Another new state in India??

The Telengana controversy has been raging for a while now, even if you graciously concede that lead-time in Indian politics that should be rightly known as `pickling time'.  My grandmother would not permit any of us to so much as inhale a whiff from the mango pickle in a tightly closed porcelain jar, unless the requisite number of days per her own unwritten statute had elapsed.  Our hard-boiled politicians simulate the same tactic when it comes to any issue that is a political hot potato and they find it expedient to kick the ball down the road for the next government to handle. Some issues have been left festering for 64 years or so - the precise number was easy to pick, because prior to that Indian politicians did not have control over governance.  My grandma  was an excellent judge of the mandatory pickling time, thereby achieving outstanding results all the time.  But unfortunately, our politicians through the decades have always been bereft of the skill and the goodness of loving grandmas. So they resort to pickling as a way of avoiding tough decisions.  Not that they are so dumb as not to realise fully that the passage of time would only complicate the process of resolution, but they still sit on their hands because they would rather have someone else bell the cat. Telengana, Lokpal are a couple of issues seething now, after decades of neglect by all governments. This writer just wanted to see what is it that makes the idea of a new state attractive, especially when it is not based on linguistic division of people, given that Telengana is sought to be carved out of Andhra, Telugu being the language of the people in the covered areas.  For the record, this scribe does not really care whether or not the new state is created, ever!

We can be sure that the pickling process kicked in for this case, primarily because the politicians could not use language as the tool to whip up passions.  If Andhra had people speaking two different languages, Telengana would have seen the light of day a bit earlier.  Obviously, only after a few hundred people became martyrs in the fight for 'independence' and 'freedom' from the oppressive tribe speaking a slightly different language; only after a few hundred buses and train coaches were burnt or otherwise wrecked; only after a few student leaders who usually were neither students nor would recognize `leadership' if they were in the same bed with that quality, ignited passions regularly among like-minded non-students to shut down schools and colleges, causing terrible inconvenience to those who want to study; and only after the customary strikes and shutdowns among the already stricken government offices, disrupting whatever little was on offer as `services' to people.  It would have been a cake-walk for the manipulating politicians to split the state, had the issue been language. But that was not to be and Telengana is still languishing. 

If the historically proven primary motivation for creation of a new state in India - language - is out of the equation in the case of Telengana, what is then the argument driving the agitation?  Is it that it has dawned on the people and the political tribe that smaller states are easier to govern and by dividing the state into two, administration and services to people would be enhanced beyond recognition??  The example of Singapore as a state has often been laid on the table to argue for smaller states.  Somehow, that sounds hollow because Singapore would probably have been as efficient as it is even it is double or triple the size because the reliance there is on good political and administrative structures, besides much cleaner politicians with very little corruption to complain about.  If someone wants to provide similarly clean administration in an Indian state, the process can begin with district level implementation (which is small enough in size) and the building blocks will result in mind-blowing improvements in governance overall.  Some smaller states have been forked out of UP and Bihar in the past (Jharkhand, Chattisgarh and Uttaranchal) and one does not hear of virtual Ramrajya in those states due to their smaller size!!   We should not be surprised if the gullible people who were goaded by avaricious politicians into agitating for these states have not seen any change at all in terms of overall governance and still wallow in their pitiful misery routinely created by government's apathy - only the name of the government has changed from X to Y. 

If smaller states fail to achieve better governance and still frenzy is being whipped up by vested interest groups, who stands to benefit from this artificial change??  Let us see.  While outlying areas in the new state continue to struggle to get noticed by the new government, one city will walk away with the glory as the capital of the new state.  Eventually crores of additional tax-payers' money will be spent in setting up new infrastructure for delivering the same abysmal services to people.  Contractors and politicians involved in such projects will, as usual, end up looting public money for personal benefit.  Nothing new in that except that an enormous new opportunity has been created by splitting the existing state.  While the sum total of assembly and parliamentary constituencies in the two states will probably be the same as in the old state, what will definitely change and help the marauders is the setting up of various new government companies/corporations in the new state.  While employees from the old corporations will be distributed, what will be inevitable is all the new corporations in the new state will be headed by new set of politicians.  So, what was earlier a set up of some 35 or so clueless politicos sitting as head honchos in as many state sponsored companies which do nothing but provide vehicles for the CEOs and assorted brethren another avenue of milking tax-payer funds, has now been effectively multiplied to 70 such companies in two states.  And, while logically after the split, the two states together should have the same number of ministers as in the earlier government, usually the post split  total number would always be way higher, beneficiaries being those who struggled for the creation of the new state.  All other assorted hangers-on will be favoured by the politicos  for whatever positions that can be created arbitrarily, in the name of service to the people.   Now, the new state has fulfilled the aspirations of the downtrodden people in the area, without improving anything in their lot but opening up new avenues for politicians to merrily pursue their corrupt ways.

Do we need more new states??  Or should the attempt be to improve governance in the existing set-up?  Unfortunately the voting public is willing to gulp anything fed to them by the so-called leaders.  Until that changes, there will be more Telenganas in the offing.  What next??  South Tamil Nadu and North Tamil Nadu?? Or Uttara Kannada and Dakshina Kannada??  God save India!