Word: andhra
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...undulating hills and thick vegetation of Dandakaranya Forest - nearly 50,000 sq km of jungle straddling parts of central-Indian states Chhattisgarh and Maharashtra and the southern state of Andhra Pradesh - have for decades been a forsaken, off-the-map region frequented only by corporate India looking to make a killing from the iron-ore reserves of the land. Indeed, for close to 10 years now, the area has remained off limits for the Indian government and its agencies, including the police and military. It is one of the few pockets of India that has not been topographically surveyed...
Late Wednesday, the Indian government announced it would approve the carving out of a separate state known as Telangana from Andhra Pradesh. The movement for Telangana secession is virtually as old as the Indian republic itself, but it gained traction this month after its main political leader, K. Chandrashekar Rao, commenced a week-long fast. Rao's deteriorating health as well as coordinated protests - some violent - across the 10 districts of Andhra Pradhesh's 23 that comprise Telangana, including the influential high-tech capital of Hyderabad, seemed to force New Delhi's hand. But it could open a whole series...
Though Telugu-speaking as well, Telangana had once been part of a separate kingdom ruled from Hyderabad, which recognized British suzerainty during the colonial period but was not administratively part of British India. It was subsumed into the territory of Andhra Pradesh only in 1956, after a further dismemberment of the once independent Hyderabad kingdom. Though the city of Hyderabad was made the capital of the united Andhra Pradesh state, calls for greater autonomy have lingered, with many in Telangana complaining of marginalization at the hands of the coastal Andhra population...
...Delhi imagined it would calm tensions with its nod toward accepting a new state, the move backfired. Dozens of local legislators in Andhra Pradesh have resigned their posts and strikes by those opposing Telangana's secession have paralyzed much of the state. Trains have been blocked, businesses shut down. According to news reports on Saturday, two activists in favor of a "united Andhra" took their lives in protest of the state's splitting. The turmoil has also plunged Hyderabad, a booming, cosmopolitan I.T. hub, into panic as politicians and business leaders fret over the costs of the current instability. "This...
Hoping to dampen a few of calls for new and smaller states ignited by the Andhra controversy, New Delhi has dialed back its support for Telangana, insisting that the matter now find a resolution through a vote in the Andhra Pradesh legislature. Given the current tumult, it's unclear when or how such a motion may go through. The political party headed by Rao, the Telangana separatist leader, was trounced both in recent state and national polls. His hunger strike - now ended - and the disturbances organized around it were likely an act of desperation of a movement shorn of much...