Telangana shutdown likely to hit industry

If industry in the Telangana region had hoped that, with the new state the locals were agitating for having been granted, there would be a holiday from bandhs, it was mistaken. Just four days before the new state of Telangana will be formally born on June 2, its chief minister designate and supremo of the Telangana Rashtra Samithi (TRS) K. Chandrasekhar Rao gave a call for  bandh on Thursday, May 29th.

The bandh is to protest against a move by the Centre to bring in an ordinance to merge the villages coming under the seven mandals of Khamman district of Telangana with the rest of Andhra Pradesh for the construction of the mega Polavaram project in the Andhra region of the bifurcated Andhra Pradesh.

"Any disruption in operations is not good for industry and to that extent it is not a pleasant development, specially at a time when Hyderabad needs to focus on portraying itself as the region that is getting back to business, " says Suresh Rayudu Chitturi, Chairman of the Andhra Pradesh chapter of the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) and the Vice Chairman and Managing Director of Srinivasa Hatcheries. "However it is only fair that we give the new government (of Telangana) time to settle down and for things to start looking up."

He and others in the industry do not see the bandh having a major impact. Others in the industry think that since nobody seems to be against the construction of the Polavaram dam per se, the issue that TRS has raised is one that has more to do with the design of the project. The view most seem to have is that if the governments all the four states -Telangana, Andhra, Chattishgarh and Orissa sit together, it is possible to resolve the issue.

However, C H Hanumantha Rao, an economist who has looked at this region closely over the years says, the design aspects of the project are not new and have been discussed for many years. He says the issue now is really about giving away the submerged villages from Telangana to Andhra and its future implications. The move, he says, would mean "since there will be no submergence issue in Telangana it will not be a party to disputes later on issues relating to submergence."