Income gap pushed students to T-agitation
Jan. 6: The Srikrishna Committee has pointed out that the people from backward classes, scheduled castes, scheduled tribes and minorities were the worst affected in the Telangana region with falling income levels and losing of education and job opportunities.
This, the report said, is mainly due to the concentration of educational institutions and industries in Hyderabad and Ranga Reddy districts, where large scale migration from other regions took place.
The committee opined that this loss of opportunities led to largescale resentment among these sections in Telangana and prompted them to take part in agitations and in some cases to committing suicides. It also said that the large number of students, who were involved in Telangana agitation and suicides in Osmania University and Kakatiya University campus were Dalits and BCs.
It also noticed that in Telangana, the relative income growth has occurred only amongst the richest; whereas the poorer and the most deprived have experienced considerably large declines in relative income leading to unrest within the communities.
While there is erosion of relative income amongst the rich in coastal Andhra. The people from SC, ST and minority communities in Telangana region have suffered a decline in income during the past decade or more, whereas these communities have gained substantially in coastal Andhra.
This has resulted in large-scale resentment among these sections of people in Telangana, which prompted them to take part in the agitation.
The committee has asked the state government to inquire into the issue of fake domicile certificates to claim admissions in schools located in Hyderabad and Ranga Reddy (Zone 6) saying that an increasing number of parents from all three regions prefer to educate their children in this zone, as four years of schooling here makes them eligible for admission in institutions of higher and professional education, which are concentrated in this zone.
“Field visits brought out that many students with higher education qualifications in Telangana are first generation college entrants (from rural families and whose parents are illiterate) and therefore have very high expectations of finding well paying jobs, in particular, in the government or public sector. It seems that it is the inability of such graduates to fulfill their aspirations that is responsible for their disappointment, disillusionment and frustration. Such students are likely to turn to those who promise them a better future. Large scale involvement of students including those from dalits and BCs in the current movement for Telangana seems to testify to this. A large proportion of student leaders of the movement located in Osmania University and Kakatiya University are known to be from Dalit, BC backgrounds. According to many sources, purported student suicides during the course of the agitation are also largely by Dalits and BCs,” the report stated.
The committee also recommended, “While the lack of suitable employment is rarely due to discrimination and more due to lack of adequate training, the perception of neglect or discrimination needs to be addressed in order to bring students back into the mainstream. Improving the quality of education and solving the problem of unemployment among educated youth will have a positive impact on their attitude towards agitations.”
While the farmers in all regions have shown stable income or income which has hardly changed; the real income of the agricultural wage labourers has declined considerably in Telangana, while it has increased in coastal Andhra region.
These trends and intra-regional differentials in income distribution are corroborated by an advance analysis by estimating Gini coefficients. However, of all the regions, it is Rayalaseema, which has experienced broad based decline in living standards in AP during the reference period. This fact gets support from the measurement of ‘monthly per capita consumption expenditure’ which is far too low in Rayalaseema.
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