Finding Common Ground

Vasu Reddy from Chicago
vasureddy@aol.com

Telugu people have more than just their language as common ground. We are for centuries have had our language, heritage, literature, culture, traditions, food, education, people and progress together, while we shared the misery, poverty, backwardness, poor politics and wasted opportunities together, while the past few years have shown progress of the cities and certain aspects of the population in isolation.

The last two months have derailed probably a couple of decades of progress in employment, education and progressive investment climate. No one benefits in an environment where the Universities are used for political activism, and shutdowns are called on by the most insignificant politicians. People have to live with the fear of being persecuted for just going to work or school and normal citizens will not risk it.

The state had tremendous respect in the central government just a few months ago with a chief minister who did things his own way, and delivered every potential populist promise to the people of the state. With the death of YSR there is no leader that can rein in the warring political factions even within the same political parties.

People of the state have lost billions in opportunities, and the current crop of students will lose a year of their life to this unmanageable crisis to the state. It might be fun to miss school for a few days and skip exams this semester, but it can never be made up in a life time. Lost time and opportunity for every student will never be returned. Parents and families toil very hard to pay for the kids to go to schools and colleges will be burdened to do this again and have to pay twice for the same. Outside of the loss of time and money, the students are exposed to the violence that comes with the political instability which will stay with them for a life time. No one wins, and we are given a common ground for all to lose, and just lose with this agitation.

Unfortunately it is too late to save the kids or educational institutions. We have them pawned by politicians who have chosen them as sacrificial lambs in a political agitation. There is no agenda for any regional aspirations and there will never be one as the development of entire country will simply destroy the traditional political equations. When people are self sufficient and law abiding, politics will find common ground to cater to the public to stay in power, but we must first get to that stage where the kids will be throwing away a year of their education and parents helpless in doing anything to stop it.