It was easy to recall India's struggle against British imperialism as the former cabinet minister K Chandrashekar Rao threatened to fast until death last month. This Gandhian act, with all its associated imagery, forced New Delhi to make concessions towards the break up of Andhra Pradesh and the separate state of Telangana. Underneath the media furore surrounding Mr Rao's successful fast, there are hidden issues about language, development and notions of the Indian state that are being re-examined.
Since 1956, states in India have been reorganised along linguistic lines. The drive to form states based on language started with the break away of Andhra, a Telugu speaking area, from Madras State. The Telugu speaking areas of, what was then, Madras were combined with the former princely state of Hyderabad to form modern Andhra Pradesh.
Most observers considered the linguistic divisions a success, based on the view that homogeneous states would spread development more evenly among their populations. But a look across the border to Pakistan shows that political boundaries based on language need not result in stability.
There is more to identity than language alone. Religious identity, such as the movement for the Sikh homeland of Khalistan, can also lead to a drive towards secession. Moreover, for many of the worst off in India, the larger issues of poverty and development provide a more important basis of identity than a common language.
Andhra Pradesh is marked by large differences in development and wealth between its Andhra and Telangana portions. When the state was formed, there was a fear that Andhra, with higher levels of education and development and more arable land, would come to dominate the union. Certainly disparities in wealth did persist, with the majority of poverty-related suicides by farmers concentrated in Telangana. Economics, not the unifying factor of the Telugu language, were stronger in creating regional identities.
At the formation of Andhra Pradesh in 1956 a "gentlemen's agreement" was hatched to prevent discrimination against Telangana. There was discontent with the flawed application of the agreement, such as major irrigation projects benefiting Andhra disproportionately, but when the agreement was set to lapse in 1969, a movement to keep it going expanded into a demand for a separate state of Telangana. After 40 years of demonstrations, violence and finally the hunger strike of Mr Rao, the leader of the main separatist party, the central government led by India's Congress Party capitulated with the recent announcement that it would begin to work towards a separate state.
To understand the implications of this recent trend in favour of Telangana's separate statehood, there are a few major issues to consider. Firstly, the idea of linguistic states being necessary to prevent secessionist movements was born from the trauma of partition. With the separation of Pakistan, based on religious rather than linguistic grounds, identity began to be seen as a major threat to the unity of the country. Giving into demands for states based on language in many parts of India was seen as one way to defuse the threat of factional identity to the unity of the country.
Most of what India has seen as existential threats have been based on identity, from Pakistan to the Khalistan movement, but the Indian prime minister Manmohan Singh recently has said that the greatest threat is the Maoist insurgencies that have spread across rural areas under the loose affiliation of the Naxalites. The Congress Party's understanding of the issue was underscored by the defeat of its rival, the Bharatiya Janata Party, which was ousted from government partly because of its inability to answer the demands of the rural majority.
But this does not mean that the Congress Party is entirely behind such a shift. As the party in control of Andhra Pradesh, it has much to lose from the break-up of the state. The current backtracking on Telangana by the Congress Party, after its initial support after Rao's fast, needs to be seen in this light.
And there is no assurance that moving away from language-based states towards those focusing on regional and local needs will result in progress towards development. Jharkhand was formed as an independent state separate from Bihar in 2000 based on the demands of tribal peoples of the area. The separation was justified on the grounds of better development and opportunities for those who felt they were not represented in Bihar. Yet little has changed and Jharkhand finds itself at the centre of the Maoist insurgency.
This movement from a system of states based on language to more regionalised needs is a domestic process that parallels the growing maturity of India on the world stage. The challenges that Telangana will face if it gains statehood will still be many, as evidenced by the states that have previously broken from the language-based model.
If the seduction to fall into mismanagement and corruption is avoided, there is no natural reason that it should fail. Despite its arid soil, Telangana will still have the major technology centre of Hyderabad, providing a solid base to create a financially viable state. What is at stake in Telangana may not be the exaggerated fears of India's dissolution, but a test case of the success of this new model of statehood.
Talha Aquil is a consultant who has compiled political risk assessments for companies seeking to invest in South Asia
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Sheikh Zayed's poem
When it is unveiled at Abu Dhabi Art, the Standing Tall exhibition will appear as an interplay of poetry and art. The 100 scarves are 100 fragments surrounding five, figurative, female sculptures, and both sculptures and scarves are hand-embroidered by a group of refugee women artisans, who used the Palestinian cross-stitch embroidery art of tatreez. Fragments of Sheikh Zayed’s poem Your Love is Ruling My Heart, written in Arabic as a love poem to his nation, are embroidered onto both the sculptures and the scarves. Here is the English translation.
