The Sakala Janula Samme has come to an abrupt end; or to a pause, going by the claims of the Telangana Joint Action Committee leaders, after a 45-day long intense fight for the separate Telangana state.
Now that the employees of all sections are back in their respective duties, everything has come to normal in Telangana. But, many questions are now being raised over the utility of the Sakala Janula Samme.
What have the employees and workers have achieved through the strike? Why did they take up the strike in the first place and why did they end it abruptly without achieving their desired goal? Have the Telangana employees become tools in the hands of political leaders?
Well, there are always two sides of the coin.
One section of the people is of the view that the Sakala Janula Samme was a futile exercise and the employees had achieved nothing, except police cases and the wrath of the people for causing tremendous inconvenience. They were branded as anti-people and anti-government.
This section is also of the view that the Telangana JAC, mostly dominated by Telangana Rashtra Samithi, has used the employees, teachers and workers to blackmail the Congress government in the state and the Centre to dole out benefits to TRS president K Chandrasekhara Rao and his family.
A so-called intellectual has even written an article in a Telugu daily on Tuesday that the Sakala Janula Samme was a big drama enacted by the Centre with the help of the TRS and the Telangana Congress leaders to divert the people’s attention from crucial issues like corruption and Anna Hazare crusade.
Another section, however, has a different view point.
According to these analysts, the Sakala Janula Samme has achieved its desired goal – of waking up the Centre from deep slumber on the Telangana issue and forced to announce some stand on it at the earliest.
For the first time, the employees, teachers and workers went on strike not for their individual benefits, but for a particular cause. For the first time, the entire Telangana spoke with one voice. If the strike ended abruptly, the blame should go on to the political parties, but not the employees who had done their best to highlight the demand. After all, no strike would go on indefinitely as it is the question of their survival and that of the people depending on them. In so far as highlighting the demand, even if it is by causing inconvenience to the people, the employees had achieved a tremendous success.
In any case, the judgement should be left to the people; and no organization or party has any right to run down an agitation without participating in it.
