Create 50 states

Its time to create small states and make them accountable rather than sing wrong tune of federalism 

The imminent formation of Telangana, the 29^th state, and the consequent outcry for a multitude of smaller and ethnically more cohesive states, questions the inherent arbitrariness of the 1956 states’  reorganization, brought about by Jawaharlal Nehru and Govind Ballav Pant in a haste. Telangana is the remnant of the Nizamshahi, the land where the Nizam family, as titular head in the British period, could still live off the fat of the land. The Nizam rule had it injected a sense of uniqueness into the people’s mind, ahubris not ironed out by Operation Polo

But Nehru’s government got rattled by nationalist posturing in many regions of the country at that time. It thought—rightly, perhaps, with linguistic separatism rocking the erstwhile Bombay province—that sub-nationalist enthusiasm is nothing but a precursor to mob violence, and of course a political challenge to Nehru’s authority. So little attention was paid to the reservations that Chief Minister of Hyderabad state Burgula Ramakrishna Rao had expressed about the merger of Talangana with Andhra Pradesh, and Nehru went ahead with putting the two unwilling horses under the yoke just because majority population in both places spoke Telugu. 

However, the chain reaction that the creation of Talangana has set off has its own message, which is, not only that people speaking the same language often hate each other but that a distant state capital is often a curse, a constant source of irritation, particularly if the capital is too important for historical or economic reasons. Besides, the larger the state is, the more it is prone to fission. The call for a separate Vidarbha is the fallout of stretching Maharashtra too wide, and allowing Mumbai to become too important. The state reorganization commission in fact recommended the creation of Vidarbha with Nagpur as the capital in 1956 but in May 1960, when Maharashtra was formed, it swallowed the region. Despite agitations since the 1970’s, led by Jambuwantrao Dhote, for a separate Vidarbha state, no attempt has been made to stamp out the flame. It will cause a bush fire any time soon.

The “distant capital” syndrome has brought Uttar Pradesh to the edge of a four-fold division of the state that now measures nearly a thousand kilometres from its western end to the easternmost. On the other hand, the ethnic separateness of the Gorkha people from Bengalis, which is at the root of the Gorkhaland movement in Darjeeling, and which the Centre had swept under the carpet all these years under pressure from Bengali politicians, has now turned the picturesque hill town into tinder-box.

Remote places inhabited by people of different ethnicities were ruled by empires of the past. In a democratic republic, distance matters, and so does population and ethnicity. 

At the core of the problem lies the fact that the Constitution devoted all its attention to the distribution of power to the states, to be seen as ‘federal’ by all, but hadn’t sought to define what the size of the state should be as a viable administrative unit. The issue has been glossed over, and it is a serious lapse. Instead of touching on the viability factor, like population size and area, the Constitution makers bent over backwards to draw up a lengthy list of 66 items, including public order, in the exclusive state domain. This is in addition to the 47-item Concurrent List that makes almost every meaningful step in the direction of reform—be it in the sphere of labour or education or law—subject to nod from the state capitals.

The Constitution got skewed because of the long days it spent in sorting out the partition issues. During and after Independence, there was doubt if the princely states would plump for India, or Pakistan, or whether some of them would prefer to stay independent, as the Nizam wanted, until the Indian Army under General J. N. Chaudhuri wrecked his daydream. There was also doubt lingering for some time if partition was indeed the last word. If not, thought the Indian optimists, mostly close to Nehru, then it would be a good idea to leave head room for negotiation in the name of federalism. Brajeshwar Prasad from Bihar hit the nail on the head when he said at the Constituent Assembly on 20 May 1949: “I do not know of a single instance in history where a unitary form of government has degenerated (italics mine) into federalism...We are reversing, Sir, the process of history; we are emphasizing federalism which is conservative in character and is full of weakness.”

As India aspires to emerge as a powerful nation, it should re-think its internal organization more like a beehive than an unkempt garden full of wild bushes and ugly trees. With India’s size and population, it can certainly have not 29 but 50 or 60 states. We need not be scared of smaller states. If a small country like Switzerland can have 26 cantons to govern, why can’t we have smaller areas which are easier to manage. Besides, it makes the state government accountable to people in the neighbourhood. 

Its time to re-write the Constitution in national interest and bring in Mayor-in-Council model of development and goverance. Let the legislators deal with only law making rather than becoming sons-in-law in states. If a  small state keeps its own house in order, the country becomes the gainer. But a gigantic state like Uttar Pradesh often fancies that it is the pocket edition of the nation itself, and begins to compete with the Centre often by attacking its institutions. Yes, the states need to be cut to size, for their own good. No bee in its cell challenges the honeycomb.

(The author is the National Editor of Lokmat group of newspapers)