Telangana RTC employees give KCR a taste of his own medicine

Hyderabad: Suicides, shutdowns, ‘Vanta varpu’ or cooking on roads and ‘Dhoom Dham’ or the cultural programme were all part of the movement for statehood to Telangana. With the employees of state-owned Road Transport Corporation (RTC) using the same tactics for their ongoing strike, history appears to be repeating itself in Telangana.
K. Chandrashekhar Rao, under whose leadership the Telangana movement used all these tools as part of the strategy, is now at the receiving end.
Over 48,000 employees of RTC along with their family members on Sunday participated in ‘Vanta varpu’. They cooked the food and ate it by the roadside. The scenes were reminiscent of the Telangana agitation between 2009 and 2013.
The same day a RTC driver set himself ablaze in Khammam as he was depressed over the chief minister sacking all the striking employees. The next day a conductor hanged himself in Hyderabad as he, like all other striking employees, had not received the salary for September and a cheque he had issued towards his EMI for home loan had bounced.
At least three other employees tried to commit suicide, giving a serious turn to the strike that began on October 5.
The decision of Joint Action Committee (JAC), comprising RTC employee unions, to launch indefinite strike was the first major challenge to KCR in six years. They had a list of 26 demands, the main being RTC’s merger with the government.