Small is beautiful
Being residents of a tiny state themselves, Goans could naturally be thought to be more simpatico than others to the flurry of longstanding demands from various regions of numerous states of the Indian Union for statehood reaching a fever pitch in recent days. Especially, if Goans reflect on how the movement for statehood saved this unique land from being subsumed by its massive neighbour.
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The immediate spark for the re-surfacing of many statehood demands may have been the Congress Party’s nod for a separate state of Telengana to be carved out of Andhra Pradesh, but the logic for smaller administrative units in a country the size of India cannot be ignored. For purposes of comparison, the USA with its 50-odd states is a good example. The problem in India is that this resistance to putting in place a more federal structure is given a fillip by the cynical political calculations of the political party is ascendency at any given time.
A genuine way forward could certainly have been a second states reorganization commission to follow the only one ever constituted by the Union government in the 1950s, but that has become less of a realistic option or top priority over the years. In fact, for political parties regardless of hue, the demand for a second SRC has just become a bogey to delay the inevitable. It should be remembered that all the states that have come into being in the recent past ~ from Goa in 1987, through the creation of Uttarakhand, Jharkhand and Chattisgarh in 2001 to the expected creation of Telengana in 2014 ~ not one has been the result of any SRC.
These fights have been fought, and won, by the people of these areas. Which is also why the demands for Bodoland to be carved out of Assam, Gorkhaland to be created in the hill regions of West Bengal, the proposed four-way splitting of Uttar Pradesh into Western UP or Harit Pradesh, Central UP or Awadh, Bundelkhand (that would also include a district or two of Madhya Pradesh) and Eastern UP or Poorvanchal and the demand for Vidharbha to be carved out of Maharashtra amongst others have acquired a life of their own.
This is because the message being sent out by India’s central and centralizing authorities is that New Delhi only gives in to pressure being mounted from the statehood-seeking sub regions, whether in the form of agitations or raising the political cost of ignoring them. Left to its own devices, the Centre seemingly has neither the capacity nor the will or indeed the foresight to set in place an institutional mechanism that could do justice to such demands.
The harm such an ostrich-like attitude by the Centre does to the whole notion of democracy, devolution of powers and localized governance for a region is immeasurable. So, what is the solution?
To our mind, given that a second SRC is just so much pie-in-the-sky, the next Parliament needs to pass a Constitutional amendment that makes space for the voices of regional minorities to be heard by means of guaranteeing a referendum in the areas seeking statehood. Left to itself, the mother state, as it were, will in most cases never agree to cede control over the resources, powers of patronage and political clout that sheer geographical size and a large population affords it ~ which is why putting a system in place that allows the will of the people to find institutional expression is a must to keep India both federal and united. As for the much touted “cultural linkages” between state and sub region that are routinely cited by the former to argue against any division of existing states, if these and other such links are really as strong and genuine as its proponents believe, the suggested referendum would seal the argument; one way or the other.
