It’s time to divide the bigger Indian states into manageable units
A time bomb, that could rip apart the unity of India, is silently ticking in the background. We can already hear the rumblings from various states who are feeling the heat of unfair allocations of resources based on the population. The delimitation exercise that would happen soon has the potential to rip apart India, if it is not handled carefully. When India had got independence, our problem was our burgeoning population and our limited resources.
We didn’t have enough to feed our people and depended on the aid of the rich countries. Three generations of Indians grew up on the mantra of population reduction. All states were urged to curb their population that was supposed to solve all our issues miraculously. The southern states took the lead and managed to bring down their population growth, while the big states in the North, often dubbed as Bimaru states, were as sincere in their implementation of this policy as they were about the three languages formula.
The results are for everyone to see. Indian federalism is facing its greatest challenge now as the resource allocation ration—the proportion of tax revenues paid back to each state—from the Central Government adopted the 2011 Census instead of 1971 one. States like Kerala, Tamil Nadu and Karnataka are feeling the heat and are forced to beg the centre for funds for the fault of doing their jobs better than their North Indian counterparts.
The Bimaru states have fallen back in every social parameters, including female literacy, which has a direct correlation to fertility rates. The new Census is going to exacerbate the matter even more as the gap in the last decade has only widened significantly. It is like rewarding the laggard students at the cost of the meritorious ones.
As such states like Uttar Pradesh, whose population is nearing that of the US, decide who will rule India with its huge number of Parliamentary seats. With delimitation, this imbalance is set to tip further, placing even more power in the hands of these high-population states.
This scenario not only raises the spectre of social unrest but also has profound implications for the conception of democracy itself. Recently, the chief ministers of Andhra Pradesh and Tamil Nadu urged their people to increase the population, in an already populous poor country. With the allegations of Hindi imposition gaining traction, it is a matter of time before the opportunistic politicians use such real or perceived discrimination to create a feeling of colonisation in the affected states.
It is easy for allegations of exploitation to take root in an environment where the dynamics of power and resources are so starkly skewed. It is a sad commentary on our political system that states are being compelled to encourage population growth merely as a strategy for survival, rather than focusing on improving quality of life and providing better access to resources for their existing populace.
Perhaps, it is time to break up the larger states by keeping a cap on their population. Such huge population that can rival most countries of the world are difficult to administer and are a significant reason for the social backwardness of many Bimaru states. We have also seen that many states that were carved out of bigger states like Uttarakhand, Telangana, Chhattisgarh or Jharkhand are cloaking rapid development and providing a better life to its citizens.
Dividing huge states into manageable portions not only simplifies administration but also provides a more targeted approach for addressing the unique problems of each region. This decentralisation of power could help rectify the current imbalance and foster a more inclusive democratic system.
However, such a radical restructuring would be met with considerable opposition. Powerful political entities, who have long enjoyed riding the emotional wave of religious or casteism issues pertaining to these big states, have no incentive to allow such divisions, unless the demand comes from the ground level. It is time to push a limit of population for every state, say five crore per state, beyond which a new state should be carved out automatically.
This will also help in giving prominence to many local languages and dialects like Awadhi, Bhojpuri, Maithili, Santhali, Marwari, Braj Basha and many tribal languages that have a rich literary tradition and which are vanishing because of the dominance of Hindi as the official language in such populous states.
More number of capital cities will also help in spreading out the development. With more manageable area and population, the laggard Bimaru states can concentrate on improving their sub-par human development index and focus on bringing substantive change to the socio-economic fabric of their respective regions.
By placing the impetus on local leadership, it fosters an environment where leaders must comprehend and respond to the unique needs and challenges of their constituents, rather than following a one-size-fits-all approach which has been the bane of many development initiatives in such big states. This will also make the delimitation and the resource allocation process fairer and will prevent the fissiparous tendencies that have started brewing in the southern states, fuelled by opportunistic politicians.
Anand Neelakantan
Author of Asura, Ajaya series, Vanara and Bahubali trilogy
mail@asura.co.in