December 10, 2009
 

Does a Telangana state make sense?

Telengana Rashtra Samiti chief Kalvakuntla Chandrashekar Rao is currently on a 'fast unto death' over the demand to grant statehood to Telengana. The 'fight' for a separate Telangana state is around 40 years old now.

KC Rao's stand over Telangana is not new either, and 3 years ago, he staged a resignation drama.

In general, I am in favour of smaller states, but with a few conditions.

1. The new area must have a culture that is distinguishable from the region that it is 'seceding' from.
   
2. The carved out area must have a population sufficient enough to warrant a legislature with at least 100-120 seats.
   
3. The ratio between the population and the number of direct representatives (MLAs) must not be less than 2 lakhs. i.e. 1 MLA for every 2 lakh people in the 'new state'.
4. No blackmail and no violence under the garb of "people's sentiments" etc.

The reasoning behind #1 is understandable. #2 and #3 perhaps need some more explanation and context. The smaller the legislature, the greater the impact of a handful of MLAs switching sides. For evidence, see the charade that happens in Goa, Jharkhand, Meghalaya, etc. every year or so where CMs are upstaged or get to the post with no real political backing, MLAs switch recklessly bringing down governments, etc.

One of the main arguments quoted by those in favour of creating a new state is the fact that 'fruits of development' haven't even reached their areas. The rest of the state enjoys the benefits while they are poor, unemployed, landless and humiliated. With huge states, and a pathetic governance & administration system, it is but natural that some people and areas benefit at the cost of others. But if the newly created state was too small, then it loses out on the benefits that economy of scale provides. Overall cultivable land, land available for industries, resources such as electricity & water etc. may not be sufficient & efficient enough given the smaller scale. In addition, higher administrative overheads (government staff, for example) could drag down efficiency even further.

Overall, most state capitals in India are located almost near the borders. See this political map. Srinagar, Jammu, Shimla, Dehradun, Gangtok, Itanagar, Dispur, Kohima, Agartala, Kolkata, Bhubaneshwar, Mumbai, Panaji, Bangalore, Chennai and Thiruvananthapuram. Sometimes it is a function of the central parts of the state being uninhabitable. Sometimes it is due to historical and legacy reasons. But the fact does remain that the centre of administration in most states is far away (geographically and metaphorically) from the bulk of the people.

I compared the populations and number of MLAs for a few Indian states (high population, medium-sized population and low population) and the results indicate that a population per MLA ratio of around 2 lakhs to 3 lakhs is an acceptable number. States with values below 2 lakhs tend to be really tiny, and have less than 100 MLAs thereby increasing the risk of unstable governments. All the data is sourced from Wikipedia articles.

State	Population (000s)	MLAs	Ratio (000s)
Uttar Pradesh	190891	403	473
Maharashtra	96752	277	336
Bihar	82998	243	341
West Bengal	80221	295	272
Andhra Pradesh	76210	294	259
Tamil Nadu	66396	234	284
Orissa	36706	147	250
Kerala	31948	141	226
Jharkhand	26900	81	332
Assam	26655	126	212
Punjab	24289	117	206
Haryana	21082	90	234
Chhattisgarh	20800	90	231
Uttarakhand	8500	70	121
Meghalaya	2306	60	38
Goa	1400	40	35
Arunachal Pradesh	1091	60	18
Mizoram	888	40	22
Sikkim	540	32	17

Notice that the north-east states (except Assam) prominently have very small ratios, and ridiculously small legislative assemblies. Yet, given they are all culturally so different from each other, it would not make any sense to consider them as one big unit.

Now lets consider the Telangana demand. It is claimed that the population of a new Telangana state would be around 30 million (3 crores). So it would come into the 'mid-sized state' category, similar to Kerala, Orissa, etc. In itself, that means it won't be a tiny dot on the map. But there's also a need to have a functioning legislature and a stable government. Will that be possible, especially given how K Chandrashekar Rao, even when in power, launches agitations at the drop of a hat, especially if it seems like his popularity is waning?

If Telangana (land of the Telugus) was created as an outcome of a fast, it would perhaps be an ironical (or apt, perhaps?) situation for Andhra Pradesh and an apt tribute to Potti Sreeramulu, whose death (in Dec 1952) after a fast resulted in AP being created out of the Madras Presidency in 1953.

What next? Syed Ali Geelani going on a fast demanding Kashmir as a separate state? What about Vidarbha? Who will volunteer for that fast? Random farmers or P Sainath?

Labels: federalism, k chandrashekar rao, kcr, secession, states, telangana, telugu

Rambled @ 11:21 AM

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2 comment(s)

Nice article. Well, I personally myself not very much clear whether the separate state Telengana will be good for any reason or not. I have been in Hyderabad for 4 years and have came across many Telengana supporters and also Andhra supporters (note: not united AndhraPradesh). What I feel is, Telengana issue is an after thought of Hyderabad development. (I do know the history of Telengana and its 40 years struggle for separate state). For last so many decades the issue was sleeping. Only in 2001, when Hyderabad shot to fame for IT, KCR again raised the issue. They saw the unimaginable money that coastal area guys are making out of Hyderabad and these selfish politicians wants everything for them only. So, they started asking for Telengana, once again. Everyone in AndhraPradesh knows the character of KCR and as you also have pointed out, KCR just keeps on jumping sides and wanted to be in power. He came out of TDP as he did not get any lucrative ministry in Naidu govt. So, the story of Telengana currently seems to be just another political game obviously taking the common man with them for their own benefit.
But if you see the other side of the story, Telengana people are really neglected. The literacy level is very low. All the financial benefits mostly goes to coastal areas. Except Hyderabad, other regions are not that developed. Coastal area guys come in hyderabad, make a lot of money and spend all the earning out of this region to develope the coastal region. So, the decade long suppression and neglect of a particular region will always bring such type of agitation one day. And that is why KCR is getting such huge mass support.
So, finally the greed of a small group of people (when they neglected a particular region or now when KCR and group wants to take the max benefit of it) always lead to a great destruction and in this case the country is getting divided internally into smaller pieces. People die, property gets destroyed, hatred gets deeper between region and so on...
Finally, the future can only say whether the separate state Telengana really solves the problems of the region or it is another Madhu Koda (KCR) in making...

By  Lokajit Tikayatray (Dec 10, 2009, 11:34:00 PM)  

Lokajit - Its quite likely that had Hyderabad not grown to be what it is today, folks wouldn't be so keen on Hyderabad being part of Telangana. But does that mean they wouldn't want a separate Telangana ... that I'm not sure of.

KCR basically wants to be a CM. In AP, his party just doesn't (and probably never will) have the numbers to stake claim. In Telangana state, he will be king.

By  Jagadish (Dec 18, 2009, 12:39:00 PM)  

I'd prefer if you posted comments with your real name to add more credibility to your opinions. Obviously comments containing offensive and unsuitable language will be deleted. The opinions in the comments are your own views. You are welcome to provide a URL to your own blog, especially if it discusses issues you find here.

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