Out of political correctness or wary of a generally hostile Media Telangana leaders tend to say their grouse is only with few dozen Seemandhra Oligarchs in Hyderabad and not with the 'ordinary' seemandhra settlers.
"Poota Kootiki Vacchotodu undocchhu, kani Potta Kotteytodini tharmutham"
'Those who came for a lively hood can stay, but with those who came to snatch the food from our mouth will be driven out"
But that's not the whole truth , i will use guesstimates and statistics wherever available and try to build a general picture using figures form the thesis of Dalel Benbabaali, a French anthropologist
"More than half of the interviewed households had an annual income of above 5 lakhs. 54 % had properties worth 1 crore or more." (2012 figures)
Compare this with the Indian average of annual household income of 60,000 Rs, and household worth of 14 Lakh Rs .
So your average Kamma settler tends to be 6-7 times richer than the average Indian.
Mind you this is sample survey of 100 Kamma households in various localities (high,middle, relatively low income groups) of Kukkataplly , so this gives a fairly accurate picture of the 'average' wealth of a Kamma settler.
"In Kukatpally municipality, which is now part of Greater Hyderabad, half of the population are Kammas (approximately 2 lakhs), according to the caste association."
Assuming there are roughly equal number of Kamma settlers outside Kukatpally, the total Kamma population comes to 2 lakhs.
A great majority of these made huge profits in real estate, using insider information of the closely knit business class and owing to their excellent contacts with the political and bureaucratic elite.
According to Sree Krishna report 1st Generation settlers constitute 7% of Hyderabad's total population(GHMC limits) assuming Hyderabad's population to be 80 lakh , this comes to 5 lakh 60 thousand , add in the second generation settlers it will be approximately 7 lakhs . Not all settlers are as prosperous as Kammas, so a rough guesstimate ,assuming there are 1.5 lakh other settlers who are similarly rich, & add to it 50,000 seemandhra public employees 'illegally' working in Hyderababad, we come to a figure of at least 4 Lakh wealthy settlers. A large number of settlers have made in to the IT field, they are in position to hyper network, influence opinions drive the narratives of National media and social media , many travel to other metros as part of their work, so could just say to their co-workers over water cooler gossip "Telangana is nothing but sheer political opportunism by a bunch of power hungry leaders and overly emotional populace" .
While there are several lakh settlers from other states in Hyderabad, most of them feel ambivalent about the division or mild opposition to the division, but not strongly enough to feel that their 'world would turn up side down' or as a threat to their livelihoods , most view it through as a prism of local provincial politics and feel they don't have much stake in it either division or without division. Most grumble and are irritated about the agitations and just hope for a return to the normalcy.
, so we have approximately a group of 4 Lakh settlers who are well organized, hate the very idea of Telangana and collectively present a formidable force that could use its collective economic heft and political clout to lobby and arm twist central government to deprive Telangana of the constitutionally mandated 'state subjects' and who equate the maintenance of status quo with self preservation.
Even if Telangana leadership somehow manages to win full control of Hyderabad, we shouldn't expect a 'happily ever after' scenario for Telangana, given that Its relatively easy to get rid of the hated andhra political leadership ,but it takes determination to demolish a 6 decade old system of oppression built by Andhras , reconciliation with Settlers is must at a some point in the future ,but it should not come at the cost of betraying the of basic aims of Telangana movement , there is even a risk of continuing the existing system, the only difference will be the addition of a new Telangana elite who not only add to the plunder but also ally and provide protection for the settler class to continue the business as usual.