Your love is ruling over my heart
Your love is ruling over my heart, even a mountain can’t bear all of it
Woe for my heart of such a love, if it befell it and made it its home
You came on me like a gleaming sun, you are the cure for my soul of its sickness
Be lenient on me, oh tender one, and have mercy on who because of you is in ruins
You are like the Ajeed Al-reem [leader of the gazelle herd] for my country, the source of all of its knowledge
You waddle even when you stand still, with feet white like the blooming of the dates of the palm
Oh, who wishes to deprive me of sleep, the night has ended and I still have not seen you
You are the cure for my sickness and my support, you dried my throat up let me go and damp it
Help me, oh children of mine, for in his love my life will pass me by.
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COMPANY PROFILE
Name: Almnssa
Started: August 2020
Founder: Areej Selmi
Based: Gaza
Sectors: Internet, e-commerce
Investments: Grants/private funding
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Jigra
Starring: Alia Bhatt, Vedang Raina, Manoj Pahwa, Harsh Singh
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Electoral College Victory
Trump has so far secured 295 Electoral College votes, according to the Associated Press, exceeding the 270 needed to win. Only Nevada and Arizona remain to be called, and both swing states are leaning Republican. Trump swept all five remaining swing states, North Carolina, Georgia, Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin, sealing his path to victory and giving him a strong mandate.
Popular Vote Tally
The count is ongoing, but Trump currently leads with nearly 51 per cent of the popular vote to Harris’s 47.6 per cent. Trump has over 72.2 million votes, while Harris trails with approximately 67.4 million.
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In-demand jobs and monthly salaries
- Technology expert in robotics and automation: Dh20,000 to Dh40,000
- Energy engineer: Dh25,000 to Dh30,000
- Production engineer: Dh30,000 to Dh40,000
- Data-driven supply chain management professional: Dh30,000 to Dh50,000
- HR leader: Dh40,000 to Dh60,000
- Engineering leader: Dh30,000 to Dh55,000
- Project manager: Dh55,000 to Dh65,000
- Senior reservoir engineer: Dh40,000 to Dh55,000
- Senior drilling engineer: Dh38,000 to Dh46,000
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- Senior maintenance engineer: Dh22,000 to Dh34,000
- Field engineer: Dh6,500 to Dh7,500
- Field supervisor: Dh9,000 to Dh12,000
- Field operator: Dh5,000 to Dh7,000
Nepotism is the name of the game
Salman Khan’s father, Salim Khan, is one of Bollywood’s most legendary screenwriters. Through his partnership with co-writer Javed Akhtar, Salim is credited with having paved the path for the Indian film industry’s blockbuster format in the 1970s. Something his son now rules the roost of. More importantly, the Salim-Javed duo also created the persona of the “angry young man” for Bollywood megastar Amitabh Bachchan in the 1970s, reflecting the angst of the average Indian. In choosing to be the ordinary man’s “hero” as opposed to a thespian in new Bollywood, Salman Khan remains tightly linked to his father’s oeuvre. Thanks dad.
How to get exposure to gold
Although you can buy gold easily on the Dubai markets, the problem with buying physical bars, coins or jewellery is that you then have storage, security and insurance issues.
A far easier option is to invest in a low-cost exchange traded fund (ETF) that invests in the precious metal instead, for example, ETFS Physical Gold (PHAU) and iShares Physical Gold (SGLN) both track physical gold. The VanEck Vectors Gold Miners ETF invests directly in mining companies.
Alternatively, BlackRock Gold & General seeks to achieve long-term capital growth primarily through an actively managed portfolio of gold mining, commodity and precious-metal related shares. Its largest portfolio holdings include gold miners Newcrest Mining, Barrick Gold Corp, Agnico Eagle Mines and the NewMont Goldcorp.
Brave investors could take on the added risk of buying individual gold mining stocks, many of which have performed wonderfully well lately.
London-listed Centamin is up more than 70 per cent in just three months, although in a sign of its volatility, it is down 5 per cent on two years ago. Trans-Siberian Gold, listed on London's alternative investment market (AIM) for small stocks, has seen its share price almost quadruple from 34p to 124p over the same period, but do not assume this kind of runaway growth can continue for long
However, buying individual equities like these is highly risky, as their share prices can crash just as quickly, which isn't what what you want from a supposedly safe haven.