Student UPROAR

Government job aspirants lament that the current BRS government, which gained power with the support of the youth, has disappointed them

- Anisha Reddy

IN 2010, Sai Kumar Meegada, a 20-year-old chemical engineering student in Hyderabad, had breakfast, returned to his dorm room, slipped a length of clothesline around his neck, tied it to the ceiling fan and hanged himself.

Before he signed off from life, Meegada, who routinely scored straight As in his exams, also left a note behind for the people of the yet-to-be-formed state of Telangana.

"For the people of Telangana, this is my final salute," said his note, which added traction to the decades-old struggle to create a separate state in Andhra Pradesh (AP), one of the larger states in southern India.

Meegada was one of the many people, including youth, who sacrificed their lives on the altar of the Telangana statehood movement, whose champions had argued that the region had been neglected by successive state governments. Almost a decade later, the sacrifices-some of them fatal-made by around 30 lakh youth to give birth to Telangana appear to have been in vain.

'Jobs, water and financial stability-were the three prime promises made during the statehood movement by the incumbent chief minister of the state, Kalvakuntla Chandrashekar Rao-or KCR-one of the icons of the Telangana movement.

During the movement, more than a thousand students gave up their lives in the hope that the next generation would enjoy improved employment opportunities after the formation of the new state. However, government job aspirants in Hyderabad lament that the current Bharat Rashtra Samithi (formerly TRS), which gained power with the support of the youth, has utterly failed to fulfil these aspirations.