Sunday, Dec.

13, 2009

How to Rule India: Break It Into More

Pieces?
By Ishaan Tharoor

In mid-October 1952, an acolyte of Mahatma Gandhi named Potti Sriramulu invoked the
tactics of his teacher and went on a hunger strike. The nation of India — at the time just
five years old — was still finding shape after centuries of division and colonial rule, with
many of its diverse regions clamoring for greater political recognition. Sriramulu's fast
came on behalf of tens of millions who, like him, spoke Telugu, a prominent south Indian
language, and wanted their own state within the country.
Yet his protest went unheeded for weeks by New Delhi and, 58 days after it began,
Sriramulu died, a sacrifice that triggered widespread rioting and eventually forced the
government into forming the Telugu-speaking state of Andhra Pradesh in 1953, as well as
other new states organized on linguistic lines. No small irony then, that, almost 60 years
later, another hunger strike threatens to dismember the state Sriramulu first won, and
revive a fierce debate about the nature of the federal Indian nation-state. (See a pictorial
history of the tempestuous Nehru dynasty of India.)
Late Wednesday, the Indian government announced it would approve the carving out of a
separate state known as Telangana from Andhra Pradesh. The movement for Telangana
secession is virtually as old as the Indian republic itself, but it gained traction this month
after its main political leader, K. Chandrashekar Rao, commenced a week-long fast. Rao's
deteriorating health as well as coordinated protests — some violent — across the 10
districts of Andhra Pradhesh's 23 that comprise Telangana, including the influential high-
tech capital of Hyderabad, seemed to force New Delhi's hand. But it could open a whole
series of controversies for the Indian government as many other regional movements
have now stepped up their own demands for statehood. (See a story about the death that
may have precipitated the Andhra Pradesh controversy.)
Though Telugu-speaking as well, Telangana had once been part of a separate kingdom
ruled from Hyderabad, which recognized British suzerainty during the colonial period but
was not administratively part of British India. It was subsumed into the territory of
Andhra Pradesh only in 1956, after a further dismemberment of the once independent
Hyderabad kingdom. Though the city of Hyderabad was made the capital of the united
Andhra Pradesh state, calls for greater autonomy have lingered, with many in Telangana
complaining of marginalization at the hands of the coastal Andhra population.
But if New Delhi imagined it would calm tensions with its nod toward accepting a new
state, the move backfired. Dozens of local legislators in Andhra Pradesh have resigned
their posts and strikes by those opposing Telangana's secession have paralyzed much of
the state. Trains have been blocked, businesses shut down. According to news reports on
Saturday, two activists in favor of a "united Andhra" took their lives in protest of the
state's splitting. The turmoil has also plunged Hyderabad, a booming, cosmopolitan I.T.
hub, into panic as politicians and business leaders fret over the costs of the current
instability. "This will be a total flop as investors will flee," says Amruthraj
Padmanabhundi, a 27-year-old I.T. professional in Hyderabad. "I am very worried
[about] my prospects slipping."
The prospect of Telangana's creation has buoyed similar causes elsewhere as calls for
secession echo in nearly a dozen states in India. A four-day strike is under way among
the picturesque hills and tea estates of Darjeeling, in northern West Bengal, with
protesters intensifying demands for a new state of Gorkhaland that would better address
the needs of the area's ethnic Nepalese population. More than 100 activists have begun
what they call a "fast-unto-death." On the other side of the country, in the vast desert state
of Rajasthan, a caravan of some 5,000 demonstrators and 500 camels paraded into the
capital of Jaipur on Friday, agitating for the formation of Maru Pradesh, a state that
would be carved out of some of Rajasthan's poorest districts. "Rajasthan is huge. It is not
easy to keep track of all the villages, of the development or the lack of it," says Jaiveer
Godara, the leading voice of the movement. "The person who lives in the last village of
Maru Pradesh has to wait for three days to get supply of water from outside ... [And]
there are no roads that lead to his village." (See a story about the 1937 silver jubilee of
the ruler of Hyderabad, reputedly the world's richest man, from TIME's archives.)
At the root of this looming crisis lies the still unresolved question of how the world's
largest democracy ought best to govern itself. Independent India was at first a patchwork
of former British provinces and princely states threaded together into a federal republic.
Some of its states remain huge and unwieldy — for example, the north Indian state of
Uttar Pradesh, with its estimated 190 million people, would be virtually tied with Brazil
as the fifth most populous country on earth but it would also possess 8% of the world's
population under the global poverty line. With a country of India's size and diversity —
as well as poverty — there is logic in having smaller states. "It will in fact strengthen
[governance] through economic and administrative convenience," says Delhi-based
political analyst Paranjoy Guha Thakurta. "India can survive and prosper by breaking
up."
The Indian government last fashioned new states in 2000, when three largely remote and
impoverished regions were elevated in status. At least two of them — Chhattisgarh and
Uttarakhand — have shown marked progress since their inception. Small states like
Kerala in the south and Haryana in the north, both with populations under 30 million,
boast some of India's highest development indicators. Backers of further decentralization
even point to the original, idealistic Gandhian vision for India — of a republic brought
together not by a strong central government, but an "ocean" of egalitarian and self-
sufficient villages.
Of course, that sort of utopianism has little place in the current hurly-burly of Indian
politics. Experts worry that new states may simply mean more jockeying for power and
expanded bureaucracy in a country already notorious for its spools of red tape as well as
its perpetual political horse-trading. "Ultimately, fragmentation is not a substitute for
good governance," says C.V. Madhukar, director of PRS Legislative Research, a Delhi
nonprofit which advises the government.
Hoping to dampen a few of calls for new and smaller states ignited by the Andhra
controversy, New Delhi has dialed back its support for Telangana, insisting that the
matter now find a resolution through a vote in the Andhra Pradesh legislature. Given the
current tumult, it's unclear when or how such a motion may go through. The political
party headed by Rao, the Telangana separatist leader, was trounced both in recent state
and national polls. His hunger strike — now ended — and the disturbances organized
around it were likely an act of desperation of a movement shorn of much of its real
political capital. "Having the government buckle to this kind moral blackmail is not a
healthy way to go about things," says Madhukar. "There shouldn't be this sword of
Damocles hanging over peoples' heads." A young India may have come of age through
such dramatic acts of Gandhian sacrifice, but a more mature nation needs more measured
habits. —With reporting by Nilanjana Bhowmick/New Delhi

•Χ λ ι χ κ το Πρ ι ν τ

•Find this article at:

•η τ τ π : / / ω ω ω . τ ι µ ε . χ ο µ / τ ι µ ε / ω ο ρ λ δ / α ρ τ ι χ λ ε / 0 , 8
599,1947392,00.η τ µ λ

•Copyright © 2009 Time Inc. All rights reserved. Reproduction in whole or in part
without permission is prohibited.
Privacy Policy|Add TIME Headlines to your Site|Contact Us|Customer Service