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Nearly one-and-a-half years after the bifurcation of Andhra Pradesh, a growing discontent in the Rayalaseema area is on the verge of turning into a movement.
The Rayalaseema region comprises four districts - Kurnool, Kadapa, Anantapur and Chittoor, all drought prone areas.
In the beginning of November, K Venkata Subba Reddy, the president of Rayalaseema Rashtra Samiti (RRS), an outfit floated for a separate state – not unlike the TRS party for Telangana, asked for a Rayalaseema state with four districts of the region, Prakasam and Nellore from Andhra and a few districts from Karnataka and even Tamil Nadu.
“Separate state is the only solution. Successive governments have neglected the region. We demand Union government to carve a separate state by December 2018 with a special package of Rs 10 lakh crore,” Reddy demanded, failing which he threatened of a region-wide strike.
However, even with all the noise generated on the ground and on television channels, the pro-Rayalaseema agitation has not managed to mobilise effectively, until now.
Many groups and organisations have started springing up on Facebook and other social media to create awareness on the issue, with some even involving NRIs to support their movement.
Prof K Sadasiva Reddy of Sri Krishnadevaraya University, Anantapur, who led a pro-Rayalaseema agitation from the University told Deccan Chronicle “The routine protests were being neglected, we have decided to use social media as a force to change the mindset of governments to take positive decisions towards the region.”
Another group that is slowly gaining popularity is the ‘Rayala Sena’, which also runs a few forums on Facebook, the most prominent one being the ‘Rayalaseema Social Media Forum.’
The group mostly consists of Rayalaseema youth, IT professionals, entrepreneurs and other educated professionals, many of whom come from a farming family.
“When the bifurcation of Andhra happened, there were a few proposals including one of Rayala Telangana but we still went with the residual state as we had some trust that the state government may finally listen to our woes,” says Thirumal Prasad Patil, a 36-year-old IT professional from Anantapur who is one of the brains behind Rayala Sena.
In March and April, a group of individuals, mainly IT professionals got together and thought about how they could develop the region.
“In around May and June, lot of suicides started happening and that was the turning point for us,” Thirumal says while adding that “everyone pooled in and helped the family of a farmer in one particular case, but that got us thinking on what we can do at a larger scale.”
According to Thirumal, one of the main reasons why the area did not get a mass appeal is because there are many small groups for the cause, but there is no unity among them.
However, the movement is yet to be taken seriously as the Andhra Deputy Chief Minister KE Krishna Murthy called upon TDP workers last week to strongly rebut the charges and ‘rumours’ by the opposition parties that the government is neglecting the development of Rayalaseema region and alleged that the opposition was spreading false stories.
(Nitin B works with The News Minute.)
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