Telangana government's main projects revolve around water

We make our way through a large, impatient crowd and a beefy security guard into irrigation minister T Harish Rao's office inside the Telangana secretariat in Hyderabad on a Tuesday afternoon. Rao is seated at the head of a long table with a dozen others, including his ministry officials and legal experts. This is not just another day at work for Rao, a tall, mustachioed man always clad in white. You only have to look at the wallmounted television tuned to a Telugu news channel to know why.
It is day two of a three-day protest by Andhra Pradesh politician YS Jagan Mohan Reddy, chief of the YSR Congress Party (YSRCP), in Kurnool against Telangana's two large irrigation projects on the Krishna river. The channel is airing footage of Reddy attacking Telangana chief minister K Chandrashekar Rao, better known as KCR, and his Andhra Pradesh counterpart N Chandrababu Naidu. They head the Telangana Rashtra Samithi (TRS) and the Telugu Desam Party (TDP), respectively. Reddy is opposing the projects on the grounds that they will reduce the water available to Andhra, particularly the Rayalaseema region, to which he belongs. Andhra is downstream of both the Krishna and the Godavari from Telangana.

"Naidu and Jagan are playing a political game. What we are asking for is our rightful share of the (Krishna and Godavari) waters based on the rivers' catchment in Telangana," says 43-year-old Harish, who is KCR's nephew. Days before Reddy's protest, Naidu sought the Centre’s intervention in halting Telangana's irrigation projects on the Krishna and Godavari, saying they contravene the Andhra Pradesh Reorganisation Act, 2014, the framework for the bifurcation of the erstwhile Andhra Pradesh and the creation of Telangana. Between the two states, Telangana accounts for 78% of Godavari’s catchment area and 68% of Krishna's.

Reddy has claimed the Telangana government has not sought the approval of the Krishna river management board for the Dindi and the Palamuru-Rangareddy lift irrigation projects, two of its largest projects. But Harish rubbishes the charge, saying both projects were conceived in united Andhra and the state is just executing them. "We are not even using 20% of what is allocated to us in the Krishna and the Godavari."

Telangana has been allocated 954 thousand million cubic feet (TMC) from the Godavari and 299 TMC from the Krishna, with an additional 77 TMC of flood water. Earlier this month, some farmers from Andhra went to the Supreme Court, questioning the legality of these projects.

It's Show Time
The Telangana government has already put out tenders for the Palamuru project, expected to cost over Rs 35,000 crore. The project, by lifting 90 TMC of excess water from the Srisailam reservoir during the flood season, will irrigate 10 lakh acres, provide drinking water to Hyderabad and supply water for industrial use to Mahabubnagar, Nalgonda and Rangareddy districts. The project is expected to be completed in 30 months.

The Rs 10,000 crore Dindi project, which was approved in 2007 and whose source is again the Srisailam reservoir, will irrigate 3.5 lakh acres and provide drinking water in fluoride-affected Nalgonda. The district is often cited as a case study of India's worsening water crisis. With fluoride content in its groundwater many times higher than permissible levels and three-fourths of its 25 lakh borewells running dry, Nalgonda is in dire need of water.

Telangana has set aside over Rs 24,000 crore for irrigation in 2016-17 in its budget. It is a fifth of the total planned expenditure and a 170% jump over the previous year's allocation for irrigation. Drinking water and industry will account for 10% each of water from irrigation projects.

Two of the government's other marquee projects are also to do with water. Mission Kakatiya aims to revive 46,500 minor irrigation tanks, most of which have fallen into disuse, by 2020, at a cost of Rs 20,000 crore. This will help irrigate an additional 10 lakh acres. Around a third of those tanks are likely to be operational by the time rains arrive this year. Of the Rs 20,000 crore, around `11,500 crore will be met through state budgetary resources, and the rest through loans and grants from the Centre and development institutions.

The other, more ambitious project is Mission Bhagiratha, which will provide piped drinking water to each of the 84 lakh households in the state by 2018. The project will cost twice as much as Kakatiya, and KCR has publicly said that his party would not fight the 2019 assembly polls if this project was not completed.

