Small states Big politics

KV Prasad & Prashant Saxena

The Tribune Team

Small is beautiful; smallness is like an aberration, corruption of the very meaning and is like being mean. In the Indian context, 'big' exists because of the smallness of its grossness. The result is while the 'big' have fallen into an asphyxiating stranglehold of the pretenders of greatness, the small are shrinking, and given their conduct, they exhibit all traits of 'smallness.' And that's the crisis of national conduct and character. So, the people funnily say in private chats: the nation wants to know…(they add as many questions as they would like without ever expecting a response). 

We are 29 states in a kind of slicing of the Union cake that first saw the linguistic sweetener being added for making it gratifying to the popular taste and then an additive of the ease of governance and administration to make it more palatable. Yet, digestive juices are yet to whet the political appetite, and instead we have gluttony for corruption and bloating of political egos. Take a look at where we stand as small states add meat to the national body-mass without bothering too much about the matter that confronts us: development and common good.

Uttarakhand: In its 16 years of existence, the state has seen seven chief ministers and a brief spell of the President's rule.

Jharkhand: Formed around the same time by bifurcating Bihar, has already had more than half-a-dozen CMs and three stints of the President's rule. Raghuvar Das, the present CM belonging to the BJP, is the state's first non-tribal CM. 

Madhu Koda: He rose to become the mineral-rich state's CM in 2006 with the Congress' backing despite being an independent MLA. Koda began as a BJP candidate in 2000, and became an independent in 2005. He is the main accused in the coal scam.

Arunachal Pradesh: Revolts are the leitmotifs of the political game since the days of Gegong Apang when rebel leader Mukut Mithi pulled the rug from under the CM's feet on January 18, 1999, seven years after he had failed in his first attempt. A similar situation existed when Dorjee Khandu was CM; he was killed in a chopper crash in May 2011. Present CM Nabam Tuki came to power in November 2011 after Jarbom Gamlin quit following a serious law and order situation that subsided immediately after the change.

Manipur: Is expected to go to the polls in Feb 2017 and has a Congress government. In March, 25 dissident party MLAs demanded a reshuffle of the Chief Minister Okram Ibobi Singh's cabinet. CMs and governments have changed no less than 16 times since the state was formed in 1972.

Haryana: The Aaya Ram Gaya Ram expression in politics means frequent floor-crossing by legislators. The term was coined when Haryana MLA Gaya Lal in 1967 changed party thrice in a fortnight. 

Telangana: Nearly two years after bifurcation of Andhra Pradesh to carve out a separate state, a plethora of challenges has bedeviled the relationship between the two states. The key issues are sharing of river waters, power, finances, public assets and employees. Not a single day passes without the leaders of the two states squabbling over contentious claims.

Chhattisgarh: The only exception, perhaps. Upon its creation in the year 2000, the state government was headed by Ajit Jogi of the Congress, who served as CM for three years. Since December 2003, Raman Singh of the BJP has been the CM.

Core issues

At the dawn of the new millennium, the geographical map of India underwent a change internally, with Parliament creating three states of Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand and Uttranachal (later renamed Uttarakhand).

Not since the time boundaries were redrawn following the report of States Reorganisation Commission that recommended carving out states on a linguistic basis did the country undertake an exercise of this kind conceding to long-pending demands from the people of these regions - largely to address regional imbalance and address backwardness.

The ostensible reason for adjusting the contours of these states from parent states came in the wake of prolonged agitations that at times turned violent and political parties of different shades lending weight to such aspirations. Since then, demands for more such states are heard either periodically or consistently from various parts of the country. Only one state was effectively carved in 2013 — Telangana — even though the claim for a separate state from parent Andhra was vociferously raised since the mid-1960s. 

Political necessities

At the time when the then BJP-led NDA government of Atal Bihari Vajpayee decided to bite the bullet, the argument was that the three states were formed on the premise that respective assemblies of the parent states of Bihar (for Jharkhand), Madhya Pradesh (Chhattisgarh), and Uttar Pradesh (Uttaranchal/Uttarakhand) had passed resolutions clearing such a division. Yet, Telangana was not taken up because the Telugu Desam Party, an ally then as it is now, exerted stoutly opposed the division.

Since 2000, Telangana remained a political demand that bore fruits for political leadership there for a good 13 years but the list of separate states continues to get longer.

A UP assembly resolution passed by the Bahujan Samaj Party government for a four-way split of the state - Harit Pradesh, Poorvanchal, Braj and Awadh, Kamtapur and Bodoland in Assam, Vidarhbha in Maharashtra, Gorkhaland in West Bengal, Coorg of Kodavu in Karnataka are a few.

While these are within the existing states, there are others whose demands are spread across the neighbouring states. For instance, Bundelkhand comprising parts of UP and Madhya Pradesh, Bhojpur comprising UP, Bihar and Chhattisgarh, another formation that envisages parts of West Bengal areas like Cooch-Behar, North and South Dinajpur, Malda, and Assam's parts like Dhubri, Kokrajhar. 

On a different plane and citing historic reasons, there is this long-standing unresolved demand for Nagalim, which is different from demand for a separate state, but includes parts of Manipur and Arunachal Pradesh. Although the Centre announced an accord is in place with Naga leaders, details are not yet known.

Divergent views

Among the mainstream political parties, both the BJP and the Congress have supported bifurcation of states as has the Bahujan Samaj Party. In the Left, there is a division with the CPM consistently opposing any further division of states while the CPI altered its stance in the case of Andhra-Telengana.

The CPM in its resolution in 2001 made it clear that if all the existing demands were to be considered, India would be divided into more than 60 units. "This would seriously undermine the federal concept of a multilingual, multinational country. This would lead to an authoritarian unitary State structure further worsening Centre-state relations".

The central argument advanced in favour of creation of smaller states is to tackle the regional backwardness and correct the economic imbalances. People of the regions where such demands emerged, and continue to emerge, insisted that the parent state did not allocate resources for all-round growth even though that part of the region contributed more to the kitty.

For instance, when mineral rich Jharkhand was being created, the refrain in Bihar was that it would be left with ‘Baalu aur Aaloo’ (sand and potatoes) leading to another demand for a package to bridge the revenue deficit. A divided Andhra is demanding a special package for rebuilding the state.