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EUPHORIA OVER SMALL STATES ANDTHE OTHER SIDE OF THE COIN
Tadepalli Lalitha Bala Subrahmanyam, May, 2001.
T     
he turn of the century has opened a Pandora’s box in India’s geopo-litical sphere with the emergence of three new States on its map andraked up a host of controversial issues. On a different plane, the eventis historic and has more potential ramifications than India’s partitionin 1947, in the view of the spurt it has given to separatist elements invarious pockets of the country. Following the creation of Jharkhand,Uttaranchal and Chhattisgarh, voices in favour of separate Kodagu State,Vidarbha, Konkan, Telangana, Ladakh and Jammu have grown more assertiveand strident. At a stroke, all the old ghosts were resurrected from theirgraves.
“Just a resolution in the parliament, and we’ll form our ownState”
- seems to be the dominant trend across the country. Whoeverdisagrees with the separatist demand is deemed enemy of the region andits development.
WHY THIS SUDDEN SEPARATISM ?
The creation of three new States has left many wondering, with whatease and expediency the Indian Parliament could make and unmake Statesat will. They have understood that the so-called linguistc States ofIndia have no sanctity and indestructibility, but can be freely tamperedwith. A constitutional provision exists enabling the Parliament to thiseffect, but this statute was sparingly used in the past with only a fewStates coming into existance after the first reorganization of States onlinguistic basis. It is worth recalling that-for all their despotictendencies, late Indira Gandhi and her son and successor late RajivGandhi had never compromised on the principle of national unity and
 
EUPHORIA OVER SMALL STATES AND THE OTHER SIDE OF THE COIN 2 
mercilessly crushed all separatism in its umpteen
avatars
. While Indiradealt with the separate Telangana and Jai Andhra movements with an ironhand, Rajiv was rather curtly outspoken in his aversion to creating newStates. But a constitutional provision is apparently on the verge ofbeing misused well on the lines of Article 356 behind the veneer ofpublic demand and correcting regional imbalances.(i) Regional backwardness is cited as the principal reason for which thenew States were created. Ironically enough, the party in power in all the3 bifurcated States had traditionally been the Indian National Congressthat now merrily voted for their bifurcation. Then, is it the fault ofthe integrated State or the party in power there ?(ii) Now, confronted with the intellectual bankruptcy in the wake of aglobally sweeping market economy,political entities have lost theirideological ground and are in search of fresh issues to make headlines inmedia. Demand for separate States comes handy at this juncture.(iii) Besides the political arithmatic of small States makes it possiblefor a half or one-third of the MLAs to occupy miniterial berths which isnot the case with a big State having 200 assembly seats.(iv) Unlike reservation quotas, a demand for a separate State strikes anemotional chord with every inhabitant of the region, thus lending itsdivisive content a touch of democracy. Thus the demand holds a sure-shotpolitical promise worth investing in by politicians of all hues.(v) Moreover, the Indian polity is often termed as quasi-federal, whilein fact, it has few or no federal features worth the name except theexistence of 28 States. The Centre loves to view these states more asmere administrative units than manifestations of the cultural aspira-tions of various sub-nations in the country. Thus, strong sub-nationsare perceived as a threat to the constitutionally centralized powersarrogated to themselves by successive Union Governments during the last53 years. Therefore, the centre is ready to bifurcate or even trifurcatebig States just on demand, pending a number of other bills of moreurgency and importance.(vi) When the Indian leaders at the dawn of independence decided to formStates on linguistic basis, they were not motivated by any vestedinterest, but only an urge to emancipate the native cultures, languagesand people subjugated under the colonial yoke. With the memory of thoseleaders and their movements in the Gandhian era slowly fading out of
 
EUPHORIA OVER SMALL STATES AND THE OTHER SIDE OF THE COIN 3
public memory, divisive politics now usurp the vaccuous ideologicalspace.
IS SMALL REALLY BEAUTIFUL ?
(i) According to the advocates of small States, they are easy to governand develop. Small countries like Japan, South Korea, Singapore, Taiwanand a host of European countries have made faster material progress thanbig countries like India, China, Brazil and Indonesia. Apart from theselective exemplification, this contention has basic fallacy abou it. Adignified municipality called the (constituent) State of India can notbe likened to an independent republic of sovereign powers, which candecide and dictate its own future. Under the existing dispensation, theso-called States are toothless for all practical purposes with no powersto sanction either a small industrial ot irrigation project. They cannot even rename a place without the Centre’s approval. All minerals andunderground resources squarely belong to the Centre. States can notgrant permission even to start a newspaper or journal. No resolutionpassed by a State becomes an Act without the President’s seal of appro-bation. All avenues of revenue were monopolized by the Centre long ago,leaving the States to fall back upon sales tax, octroi and registrationfees only. Almost all subjects in the States’ list were graduallytransferred to Concurrent list, thus enabling the Centre to poke afinger in all internal affairs of the States. Given this ground situa-tion, what additional progress can one expect from the new (small)States, without fighting for true federalism in our constitutionalframework ?(ii) Secondly, did all small States progress ? If they did, what could bethe reason ? Orissa, a small State of approx. 1,55,000 sq.k.m. (half thesize of Maharashtra), was formed way back in 1936 and is still rated asa backward State. Still smaller states like Haryana and Punjab (eachhaving an area admeasuring approx. 50,000 sq.k.m.)were formed in the60’s and they made rapid strides, owing not as much to their small sizeas to the Green Revolution, centrally sponsored irrigation projects andinflows of foreign exchange as also their proximity to the nationalcapital.From a global perspective too, not all small countries can becredited with progress. Well in our neighbourhood, we have under-devel-oped small countries like Nepal, Bangladesh and Bhutan.(iii) The issues arising out of the rapid technological advancements inthe world put governments under stress to cope up with them and made them
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