Telangana has the highest State-owned Tax Revenue in the country – about 75% as against 46% average of the States
By JR Janumpalli
June 2 marked the ninth anniversary of Telangana State’s formation and the State entered into its 10th year of existence. During this period, the State’s forward march was very eventful and inspiring. For a region which was denied its Statehood for six decades, forced to be in the company of a domineering majority region and was fighting with its back to the wall for its rightful share of its own region’s resources, it is commendable progress. A revelation of its denied potential and proving wrong sceptics and an avowed vindication of its ardent activists’ hopes.
At the peril of repetition, we need to recount Telangana’s outstanding progress in the union of States on its 10-year journey. It has risen to a position of above 5 in the larger States in terms of GSDP and number one in per capita GSDP. The erstwhile united State was hovering at the 15th-18th position before 2014. In most of the macroeconomic indicators too, it has secured its place at the top. Its Budget performance is acknowledged to be very prudential by the Reserve Bank of India. It has also made a mark in several innovative socioeconomic schemes in these years.
Against Odds
But the two national parties and other local parties in the State refuse to acknowledge it. The Congress does not talk about progress but indulges in personal and family invective without evidence. The BJP local leaders instead of trying to get the denied help from their recalcitrant ruling Centre, promote anarchy and disgruntlement for their own political benefit. Other local parties like the TJS simply indulge in knee-jerk reactions of rejection of everything the Telangana government does. They have lost the perspective of the new State and its essential reconstruction.
The media is a peculiar mixture, dominated by ‘two Telugu States’ (a euphemism for Andhra) media, both print and digital. There are some local anti-Telangana and some pro-Telangana outfits. The latter is dubbed as pro-government, blithely by the antagonists. Even if they report the official Central and State data and the ground-level situation as it is, it will be billed as pro-TS government. Yet, the Telangana media reporting dedicated news on the State’s progress is doing a fine job. It has shown its merit and brought the real progress of the State to the fore.
The progress made by Telangana in these years needs to be reviewed against the backdrop of its formation. It is a demerger of two merged States, not a bifurcation of the original State. It was a conditional merger. The States Reorganization Commission (SRC) did not recommend it. The Centre forced it for political reasons. They did not gel like other linguistic States. There were vehement intermittent revolts against it with a lot of loss of human life.
Naysayers Abound
It was the misfortune of Telangana to have fallen for the wrong political calculations of the Centre, in its forcible merger with Andhra in 1956. The Centre had revised such decision in the case of Bombay-Gujarat and Punjab-Haryana and bifurcated them later. They flourished after separation. In 2000, three States were created which were not in the purview of the SRC and their struggle for separate States was not as intense as in Telangana. Despite all these examples, everybody who was somebody professed that the demerger of Telangana was wrong and would trigger many such divisions. But nothing of that sort happened, except providing a profound new lease of life to the suppressed Telangana State.
As if the 58-year ordeal is not enough, the BJP Central government from 2014 started its discrimination against Telangana. It has withheld central funds in a willful manner, employed a deliberate political squeeze on the State – did not provide flood relief to Hyderabad and buy rice from the State, jeopardised Telangana’s irrigation projects with its draconian takeover of river water projects on Godavari and Krishna, did not sanction national institutes, medical colleges, Navodaya schools, etc.
It also made big political raids on the State to win the GHMC election and a few by-elections to corner the BRS. It denigrated the State’s development with unsubstantiated allegations, personal attacks on the Chief Minister and his government, and treated Telangana in a very condescending manner. It is a very unsavoury attitude of a central government towards a newly formed State. Leave alone helping it, trying to squeeze financially to subjugate it politically is an undemocratic act.
Strength and Resilience
Despite all this, Telangana conceived, launched and implemented many infrastructure and welfare projects, commensurate with the needs of the new State, which have become the models for other States. Perhaps Telangana is the one State which has executed all its projects with speed and efficiency and brought them to full use. Examples are many – power projects, Mission Kakatiya, Mission Bhagiratha, Kaleshwaram Lift Irrigation project, the new Secretariat and new districts. Besides, a plethora of socio-economic schemes, which in combination with capital projects, put the State in the number one position in per capita income (2023) in the country.
This underscores the economic strength and resilience of the State. It has also proved beyond doubt that Andhra was dependent on Telangana in all the 58 years in the merged State, and not the other way round. Telangana has the highest State-owned Tax Revenue (SOTR) in the country – about 75% as against the 46% average of the States. AP has about 50% SOTR. For 2021-22, the SOTR of Telangana stood at 78.87% while AP was 46.49%. The debt to GDP ratio of Telangana is at 24.7% as against AP’s 31.5%. AP is heavily dependent on the Centre for its deficit revenue dole-outs. As for central tax and grants devolution for 2021-22, Telangana got just Rs 27,330 crore as against AP’s Rs 74,556 crore.
The progress and achievements made by Telangana have vindicated in full the grievance, claim and aspiration of the people of the separate State. It is all because of the fine culmination of the State’s inherent economic strengths and pragmatic political leadership, strategisation, bold conception and execution of projects by the BRS government. Chief Minister K Chandrashekhar Rao did his homework in detail, selected the right projects, chose the right people for the right work and monitored relentlessly to bring the projects to use at the earliest. The prudential management of the Budget proved to be the key. For the good fortune of Telangana, all these things have come into play in the right measure at the right time to make the desired progress.
That made us reclaim our ‘Amar Sonar Telangana’, which we had lost to Andhra domination in 1956 ingenuously.