Desh, pradesh

A second State Reorganisation Commission SRC to be set up sometime after the presidential elections 8212; as reported in this paper on Sunday 8212; is an immensely good idea. It would signal a reassuring return to the agenda of high politics after a race to Rashtrapati Bhavan marked, above all, by the petty political calculus. Parties across the spectrum must immediately prove to the people that they can step out from their narrow corners to seize a large debate. A new SRC is an idea whose time has come for the longer term as well. Much has changed in India since that fraught moment in 1953 when the first SRC was established after the fast unto death of the legendary Potti Sreeramalu. In an India much more at ease with itself, the demand for the smaller state need no longer be as apocalyptic. It is a largely unsentimental part of the layered processes of democratic negotiation and accommodation. The lack of spectacle with which the new states of Uttarakhand, Jharkhand, and Chhattisgarh were finally delivered by the NDA government recently is illustrative.

Language is no longer the salient issue now. For instance, the demand for a separate Telangana 8212; ironically by breaking up Andhra Pradesh, India8217;s first linguistic state 8212; builds upon the region8217;s underdevelopment in comparison to the state8217;s more well-off coastal areas. But a second SRC would surely find the case of Uttar Pradesh most challenging, and perhaps the most rewarding, of all. In this behemoth of a state, both administration and politics have run into constraints imposed by its sheer size. While the political contest has become coherent and homogenised within most states in the country, UP remains a segmented and fragmented place, its politics an unhealthily high-stakes game. Mayawati8217;s ability to draw in votes from all regions of the state in the recent assembly polls is a hopeful sign, but the structural constraints for political reform in UP cannot be ignored. There must be more urgent thinking about its trifurcation into Harit Pradesh, Purvanchaland Bundelkhand, or its division along any other lines.

To be sure, the small state is not an answer in itself. Jharkhand has shown how it can also become a syndrome. But that is a problem to watch out for later. First, it is necessary to take forward the democratic process, begun in 1953, of taking politics and government closer to the people.