Behind KCR-Bommai slugfest, data reveals backwardness of Raichur
Though Karnataka chief minister Basavaraj Bommai rebuffed his Telangana counterpart K Chandrashekar Rao for his remark on Raichur, government data shows the district has remained one of the most backward regions in the state.
At a TRS party event on August 19, KCR, as the Telangana CM is known, claimed that people in Karnataka’s Raichur district, attracted by his government’s welfare schemes, are demanding that their area be merged into Telangana.
“You are close to Tandur, a border area with good connections with Karnataka. Some border area people in Raichur had demanded that they be merged with Telangana or provided the same kind of welfare programmes in Karnataka as implemented in our state,” KCR said.
Terming Telangana CM’s comments on the Raichur merger a joke, Bommai asserted that not an inch of Raichur would be ceded to Telangana. “KCR fought for separate statehood on the grounds of lack of development and became chief minister of Telangana. Now, to cover up his failure to develop his state, he is into a such gimmick. KCR should stop giving politically motivated statements,” Bommai said.
While the Karnataka CM said that Raichur was an important part of the state in his statements on the issue, the district has remained one of the most backward regions in the state.
In January 2018, Prime Minister Narendra Modi launched the ‘Transformation of Aspirational Districts’ initiative in the 100 most backward districts in the country, Raichur was one of the two backward districts selected from Karnataka.
On the social development parameters, the district has been an underperformer. The overall literacy rate of Raichur district is 59.56% while the male and female literacy rate is 70.47% and 48.73% respectively. At the block level, a considerable variation is noticeable in the male-female literacy rate. Devadurga has the lowest literacy male and female rates at 60.47% and 38.62% respectively. Raichur block, subsequently, has the highest literacy rates– among both males and females. The male literacy rate is 75.26%, while that for females is 55.16%, indicating an urban-rural divide within the district.
Raichur’s per capita income ( ₹73,851) is less than that of the state ( ₹126,976). Low per capita income is usually an indicator of poverty in a region. Figures drawn from the Economic Survey of Karnataka 2013-14 show that the incidence of poverty (2011-12) in urban areas is 38.2% whereas in rural areas is 37.6% in the district of Raichur.
The overall incidence of poverty (2011-12) in the district is 37.7% remains significantly higher than the state level (21%). The low per capita income of Raichur might be a probable explanation for the high incidence of poverty in the district.
In the 1950s, at the time of the reorganisation of states based on the linguistic formula, the territory of northern Karnataka that belonged to the erstwhile state of Hyderabad under Nizam’s rule was fragmented into three parts and distributed among Andhra Pradesh (Now Telangana), Maharashtra and Karnataka.
North Karnataka, the arid part of the state, which represents 60% of its land mass, is a serial underperformer, and its districts such as Raichur, Bijapur, Yadgir, Gulbarga, Bellary, Koppal, Bagalkot and Bidar, among others, dramatically trail the rest of the state in all major economic and human development indicators.
Narendar Pani, a Bengaluru-based political analyst and faculty at the National Institute of Advanced Studies, said Raichur has been a victim of the problem of state machinery focusing on the growth of one big city. If resources were taken away from Raichur to develop Hyderabad in Nizam’s time, in the post-independent Karnataka, the focus was on developing Bengaluru. “When a city is developing because of the focus given to it, the people of other regions naturally move to the city for better opportunities and that region doesn’t develop,” he said.
According to an IAS officer who served in Raichur around 30,000 families in Raichur district, who have BPL cards, have not collected their ration 2019. On an enquiring, it was found that these families have left their native place to greener pastures in search of livelihood in the cities.
“Most of the people belonging to the five districts go to Bengaluru and Mumbai to work as construction labourers. Some go to districts like Hassan, Mandya and Haveri for harvesting sugarcane crops. More than 30 buses ply from the district of Raichur to Bengaluru every day. But even these many buses are not sufficient to take a large number of people from these districts that are migrating to the capital,” the officer said on condition of anonymity.
Pani added that the statements from both Chief Ministers regarding Raichur were purely political. “As an economical force, the Raichur has little to offer. The demand for the merger is just another attempt to start a border dispute which could win votes,” he said.
Meanwhile in July Bommi announced that specific measures would be taken to eradicate malnutrition in Raichurt. Necessary allocations would be made for the purpose in the budget, Chief Minister Basavaraj Bommai said. Bommai who had an interaction with Niti Ayog (SGD) consultant Sanmukta Samaddar said that funds would be provided in the next budget for Kalyana Karnataka Regional Development Board to improve the education, health and standard of living in the region.
