Telangana

The Rythu Bandhu scheme gives financial support to farmers towards meeting the cost of inputs and other initial needs to support farming. Still, it cannot provide sufficient support to tenant farmers who are fragile and in the worst situation to pay rent and meet the cost of farming. Thus, the scheme should be extended to the most deprived agrarian communities, who are landless, and face risks from farming and employment uncertainties in agriculture.

The justifi cation for a slew of preferential policies aimed at Brahmins in three southern states of India are empirically examined. The results reveal that Brahmins in these three states are at the top of various human capital measures, various standard of living indicators, and have better political and social networks compared to all other social groups. Thus, these preferential policies retrench the existing caste inequalities instead of eliminating them. 

This study gives insights into the financial inclusion and fintech performance of Telangana urban cooperative banks, based on a primary survey carried out among UCB officials. More than 60% of the UCBs are found to cater to slum dwellers and micro, small and medium enterprises. But a clear gender gap is evident in terms of account ownership and access to credit.

The return of patronage culture in Telangana calls for a re-examination of democratic claims made on behalf of “Telangana’s cultural turn.” This turn to the centrality of sentiment, emotion, even death, in political mobilisation sought to break culture’s links with the Telugu language and its dominant caste speakers and resituate it as an expression of the region’s democratic demands. Cultural resources of the Adivasi, Dalit and backward castes, such as dialect, songs and performances were deemed “authentic” sites of regional identity even as these were widely disseminated through audiovisual media such as posters, newspapers, and internet between 2001 and 2014. Post-separation marginalised groups are unable to reclaim these cultural resources to further their demands of political representation, as political culture is now mediated by institutions of a postcolonial state and the ruling Telangana Rashtra Samithi party’s welfare–patronage policies. Marginalised castes are also unable to move towards a common ethical and moral standard as culture is seen from the restricted logic of politics of representation.

The first Lok Sabha election results after the formal creation of Telangana and its wider implications for both state and national politics are assessed. Coming as it did, within a few months of the state assembly polls, the electorate in the state made a clear distinction between the earlier state election verdict and the present verdict in the national election. What factors contributed to this change and what are the implications for the politics in the state?