Friday, December 11, 2009

United States of India (!) Will have more states in future: For whom?

Mrs.SoniaGandhi must have thought that her generous decision and gracious consent to quickly carve out Telangana state from Andhra Pradesh, with A.P assembly bringing out a resolution soon in this regard would defuse the crisis and bolster the image of congress and that she was after all fulfilling the five decade old demand , and also its commitment in the Common Minimum Programme.

But understandably and quite expectedly, it has opened up the pandaros box and has whipped up long pending similar demands in other states, the legitimacy of which also can never be questioned.

What was indeed surprising and more redeeming feature was, the mass resignation of MLAs , most of them belonging to Congress, signaling clearly to the High command that no longer they are under the supremo and that even a just decision, must undergo a broad political consultative process and that all the stake holders must have a say. One agitating woman aptly put it that the decision could not be treated as birthday cake gifted from the largess of Sonia.

Demand for separate Telangana state is only a symptomatic expression of many such backward regions, not meriting much attention, in the form of opportunities in education and employment.

Bodoland people’s Front in Assam, Gorkha Jana Mukthi Morcha in West Bengal and Harit Pradesh demand from parts of Uttar Pradesh and Mahyapradesh, and Vidharbha in Maharastra and even a north –south divide in Tamilnadu would gain momentum in the months to come.
The fundamental root cause for this kind of demand is the growing political ambition of many regional bosses in many states and the deliberate neglect of poor people in many backward regions in those states regardless of who rules the state at a particular point of time.

Being part of a state, and hence India, so many poor people living in many backwards regions, face the identity crisis and feel neglected and humiliated and do not receive the fruits of economic changes taking place in the country.

Our country cannot be called as the United States of India .There is so much of regional chauvinism of Bal Thackeray of Maharastra variety and many political leaders do not have any real concern in allowing labour mobility across the country. The minority community, the Dalit, and tribal population including the Other Backward Classes feel completely marginalized from the mainstream India .Maoist uprisings in select pockets of India is a reminder that everything is not well and many ordinary people who do not have special link with any political party are thoroughly dissatisfied with establishment and hence want to revolt. If no attempt is made to understand the trails and tribulations and politicians continue to live in ivory towers , pretending that its all caused by some terrorists and militants, all of us will be living in a fools paradise .

There is real currency unification with in the country but the rate of inflation is not uniform through the country. Indeed, thanks to the callous attitude of the state.The food and energy inflation are at record level in the country and many ordinary wage earners cannot even dream of expecting a secured job, not to speak of hike in the pay. Periodically we conduct elections and we take pride in saying that, India is the largest Democracy on Earth. But, does this political experiment have any relevance in solving the problems confronting the common masses? We don’t know to what extent the creation of smaller states by bifurcating the larger states would help solve the poor people’s livelihood issues, employment concerns, standard of living, health care benefits and provision of drinking water, and so on. But it appears that no power on Earth can stop Indian states getting further sub-divided into smaller states, although one cannot clearly predict its favorable advantages for the common man in the street, who has become always a victim of political chess play.

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