Telangana sentiment takes a back seat to jobs in statehood stir hotbed Osmania University

In the elections held months later, K Chandrashekar Rao, the most visible face of the Telangana movement, was voted to power and has been the Chief Minister since. However, on the campus, the nostalgia about KCR’s role in the agitation has waned, with student distress rising over the frequently cancelled government recruitment exams, the creeping maximum age limit for many of these, the lack of jobs, the “shrinking space” for dissent, as well as the state of the university’s infrastructure.

Seeking “necessary change”, many express lack of enthusiasm for the BRS’s welfare schemes, which are mostly targeted towards farmers and have little for the youth.

Sitting in the lawns of the OU Arts College building, the site of many a university protest, Mahesh B, 29, who is from Nalgonda district, says the Telangana sentiment, as strong as it is, “is not the factor shaping the coming elections”.

“There are other concerns, like the utter failure to conduct government exams. The government has failed students. I wrote Group-1 exams (for posts such as collector) twice, qualified both times. But these remain mired in allegations. What about the 90,000 jobs announced by KCR in the Assembly (in March 2022)?” Mahesh says. “We all come to the university to get accessible education and in the hope of government jobs,” he adds.

Resentment over the “mismanagement” of recruitment exams has been brewing for a while. In 2017, the suicide of a 21-year-old on campus had brought the university to a boil, with students alleging he was driven to despair by the endless wait for government job notifications.

More recently, the university saw protests both times that the Group-1 exams got cancelled – due to a paper leak and over alleged irregularities. “The government is not accessible and is not receptive to protests,” says Mahesh, also questioning the “unofficial” closure of the ‘Dharna Chowk’ protest site in the city.

An MA Hindi student from Nizamabad, Santosh B, says: “The government’s ahamkaram (arrogance) has increased. You cannot keep asking votes on the Telangana sentiment. There are other institutional issues.” He points to the allocation for education in the Telangana budget – it was 7.6% in 2023-24, lower than the average allocation by states for education in 2022-23 (14.8%) as per PRS Legislative Research.

Telangana’s unemployment rate of 15.1% is more than the national average of 10%, as per the PLFS (Periodic Labour Force Survey), 2022-23. The Telangana government has countered claims of unemployment in the state, which the Congress took up during the campaign. Municipal Administration, Urban Development and IT Minister K T Rama Rao or KTR, also KCR’s son, says their government has filled more than 1.6 lakh job vacancies since 2014, against just about 10,000 during the previous 10-year Congress rule.

He recently held a meeting with a contingent of job aspirants and promised to sit with them on December 4, a day after the results, and assure a job calendar. That incidentally is a leaf out of the Congress’s book.

In February, KTR inaugurated the “first integrated KG to PG campus” under “the Mana Ooru-Mana Badi (My Village My School) initiative” in Rajanna Sircilla district. He has been talking of setting up more than 700 gurukulam schools across the state to provide quality education to poor students.

The BRS also highlights the private sector investments coming to the state, including “Google’s biggest campus outside the US”, the Hyderabad Pharma City, etc.

Beyond jobs, many students express anguish over university facilities. Md Ehtesham Hussain, a second-year post-graduate student in Public Administration, points out that his department has only one permanent faculty. A senior university official admits that out of the 1,200 posts for permanent faculty in the university, only 380 are filled. According to the official, while “the government is firm on filling up all the posts”, it is held up as the Telangana Universities Common Recruitment Board Bill, 2022, is pending with Governor Tamilisai Soundararajan.

Students also complain of “increasing” fees and “privatisation”. This May, the move to increase the fees for departments such as Social Science, Arts, Commerce, Education and Language from Rs 2,000 per year to as much as Rs 20,000, and for technical and engineering courses from Rs 2,500 to Rs 25,000 per year, had seen protests.

The senior official attributes the steep increase to the long-delayed implementation of UGC guidelines, with the Vice-Chancellor appointed in 2021 finally streamlining the process.

Some students point to the “crackdown on dissent” within the campus, referring to the arrest of Associate Professor C Kasim of the Telugu Department over alleged links to outlawed Maoists. He was in jail for four months in 2020.

Nagaraju, 27, an MTech student, says this is a reflection of the absence of a credible Opposition in the state, with the BRS’s long rule rendering Telangana virtually a one-party state. He gives the example of Rajasthan, which voted on November 25, and its history of changing the government every five years.

Mani G, 22, a student of political science, also slams the BRS government as “autocratic and dynastical”. “Rythu Bandhu, Dalit Bandhu, BC Bandhu… every community has become a vote bank. But more fundamental issues are being ignored,” she says.

Pradeep, a PhD student in the Telugu Department, is more forgiving of the “popular welfare schemes” but adds that “nothing has been done for skill development”. The Information Technology-allied industry development in Hyderabad is “appreciable”, he says, but not everyone can get jobs there.

The foundation of Hyderabad as a technology-friendly city was laid by N Chandrababu Naidu as the CM of united Andhra Pradesh. However, the BRS government has built on it, bringing in investments, with the articulate KTR projecting a business-friendly government on trips such as to Davos.

In the Telangana government’s annual report of 2022-23, KTR said the state had attracted cumulative investments of over Rs 25,200 that financial year. A student from Adilabad district, Atish G, 23, says they are looking with interest at the “job calendar” promise announced by the Congress in its manifesto.

Meghana C H, 22, an MSc student who graduated last year but comes to OU’s library to prepare for government exams, says: “We fought with the Congress for decades to get Telangana. If the BRS government that was formed to take care of our jobs cannot fulfill our demand, I doubt the Congress can. But change is important.”