<<–2/”>a href=”https://exam.pscnotes.com/5653-2/”>p>Consultations with the various groups were broadly done in two phases. In the first phase, consultation process started immediately after the publication of the first Public Notice on February 20, 2010, when the Political Parties, concerned groups and individuals started handing over their respective Memoranda / Representations to the Committee. Brief consultations, as such, took place at that time with these groups / individuals at the level of Member Secretary at Delhi. In the second phase, formal meetings were organized with the various political parties and other groups, starting with the first meeting at Delhi, on April 16, 2010. After that, consultations were held mostly in Hyderabad with over one hundred groups, comprising political parties and other social and economic groups etc.
The Field Visits
The Committee or its Members individually visited all the 23 districts of the State and several villages to get a first hand feel at the ground level. These visits were well organized. During its visit to the districts / villages, the Committee received utmost support and cooperation from the political parties and the general public. The information received from them was immensely useful to the Committee.
During this period, numerous Joint Action Committees (JACs) have been formed, the most prominent among them being the one at Osmania University led by Prof. Kodandaram. Initially, all political parties were members of this JAC but subsequently most parties including the TRS left the fold. However, JACs have spread to the district, mandal and village level in Telangana resulting in a groundswell of demand for a separate state. The main grievances of Telangana people that the political organisers are capitalising upon are water, Education and jobs. These demands represent the aspirations of three main constituencies most heavily invested in the demand for a separate state farmers needing Irrigation water in rain-fed areas; students demanding greater access to quality education to enable them to compete for jobs, and government employees seeking promotions and a fair share of representation in administration.
The protests, in various forms relay hunger strikes, demonstrations, meetings, signboards, distribution of literature highlighting grievances, organising representations both in writing (in response to the Public Notice issued by the Committee) and in person, have been taking place at the mandal and even the panchayat level. In several villages that Committee Members visited, large printed banners welcomed the Members. In one village, at the venue of the meeting where people of the village and many others from neighbouring villages and town had gathered, there was a large banner listing the grievances of Telangana region together with numbers documenting discrimination against the region in jobs, irrigation and education. During the Committees visits to various Telangana districts, school children and college students were lined up along the route, holding placards demanding Telangana. The sentiment among students and employees in colleges and universities was emotionally charged but the heartening aspect was that there was still room for dialogue and debate.
The sentiment in coastal Andhra is against the bifurcation of the state with a few voices willing for separation. Coastal Andhra groups raised concerns about losing access to irrigation water and to the city of Hyderabad, to the Growth of which they feel they have contributed much. While some in the delta districts are relatively confident of managing on their own in case of bifurcation (or trifurcation as the case may be), the north coastal Andhra region, being far less developed than south coastal is chary of losing its access to Hyderabad which it sees as a destination for education and work. Many economically marginal households in north coastal Andhra described how they were dependent on agricultural labour in their native villages for part of the year while for part of the year they migrated, often to Hyderabad, as manual labourers.