Sharing Rivers
That water is among the primary areas of focus for the government is not surprising, given that the Telangana movement was predicated on the slogan neellu, nidhulu, niyaamakaalu (water, funds and jobs). On each of the three, the people of Telangana felt they were discriminated against in the united Andhra Pradesh, leading to a long and sometimes violent fight for a separate state, which finally became a reality on June 2, 2014, when Telangana was carved out as the 29th Indian state, with Hyderabad as the joint capital for both states for 10 years. Assembly elections in Andhra and Telangana were held along with the general elections of 2014.
G Haragopal, a renowned political scientist in Hyderabad, believes water is one area where the government has done a good job. But he adds, "There is a perception that the focus on irrigation is to cater to the contractor class.” Haragopal says political parties in Andhra and Telangana depend more on contractors and sub-contractors than on cadres. "We welcome any project to bring drinking water or irrigation, but the process has resulted in the kind of corruption not seen in any other state," says Uttam Kumar Reddy, president of the Congress unit in Telangana.

Irrigation minister Harish Rao disputes this. He says the government now designs the projects unlike earlier when the contractors designed them, and has done away with the mobilisation advance given to contractors, which was 3-5% of the cost of the project.

Given the tensions between Telangana and Andhra on the sharing of rivers, Rao is bound to spend a considerable part of his time dousing political fires. "When it's possible (to have cordial relations) with Maharashtra and Karnataka, why not Andhra? I have tried to meet the Andhra irrigation minister Uma (Devineni Uma Maheswara Rao) several times, but he doesn't want to." Maharashtra and Karnataka are upper riparian states on the Krishna.

Besides irrigation and drinking water projects, the TRS government has announced a slew of social welfare schemes which it hopes will keep voters loyal to it, as has happened in Tamil Nadu, where chief minister J Jayalalithaa, thanks to welfare schemes and freebies, broke a three-decade-long trend in the state to win a second consecutive term.

Among the Telangana government's schemes are distribution of three acres of land to each Dalit family, free two-bedroom flats to the poor and Rs 51,000 to every scheduled caste or scheduled tribe bride, provided her family's annual income does not exceed Rs 2 lakh. Because of the government's various projects and welfare schemes, its liabilities as a share of its gross state domestic product have risen from 16.06% in 2014-15 to 17.27% in 2015-16. It is expected to rise further this fiscal to 18.46%.



Mission 2019 The government's biggest task now is generating enough jobs and making its young population skilled. "KCR can bring Tim Cook to Hyderabad but he can't get Telangana youths jobs in Apple," says K Nageshwar, a senior journalist and former independent legislator, alluding to the Apple chief's recent visit to Hyderabad to inaugurate a development office. KCR has said people cannot expect the government to give a job to someone in every family, which Nageshwar believes was an unrealistic expectation created during the Telangana movement.

Among the government's biggest challenges is ensuring industrial development beyond Hyderabad, which is not going to be easy. (Neither KCR nor his son KT Rama Rao, who is the information technology and industry minister, was available for interview.) Mallepally Lakshamiah, who was co-chair of the Telangana Joint Action Committee, which led the Telangana movement, says we have to wait another year before assessing the government's performance.


Regardless of the success or otherwise of the Telangana government's initiatives, what is becoming more and more evident with every passing day is that the opposition is shrinking, thanks to defections by opposition MLAs to the TRS, which Uttam Kumar Reddy calls a "murder of democracy". The TRS, which won 63 of 119 seats in the 2014 assembly election, now has 88 MLAs, with defections from the TDP, Congress and the YSRCP, the last of which is now left with no legislators.

"When your leader is holding a deeksha against Telangana in Andhra, how do you survive here?" asks Lakshamiah, referring to Jagan Mohan Reddy. A similar trend is evident in Andhra, too, with the ruling TDP being the beneficiary.

While the TRS continues to reap the benefits of its role in the creation of Telangana and a dwindling opposition, it will need its grand projects, particularly in irrigation and drinking water, to succeed for it to be able to retain power in 2019.