The BJP’s defeat in the recent Karnataka assembly elections has made the north/south divide in India more obvious in political terms. The party holding office at the Centre does not govern any state below the Vindhyas. While congratulating the Congress on its victory in the assembly elections, Tamil Nadu Chief Minister M K Stalin said the “landmass of the Dravidian family stands clear of the BJP”. The Congress’s victory can indeed be seen as an outcome of the sharpening north-south divide in terms of culture, the politics of language, economic development and social transformation.
Despite English being criticised as a colonial inheritance and an instrumental knowledge in several quarters, the language remains a vehicle for emancipation for many. The south recognised this aspect of English, while several states in the north tried to abolish the use of the language. By all accounts, English medium education provides advantages in securing jobs, acquiring skills and entering the service-driven modern economy. According to NSSO education survey (2018), English is the medium of teaching till Class 12 in a high percentage of schools in south India — 63 per cent in Telangana, 60.7 per cent in Kerala, 59 per cent in Andhra Pradesh, 44 per cent in Tamil Nadu and 35 per cent in Karnataka. This figure for Bihar, in contrast, is 6 per cent and for UP, it is 14 per cent. In western India, Maharashtra tilts towards the southern way of educating children (29 per cent prefer the English medium), while Gujarat (12.8 per cent) follows the northern states.
English medium education was meant to ensure greater access to jobs and a window to the larger world. Higher education was seen as a means to redistribute traditional power by participation in the modern economy. As per the All India Survey on Higher Education (AISHE) 2020–21, the gross enrollment ratios (GER) in the southern states are much higher than in states in the north. In the south, nearly 50 per cent of the youth in the age-group 18–23 years are enrolled in a higher education institution — the all-India average in this respect is 27 per cent. Tamil Nadu has the highest GER (47 per cent) followed by Kerala (43 per cent) and Telangana (39 per cent). Bihar with a GER of 16 per cent and UP with 23 per cent are the poorest performers in terms of GER. None of the states below the Vindhyas have a GER lower than the national average. All the Hindi belt states — other than Haryana and Himachal — Gujarat, the eastern and northeastern parts of the country have a GER score less than the national average.
The south has also been a pioneer in promoting a culture of reading by instituting public libraries. Three-fourths of the 27,682 public libraries in India are located in the southern states.
Economic inequality has deepened between the north and the south, partly because investors are attracted to places with good infrastructure and well-trained manpower. The index of interstate inequality in terms of per capita income has gone up from 0.25 in 2000 to 0.30 in 2020 — if we take the ratio of per capita income of Karnataka to Bihar, this ratio goes up from 1.9 to 3.91. Today, an average person in Karnataka earns almost 5.5 times more than an average person in Bihar. The per capita incomes of Andhra Pradesh (Rs. 1,14,324), Karnataka (1,54,123), Maharashtra (1,33,356), Kerala (1,34,878) and Tamil Nadu (1,45,528) are way above the per capita incomes of Bihar (28,127), Chhattisgarh (72,236), Madhya Pradesh (58,334), Rajasthan (74,009) and Uttar Pradesh (39,371).
The exercise to delimit parliamentary constituencies could deepen the north-south divide. The south has controlled population growth by following central government policies. The continued emphasis on women’s education in the south has contributed to a fall in the total fertility rates in the region much before several other states in the country and now is in the zone of less than replacement rate. As a result, the population of these states is growing far more slowly compared to states in the north. The share of the southern states in India’s population has drastically come down from 24.8 per cent in 1971 to 19.9 per cent in 2021 while for UP and Bihar it has gone up from 23 per cent to 26 per cent. The exercise of delimitation could reduce the political clout of the southern states.
An estimate by political scientists Milan Vaishnav and Jamie Hintson shows that out of 848 representatives in Parliament, after delimitation, Uttar Pradesh is likely to get up to 143 seats, a 79 per cent increase, while Kerala’s representation will remain unchanged and that of Tamil Nadu will increase only by 10 seats. This political marginalisation of the south for demographic reasons could create tensions, some of which are already visible on the financial front.
When the 15th Finance Commission decided to use the 2011 population Census as a basis for the devolution of taxes from the central government to the states, the southern governments expressed concern about this move — the south’s share in the devolution of taxes has come down from 17.98 per cent in the 14th Finance Commission to 15.8 per cent in the 15th Finance Commission.
These differences in standard of living have led to interstate migrations, largely from northern states to the more prosperous southern states. The south, of course, should not overstate its case to the point of becoming parochial — migrant labour has equally contributed to the region’s prosperity.
While recognising a person’s equal voice in the democratic process is important, recognising the regional balance of power in a federal structure is also essential. This is why some unions of states — the USA, for instance — have given the same number of seats to all the units in one chamber of their parliament. Reforming Indian institutions along similar lines would, of course, require a debate. Efforts should be made to take everyone along.
Kalaiyarasan is assistant professor at, the Madras Institute of Development Studies, Chennai. Jaffrelot is a senior research fellow at CERI-Sciences Po/CNRS, Paris, professor of Indian Politics and Sociology at King’s India Institute, London
While recognising a person's equal voice in the democratic process is important, recognising the regional balance of power in a federal structure is also essential. This is why some unions of states — the USA, for instance — have given the same number of seats to all the units in one chamber of their parliament. C R Sasikumar 
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