Vivek Menezes
Last month, the intense and engaging (and extremely brilliant) data scientist Nilakantan RS gave the Goa Arts + Literature Festival an exclusive, highly illuminative preview of the national imbroglio that has been raging the past few days, as Tamil Nadu chief minister Muthuvel Karunanidhi Stalin – ably supported by his star cabinet colleague Palanivel Thiaga Rajan – launched an emotive public battle against the three-language recommendations in the National Education Policy (which they see as an imposition of Hindi), as well as prospective “electoral delimitation” to rearrange seats on the basis of population growth. All this, exactly as it is being debated at the highest levels in India today, was neatly laid out in Nilakantan’s superb, urgent 2022 book South vs North: India’s Great Divide, and this young engineer-turned-author, who says his “primary interest is designing stable decentralized systems - be they for political entities or business-related processes”, has had an immense influence on framing the discussion. Here’s what he wrote on Twitter/X earlier this week, “I am going to take credit for predicting this moment in politics. This will not end well.”
At his riveting GALF session, Nilakantan recounted how he started looking into the numbers to find out exactly how democracy worked for him – a voter in the South Madras constituency – and then to see how it compared with voters in other parts of the country. What he learned was so startling that he started writing long threads about the results on Twitter/X, until an editor got in touch to encourage him to write South vs North: India’s Great Divide. We all owe whoever that is our collective thanks, because this unlikely debut author has written an instantly invaluable book for anyone interested in the future of Indian democracy, and perhaps especially important for Goa, with its ultra-bizarre combination of the best of South India in terms of human development, and the very worst of North India when it comes to criminal misgovernance.
South vs North: India’s Great Divide makes its case from its first compelling lines: “Consider a child born in India. This child is, firstly, far less likely to be born in south India than in north India, given the former’s lower rates of population growth. But let’s assume the child is born in the south. She is far less likely to die in the first year of her life given the lower infant mortality rates in south India compared to rest of India. She is more likely to get vaccinated against diseases than the average Indian newborn, less likely to lose her mother during childbirth, more likely to get childcare services and receive better nutrition. She is more likely to celebrate her fifth birthday, more likely to find a hospital or a doctor in case she falls sick, and more likely to eventually live a slightly longer life. She will also go to school and stay in school longer; she will more likely go to college than her contemporaries elsewhere in India. She is less likely to be involved in agriculture for economic sustenance and more likely to find work that pays her more. She will also go on to be a mother to fewer children than her peers in the rest of India, and her children in turn will be healthier and more educated than she. And she’ll have greater political representation and more impact on elections as a voter than those peers too. In short, the median child born in south India will live a healthier, wealthier, more secure and more socially impactful life than a child born in north India.”
How did this vast divergence occur, and what are its implications, considering everyone started from the largely the same position in 1947? Why did some states – including both Goa and Tamil Nadu – achieve outcomes comparable to OECD (developed) countries, while others - most notably in the “cow belt” - remained mired at the bottom of the global barrel? Most importantly, can democracy be sustained under such extreme conditions? Nilakantan writes: “The successes of south India have led to a really paradoxical situation: success in areas of health, education and economic growth is being met with a policy regime that penalizes it; success in population control will be met with a likely loss of political representation in 2026. How will the region cope with such an assault?”
We have seen and heard some of the answers this past week, with his trademark forceful lucidity from Thiaga Rajan and in a series of unusually forthright statements from his party leader Stalin, who wrote this on Twitter/X on Wednesday: “Imposition of anything breeds enmity. Enmity threatens unity. Hence, the true chauvinists and anti-nationals are the Hindi zealots who believe their entitlement is natural but our resistance is treason. The very people who glorify Godse’s ideology have the audacity to question the patriotism of DMK and its government that contributed the highest amount of funds during the Chinese Aggression, Bangladesh Liberation War, and Kargil War, while their ideological forefather is the one who assassinated 'Bapu' Gandhi.”
The contrast with Goa’s craven, disgraceful political cadre – ever eager to sell off and sell out – is painfully stark, and it has been truly impressive to watch Stalin rally across the political aisles to lead an all-party meeting that passed these bold unanimous resolutions: “The Union Government must abandon any move to reduce, either absolutely or in percentage terms, Tamil Nadu’s current parliamentary representation in any form. We will not accept any punishment for acting in the national interest by successfully controlling population growth. If parliamentary seats are increased, Tamil Nadu’s representation must rise proportionally as per the existing framework. No manipulation or dilution of our rightful political voice will be acceptable. Tamil Nadu’s existing percentage of seats, 7.18 per cent of the total, must not be reduced under any circumstances. Tamil Nadu is not against delimitation, but it cannot and will not allow it to be a disguised weapon against progressive states. All political parties (with MPs in South Indian States) will be approached to form a Joint Action Committee, to immediately take up this just cause as a battle in every forum and mobilise all necessary support.”