India's new state spurs demand for more states

MUMBAI - The Indian government’s decision last week to divide the state of Andhra Pradesh to create Telangana – the country’s newest and 29th state – has ignited a groundswell of protest in other corners of India for the creation of additional states.

Activists and separatist politicians in at least seven other states are clamouring for the creation of new states on ethnic and linguistic lines, arguing the need to cut away from their parent states for an independent identity and the relative ease of governing a smaller state.

Activists from the Vidarbha Youth Force, a protest group seeking statehood for the drought-prone Vidarbha region, blocked railway tracks yesterday and forced a train to halt, vociferously demanding separation from Maharashtra state.

Nepali-speaking Gorkhas, seeking the creation of Gorkhaland, a separate state meant to be carved out of West Bengal to improve their socio-economic conditions, orchestrated a 96-hour crippling strike in the Darjeeling Hills, which ended yesterday. Some activists are still on an indefinite hunger strike until their demand for Gorkhaland is met.

The Indian government has made clear that the creation of more new states is “not possible and feasible�.

“The Telangana movement has been going on for 60 years,� said Pranab Mukherjee, India’s finance minister. “But it does not mean new states are going to be created everywhere.�

The creation of Telangana is the culmination of about a 60 years old campaign.

Since India’s independence from the British in 1947, India has used linguistic divisions to create federal states. India’s States Reorganisation Commission (SRC), created in 1956, was officially assigned the task of redrawing India’s map by creating states based on language. Along these lines, Andhra Pradesh, home to 77 million people, was created along India’s south-eastern coast in the same year for Telugu speakers.

The sporadic movement for a separate Telangana, a landlocked, predominantly agricultural area with a population of 35 million, has simmered ever since. Locals claimed discrimination from the parent state. Telangana had 42 per cent of the state’s cultivated area, but it was allotted 30 per cent of the state’s expenditure on agriculture, and 27 per cent of the allocation of fertilisers, and less than its fair share of canal waters and hydro power.

Riots erupted in 1969 over this issue, claiming hundreds of lives.

The government finally acceded to the demand for a separate Telangana last week, saying it would begin the process of carving out Telangana as a new state from a landlocked patch of northern Andhra Pradesh, in response to the 10-day “fast unto death� of K Chandrasekhar Rao, a regional politician who advocates a separate state. But not everyone is happy about the decision to divide Andhra Pradesh. Hundreds of state legislators have threatened to resign, and New Delhi’s decision has fuelled violent agitations in many parts of Andhra Pradesh.

The most pressing question is which state gets the city of Hyderabad, home to a slew of multinational companies and a gleaming symbol of economic progress.

“It lies in the heart of Telangana,� Ashok Malik, a New Delhi-based commentator wrote in a column in the Hindustan Times. “With Hyderabad, Telangana is a potential superstar state. Without it, it will be a Maoist-infested backwater.�

Since New Delhi’s decision was made public last week, other large states, most notably Uttar Pradesh (UP), India’s largest state, have expressed the desire to split their region for better governance.

If it were an independent country, UP, with more than 190 million people, would be the sixth largest in the world.

Mayawati, the state’s chief minister, wrote a letter to the prime minister, Manmohan Singh, last week, favouring the division of the state to create two other states – Bundelkhand, which straddles the border with the state of Madhya Pradesh, and Harit Pradesh in western UP.

“As soon as we get a nod from New Delhi, we will move a motion [to this effect] in the state legislature Assembly,� Ms Mayawati said.

The creation of a smaller state does not necessarily translate into good governance and better development.

In 2000, India split three existing states to carve three new ones – Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh, and Uttarakhand – taking the total number of states to 28.

According to National Family Health Survey findings, the creation of new states has improved infrastructure compared to the respective parent states, but not social indicators such as infant mortality and access to education.

Uttarakhand witnessed a 52.6 per cent surge in access to electricity, since it was created, while its parent state, UP, has only managed to improve access by 17 per cent.

Since its creation, Uttrakhand’s sex ratio has registered a sharp drop from 1,041 girls per 1,000 boys to 996 girls per 1,000 boys, while UP has significantly improved its gender ratio in the same period.

Ramachandra Guha, a historian and the author of India After Gandhi: The History of the World’s Largest Democracy, said the demands for new Indian states must not be dismissed without careful consideration. “India did not go the way of Pakistan and Sri Lanka, which had to suffer bloody civil wars because of the unwillingness to grant linguistic autonomy,� he said.

“However, our nation-state is comparatively young, and still evolving. It now faces a second generation of challenges, these pertaining to the regional imbalances in social and economic development. A new SRC should be constituted, which would look dispassionately into the demands for [new states].