Advantages and Disadvantages of Smaller States
Does India need smaller states? By: Ashutosh Kumar Ashutosh Kumar is a professor of political science at Panjab University, Chandigarh, India
The Indian ‘model’ of federalism has several marked differences from the classical federal models one finds in countries like the United States, Canada, and Australia. One notable difference has been the unilateral power of the union parliament to reorganize the political structure of the country by forming new states and to alter the areas, boundaries or names of existing sates. Despite having the constitutional power, overwhelming concern for nationbuilding and economic reconstruction based on the development planning model, initially dissuaded the national leadership from conceding to demands for the creation of smaller regional states. Even states formed based on language, an accepted basis of the formation of independent nation-states in 19th century Europe. Only after India witnessed popular unrest, were linguistic states created in the late fifties and sixties, and this process remained incomplete. During the next three decades, only some of the centrally administered Union Territories were upgraded to fullfledged states while longstanding demands for the smaller states like Vidarbha, Saurashtra, Telangana, and Jharkhand remained in limbo.
DEMANDS FOR SMALLER STATES The advent of new millennium saw the creation of three new states -- Chhattisgarh, Uttarakhand (originally named Uttarakhand) and Jharkhand, carved out from the parent states of Madhya Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh and Bihar. More recently, India has witnessed a renewed assertion from
1
historically constituted regions for the creation of smaller states. A discernable shift in terms of federal thinking has accompanied this
Significantly, some of these regions have enormous populations comparable to countries of the global north in terms of territory and population. The regions include Telangana in Andhra Pradesh; Gorkhaland and Kamtapur in West Bengal; Coorg
The Indian ‘model’ of federalism has several marked differences from the classical federal models one finds in countries like the United States, Canada, and Australia. One notable difference has been the unilateral power of the union parliament to reorganize the political structure of the country by forming new states and to alter the areas, boundaries or names of existing sates. Despite having the constitutional power, overwhelming concern for nationbuilding and economic reconstruction based on the development planning model, initially dissuaded the national leadership from conceding to demands for the creation of smaller regional states. Even states formed based on language, an accepted basis of the formation of independent nation-states in 19th century Europe. Only after India witnessed popular unrest, were linguistic states created in the late fifties and sixties, and this process remained incomplete. During the next three decades, only some of the centrally administered Union Territories were upgraded to fullfledged states while longstanding demands for the smaller states like Vidarbha, Saurashtra, Telangana, and Jharkhand remained in limbo.
DEMANDS FOR SMALLER STATES The advent of new millennium saw the creation of three new states -- Chhattisgarh, Uttarakhand (originally named Uttarakhand) and Jharkhand, carved out from the parent states of Madhya Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh and Bihar. More recently, India has witnessed a renewed assertion from
1
historically constituted regions for the creation of smaller states. A discernable shift in terms of federal thinking has accompanied this
Significantly, some of these regions have enormous populations comparable to countries of the global north in terms of territory and population. The regions include Telangana in Andhra Pradesh; Gorkhaland and Kamtapur in West Bengal; Coorg