Thursday, January 24, 2013

JAGGA REDDY: Alone in a crowd..!

Why nobody takes Jagga Reddy seriously?


The Telangana region, including the state capital of Hyderabad, has been witness to the same old rhetoric of separatists for the last nine years. There are the slogan shouting students, agitating employees, demonstrating advocates and rabble-rousing politicians. But one politician has made his voice clearly heard, a diametrically opposite view of the (majority) popular one, and has escaped physical assault (?!) all these days. He is Jagga Reddy, MLA of Sangareddy in Medak district. Unfortunately, his voice is lost in the din.

Though Hyderabad is half-filled with settlers from Coastal Andhra and Rayalaseema regions, nobody opens their mouth to respond to, let alone condemn, the provocative statements and derogatory remarks on them by Telangana protagonists, for the fear of having stones pelted at their houses and inviting agitators to squat at their doorsteps. It is sure that half of Hyderabadis do not want separate Telangana, but who gives them a damn? Even the Majlis Ittehadul Muslimeen (MIM) has made it clear that it is against bifurcation, which more or less reflects the stand of the Hyderabad's Muslim population.

Almost all the legislators from Telangana have taken a uniform stand on Telangana, willingly or due to compulsion, coercion or for not wanting to ruffle feathers. Jagga Reddy, on the other hand, has made it clear that a separate Telangana will not serve any purpose and in fact, make things worse for the state. When the backwardness theory backfired, as proved point-by-point by Sri Krishna Commission that 'Telangana is not the only backward region in the state', the protagonists of separation stood by self-rule to push their demand ahead. "A mere aspiration to be separate will never stand in the long run", is Jagga Reddy's point, but whatever point he has made failed to hit the nail hard, thanks to the separatists among the media representatives who have covered his programmes.


The separatists have a version to stand by, whether right or not, thus consistently pushing their demand ahead. In the same vein, they have a responsibility to lend an ear to the people having an opinion different from theirs. As a different view is always met with violence, people stopped talking ill of separation, the lone exception being Jagga Reddy. Perhaps, he has not been attacked so far, for the sole reason that he is a fellow Telanganaite...!

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