Stately Gains

With the fight for a separate state of Telangana to be carved out of Andhra Pradesh gaining new momentum, the Centre has been pondering over the setting up of a new States Re-organisation Commission, 52 years after the first redrew the counters that separate this vast land. In this context, an article published in The Times of India, 'Bring out the maps', made interesting read.

In the article, the author argues that re-organisation of states is a good idea if we also look at revamping the structure of power sharing between the states. Though I agree with it in toto, I believe that mere changing the power sharing structure will be of little help unless we look at regions with special needs that require a tailor made administrative set-up instead of being just carved into a state.

The idea of a separate statehood usually stems from geographical differences or conditions of neglect and these are played upon by political outfits which are usually bit players in the national scene and try and gather a larger support base by turning the 'idea' into a 'cause' they are willing to 'fight' for. The classic cases would be the Jharkhand Mukti Morcha and the Telangana Rashtra Samiti. The TRS has now given an ultimatum to the Centre to initialise the creation of the Telangana state by March 6. One might call it the growing impatience among the TRS ranks to taste power, but the idea is not at all out of sync with the aspirations of the people. It has been a long standing hope pf many people, and the Centre should oblige.

A separate statehood would also be a good idea for the region of Vidharbha in Maharashtra. The state if created could devote its attention to more pressing issues like farmer suicides, industrialisation in the backward districts of Gadchiroli and Chandrapur, and of course the problem of Naxalism. The rest of Maharashtra can delink itself from these problems. Also creation of a new state more often than not leads to fresh enthusiasm and vigour for building infrastructure, attracting investment, setting up more innovative social programmes because it no longer gets to piggy-back on its parent state's resources. A government seated at Nagpur will always seems closer than a one seated in Bombay.

But the biggest flaw in this line of thinking is that a 'state' is a solution to many of the problems. It is not. An administrative set-up in the form of a state may not always be a good way of governance. For example, a separate state of Jammu might be good idea but Ladakh as a state may not be a good way to go about. It can be made a special administrative zone, with its own form of administration, that will be suited only for that region. Similarly hill councils in the North-eastern states may be better at promoting integrity and diversity than buying peace from secessionist outfits by offering the special region carrot. How much the creation of Bodoland has achieved is an open question. I don't know if there has been any research that goes deep into the idea of self-determination of the various regions in India taken as a whole. There have of course been seminal individual studies like those on Kashmir and the North-eastern states.

The idea should be to think out of the box and not restrict the options to those of states and union territories.

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Please take time out to visit the Bodoland site, www.bodoland.org. It is well conceptualised and makes a good read for anyone who might be interested in reading about a different culture. These are treasures of India and can only be appreciated if looked at in the perspective of national pride. It gives a new dimension to the opinion of Bodoland that might be ingrained in the mind of an average Indian. When I surfed the site, I was amazed at how lucky we are to live in such a culturally diverse country.
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