In India all major states use their principal language for transactions in legislative bodies. As the first linguistic state formed in Independent India, Andhra Pradesh should be in forefront in the promotion of official language or language of state it Telugu.
As for the ruling Telugu Desam party, formed on the hurt Telugu pride in 1982, it should stand out among the India parties as the vanguard of local culture and language. But something contrary to this happened in Andhra Pradesh Assembly today.
Telugu Desam government’s Finance minister Yanamala Ramakrishnudu thrown all the traditions and conventions to the winds. He delivered his budget speech in English. The 57-page budget speech, which took nearly 2.06 hours for the minister to read out ,doesn’t contain a single quote from the sages and poets from the Telugu lands. Telugu is a classical languate with a history of more than 1500 years history. Interspersing the budget speech with native quotes and wit is common among the finance minister.When P Chidambaram was union finance minister, he made it a point to take quotes from Tiruvalluvar and other great Tamil saints. Even President Kalam used to recite stanzas from Tamil sages. Quotes from the North Indian poets, sages and sometimes movies used to adore the speeches of other finance ministers.
It is rare for a state finance minister to read out the speech in English, full of quotes from little understood Westerners. We can’t expect a Telugu Desam minister to read out the text of the speech in English loaded with English Scholarly quotes borrowed liberally from English poets and politicians such as Henry Wordsworth Longfellow , Winston Churchill, Thomas Jefferson, President Franklin D Roosevelt (two times) , an unknown former Secretary-General of the United Nations Organisation (UNO). And he finished the speech with little known Wilfred Peterson. Telugu Desam finance minister could not find any Telugu sage or poet like Vemana or Annamayya, Potana etc or modern poets eligible to be quoted in his budget speech. The only Indian names appeared in the two-hour long speeches were Babasaheb Ambedkar, Swami Vivekananda and of course President Kalam.
Against this backdrop, the criticism from YSR Congress looks justified. The YSR MLAs ridiculed the English speech of finance minister, who could not properly pronounce the names written in English chose to read out the budget speech in English.
They said,” the budget is full of statistical jugglery, full of lies and half truths. Allocations are not adequate. Irrigation was given a short shrift and Self-help groups ignored.”
YSRC MLAs Chevireddy, Bhaskar Reddy, K Srinivasulu, Attar Chand Basha, Visweswar Reddy etc said Ramakrishnudu read out budget speech in English to hide all these gimmicks and deficiencies in the budget.