contrary, the TJAC and latter TJS gave a perception that they are extended voices of the Congress. The TRS consummately promoted such a perception. Thus, the opposition space is too crowded for Prof. Kodandaram to make a real impact. Barring the assertion that it is committed to new and people’s Telangana, the TJS is ineffective in presenting its alternate programmatic agenda for the people to be attracted.
However, in a bid to ascribe Telangana identity legitimacy to Mahakutami, Congress accommodated Prof. Kodandaram as the convener of the Peoples front which it leads now. The Professor will be assigned the responsibility of monitoring the implementation of Common Minimum Program of the grand alliance. But, with hardly any MLA’s loyal to him and given the nature of the congress party it is anybody’s guess on what the professor’s role will be if the Mahakutami voted to power.
( Prof.K. Nageshwar is India’s noted political analyst. He is a former member of the Telangana Legislative Council and professor in the Department of Communication & Journalism, Osmania University, Hyderabad, India )
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