Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
later yield fortunes in the days of YSR. They started with small irrigation projects and
gradually evolved as large-scale civil engineering and construction contractors.
Telangana
While the coastal regions boomed, the Telangana region, with Hyderabad as the capital of
one of India's 500 'princely states', lagged behind for over 200 years under the thumb of
the hereditary ruler, the all-powerful Nizam of Hyderabad. Nehru wrote in 1946 that it was
Nizam was eventually ejected from his throne by the Nehru government in September 1948
in what may have been the bloodiest of all India's mass killings, with reports of 50,000
The Telangana people's demand for some sort of constitutional identity began in 1956
when the coastal regions were merged with the Nizam's old Hyderabad state to form a
Telugu-speaking Andhra Pradesh. A few years later, in the 1960s, the Telangana movement
developed into a bid to resist domination by bureaucrats and others from the coast who,
through hard work and long hours that contrasted with the typical Hyderabadi's laid-back
approach, had aggressively cornered high government positions. The demand for a Telan-
gana identity was then fudged and rebuffed by successive Indian governments.
When Hyderabad started to grow rapidly in the 1990s, the wealthy from the coastal re-
gions helped to finance the state's politicians, grabbing land for construction projects to-
gether with licences and contracts in the city and the rest of the state. The new wealth
was displayed in the shiny office blocks and shopping malls that came up across the city,
along with palatial houses that have gradually destroyed the city's Deccan Plateau rock
landscape. Geologists say these rocks are 2,500 million years old, making them among the
oldest - and hardest - in the world. 'Uncontrolled quarrying and destruction for the sake
of building material and more building space threatens to make these rocks a thing of the
past,' says a local conservation organisation.
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By the time YSR died, the wealth and development of the city and its surroundings far
Telangana cause in the 2000s because of local resentment at what was widely seen as a
ernment services and education.
Unlike most other state bifurcation claims, the Telangana cause had by this time become
primarily focused on wealth and business interests, not the more usual motivations of lan-
guage and ethnic divisions (although there are cultural and dialectic differences - Urdu was
the official language under the Nizam). The Telangana activists wanted to keep Hydera-
