State of unlearning

edit, Governance Now, Aug 1-15, 2011

Why Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh and Uttarakhand get statehood but not Telangana, Vidarbha or Gorkhaland 
If you are following the statehood debate over the decades, the chances are bright that you will never figure out why certain regions like Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh and Uttarakhand get statehood but not Telangana, Vidarbha or Gorkhaland—the demand for which is as old, as justified on political, cultural and developmental grounds and equally violent. Or for that matter, how Mamata Banerjee is able to bring cheers to the agitated hill people of West Bengal in a matter of days, single-handedly and without promising statehood, but the same doesn’t or may not happen in a dozen-and-half more regions where similar discontent and aspirations simmer for decades. You will also find it difficult to understand why a political party supports statehood demand for a region at a particular point of time but not at another. Given the fact that demands for separate statehood have persisted primarily because of poor or bad governance, you would expect the political leadership to work out a rational response after taking a comprehensive view. But it doesn’t. The approach is always ad hoc.

Why blame the present political leadership alone. Mahatma Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru were openly in favour of linguistic basis for reorganising the states until the partition trauma of 1947. Then they changed their stand. Nehru put the issue on the back burner; he had more pressing issues to attend to. But then Potti Sriramulu went on a hunger strike demanding a united Telugu-speaking Andhra Pradesh in October 1952. Nehru ignored him until it was too late. Fifty-eight days after fasting, Sriramulu died, sparking a violent protest. Nehru panicked and as a consequence, the first state was carved out on the basis of language a year later. The state reorganization commission came about thereafter. Language determined many states but not all. In north, Hindi-speaking belt was divided into four states—Bihar, Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan.

The same panic reaction was evident in the way UPA-II reacted to Telangana Rashtra Samiti chief K Chandrasekhar Rao’s fast in November 2009. When Rao’s health deteriorated, the union cabinet held an emergency meeting and announced that the process of forming the state would begin. But ditered and set up the Justice Srikrishna Committee to look into the issue. The committee didn’t favour division of Andhra Pradesh and the matter hangs there. The BJP, the other major political player which played a crucial role in the formation of Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh and Uttarakhand in 2000, too did a flip-flop. First it supported and then changed its position at ally Chandrababu Naidu’s instance.

In between 1953 and 2000, several new states came into being—Haryana in 1966, Himachal Pradesh in 1971, Goa in 1987 and a few others in northeast. Was there any grand design behind any of these? And if so, will that help answering the demand for Telangana, Vidarbha, Gorkhaland, Bodoland, Baghelkhand or Mayawati-supported demand of dividing UP into three states—Bundelkhand, Harit Pradesh and Purvanchal? The answer can’t be ‘yes’. The government of the day realises that the basic problem is that of governance but is either incapable or unwilling to do anything about it. Therefore, the second obvious option—setting up a second states reorganisation commission to take a holistic view and formulate appropriate response—finds no takers. It is feared that this option would provoke more such demands being made. That leaves the third option before us: Mamata Banerjee-like sincerity and generous grant of power and funds for the development of the troubled regions. The fourth option is really a no option: forced by the circumstances. This leads to a prolonged strife (as in the case of Telangana), loss of life and properties and wasted opportunities. Think it over. The costs are too high in our present approach.