Nagabhairava Jaya Prakash Narayana is a very intelligent guy, otherwise how can he manage to dodge the same question a zillion times. Look at how he evades answering the Telangana related questions in an interview by Aswathy Gopalakrishnan of LiveMint. However, on careful reading of his answers, even a layman will tell that his heart is with a United Andhra Pradesh.
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On the agitation for Telangana, from which the Lok Satta Party has distanced itself:
The point is—if everything is about electoral success, not about the good of the people of Telangana, good of the people of Andhra Pradesh, good of the people of India, then we will have what we have had so far. Lok Satta is a party of the future… A party of the future must be able to reconcile conflicting interests. For me, politics is about three main things —promoting human happiness, reconciling limited resources and unlimited wants, reconciling conflicting interests…
On the Centre’s handling of the Telangana crisis:
It’s the government of India’s duty, apart from politics and which party is in power, to protect the Constitution and to ensure the unity and integrity of India. It’s their duty to reconcile conflicting interests… Instead, parties in power at the national level, just as parties in power at the state level, have used it as a cynical, manipulative political game, unconcerned about the consequences to the state and the country. Now the price is being paid. Now that you have created a hungry tiger, to dismount the tiger is a problem. How do you address this challenge?
You can resolve the issue by either dividing the state, but in a manner that interest (of other) areas are protected, or you can keep the state together, again in a manner that interest (of all) areas are protected. Unless you use this language of reconciliation, and common sense and reason, and be ready to pay the short-term political price in Andhra Pradesh, unless that political courage and wisdom are shown, we will always have a problem. Unfortunately, that political courage and wisdom is in short supply. To that extent, the government has totally failed.
On the roots of the Telangana movement:
There are deeper issues here. It may be Telangana here, something else somewhere else. Basically we have a growing number of young people, increasingly aspirational. They want a better life, entitlement of jobs. If our young people don’t aspire for a job, better standard of living, and want to live in poverty, it will be a shameful thing. Their families work hard, they get a degree, get education from some college, some school, and suddenly many of them discover that they are not employable. The demographic dividend is turning out to be demographic nightmare… We haven’t addressed these problems. We are busy with our political games and the street is now talking. And the street doesn’t talk the way you want it to. The street has its own momentum.
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After reading those 403 words, it is more than clear that Jaya Prakash Narayan does not like Telangana state formation. He is only trying to dodge and sugar coat his anti-telangana stand with flowery language.
Whats is interesting is that at the very beginning of the same interview, Jaya Prakash Narayan says:
In a genuinely functioning democracy, there is no place for this kind of an effort; it should not be necessary in a sensible democracy. But having said that, we also have a very flawed democracy. Oftentimes it’s generally believed, I think with good reason, that persons in power don’t listen if we actually follow the straight and narrow approach…
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Thank you Jaya Prakash for finally gathering courage to tell us that India is a ‘flawed democracy’ and the ‘persons in power don’t listen if we actually follow the straight and narrow approach…”
At least now, your fans will understand what kind of a democracy we live in and what kind of protests work in this country.
But seriously, aren’t you bored of your own dubious stand on Telangana?