Telangana artistes protest over ₹11.91 crore in unpaid performance bills

A group of traditional performers staged a protest at the Telangana Department of Language and Culture on Thursday, using the very arts they are usually hired to showcase. Trumpets were blown, dappu drums beaten, janapada performances staged and Gussadi dancers swayed in peacock-feather headgear outside the department, until its director, Anugu Narsimha Reddy, came out to interrupt the demonstration and speak with the artistes.

The dispute centres on unpaid wages for performances at official functions. According to the director, bills totalling ₹11.91 crore are owed to artistes across the State. All the bills have been uploaded and cleared by the Pay and Accounts Office, and only the release of funds by the Finance Department remains pending.

Mr. Reddy said the amounts involved are not large, with many individual bills falling between ₹20,000 and ₹30,000. The matter has been raised repeatedly in meetings, he added, and the department hopes the money will be released by the end of this month.

For the roughly 50 protesters, the wait has been demoralising. Ravi Kumar, a performer from Amberpet in Hyderabad, said he has appeared at events attended by Chief Minister A. Revanth Reddy over the past three years, as well as for Governor Shiv Pratap Shukla and Prime Minister Narendra Modi. His payment for a performance two years ago is still outstanding, with about ₹30,000 due to him. He is one of several thousand workers in a similar position, the protesters said.

Kumar said the sum is small for the government but significant for the artistes. Many are abandoning their traditional forms to earn a living through vegetable selling, coconut vending and daily-wage work, he said, and some now perform only in the hope of recovering what they are owed.