The setting up of linguistic states was arguably the single biggest political blunder made in post-Independence India. Today, this linguistic identity has morphed into calls for secession in a North-South divide, largely supported by some regional parties.
Bengaluru & New Delhi: The Constitution of India describes the country as a Union of States, and the Seventh Schedule lays down a clear division of powers and responsibilities. This, in turn, charts out how a state works and what it ought to do. However, Article 2, which is supposed to define what a state is, remains vague—deliberately or otherwise. Article 2 merely says that “Parliament may by law admit into the Union, or establish, new States on such terms and conditions as it thinks fit.”
Clause 14, Chapter I, Part I of the States Reorganisation Committee Report of 1955 summarises the position pithily: “The existing structure of the States [sic] of the Indian Union is partly the result of accident and the circumstances attending the growth of the British power in India and partly a by-product of the historic process of the integration of former Indian States. The division of India during the British period into British provinces and Indian States was itself fortuitous and had no basis in Indian history.”
The setting up of linguistic states, intentional or otherwise, was arguably the single biggest political blunder made in post-Independence India. Today, this linguistic identity has morphed into calls for secession in a North-South divide, largely supported by some regional parties.
Ironically, the first linguistic state formed in independent India, namely Andhra Pradesh, was divided in 2014 into two Telugu speaking states (Andhra Pradesh and Telangana), demonstrating the hollowness of the linguistic state idea in a modern forward looking country. Historically speaking, the Telugu language has always been a unifier and not a divider. Language is, in the end, a social convenience and not an identity marker.
The consequences of linguistic states are deleterious in many ways. Large linguistic states have had lopsided developmental trajectories. Karnataka, Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu and West Bengal, each with a huge metro city, are grossly over dependent on the same. Concerns of those who live beyond the shadows of these megacities are eclipsed. This greatly fuels intrastate inequalities.
Cultural diversities are smothered by the singular blanket of linguistic uniformity. Regions with markedly different dialects (Garhwal and Kumaon; Jammu and Kashmir; Rayalaseema and Andhra) are disturbingly homogenised. In turn, this leads to divisive politics marked by clientelism, casteism, and secessionist sub-nationalism.
At this time, an independent issue is to have a delimitation of parliamentary and assembly constituencies to make our parliamentary democracy fairer and more representative. This has been alluded to several times in the recent past by the Central government. The construction of a new Parliament building with the capability of seating 888 members in the Lower House is a hint in this direction.
These independent issues, namely delimitation of Lok Sabha constituencies and reorganisation of states, may be profitably linked for the furtherance of our democracy.
Based on the number of seats in the new Parliament building, if one assumes that there will be 888 Lok Sabha members in a Lower House constituted after a nationwide delimitation exercise, one arrives at an average figure of 1.06 crore voters per constituency. However, if this exercise is done proportionately (1 constituency today becomes 1.63 constituencies in the new Parliament after delimitation), the value of an individual vote will still remain widely different in different parts of the country.
Alternatively, if the exercise is carried out population wise, there will be a marked decrease in the representation of the southern states. Both methods are therefore unsatisfactory. Any increase in the number of constituencies must therefore be accompanied by a complete redrawing of limits so that there are just around 1.06 crore voters in each and every new constituency. However, even this is not enough, given the present structuring of the states.
This brings up the connection between any future parliamentary delimitation exercise and the manner and way in which states of the Indian Union have been defined by Parliament till now. The present 28 states and 8 Union Territories (UT) are shockingly different in size. These differences are partly on account of former historical events, and partly on account of reluctance by some, mostly in the larger (linguistic) states, to consider division of their states into smaller, more governable units, blocking such moves and using language as a convenient excuse. A comprehensive reorganisation of states is, however, almost mandatory today and unless this exercise is done ab initio it will lack objectivity and rationality. It cannot be done incrementally.
Such reorganisation should smoothly dovetail into the parliamentary delimitation exercise, so that each newly constituted state has more or less equal representation in the new parliament. The question of larger states dominating the political discourse would be then relegated to history. No new state would be affected by so-called North-South demographic differences, because all states would have nearly the same population, and thus a roughly equal say in the trajectory of the country. In this way, two independent phenomena, namely delimitation and states reorganisation, would be brought together synergistically.
Simultaneously, the unhealthy concentration of resources, political power, and opportunities in singular megacities can be checked, resulting in a more equal distribution of prosperity. Likewise, economic policymaking becoming more decentralised can enable regions to specialise in goods and services as per their competencies, unimpeded from distant state capitals which remain less than responsive to such demands. The states’ reorganisation and national delimitation exercise, taken together, has the potential to unleash a broad-based economic upsurge across the nation by enabling smaller units to find their own economic niches.
The main gist of the argument is that it is easier for any citizen to identify with small micro-identities in small states so that he or she feels satisfied emotionally both as a resident of a small state that captures the fine details of one’s identity and at the same time feel proud as a citizen of a very large country that has an overall and overwhelming identity that is almost timeless in its history. In such a scheme, each of the 75 smaller states in the reorganised structure would have around 12 members in the expanded Lower House with 888 MPs.
India today is poised at an inflection point in terms of civilisational identity, economic take-off and constitutional status. Politically speaking, there are two fundamentally different ways in which the country can navigate these inflection points reflecting two fundamentally different ways in which Indians look at themselves in their approaches to life itself. The first methodology would have the country going for incremental changes and amendments so that there is the least amount of local disturbance. In the other method, it would be held that incremental changes cannot bring about the drastic changes required.
Details of the scheme are given in a just released book, “Delimitation and States Reorganization” by the above authors.
* Gautam Desiraju (gautam.desiraju@gmail.com) is in Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore. Deekhit Bhattacharya (deekhitdb@gmail.com) is in Luthra & Luthra Law Associates, Delhi.