Business IdeasLetters: Pandora's box
History repeats itself. It was the fast unto death of Potti Sriramulu that heralded the formation of Andhra Pradesh and the subsequent reorganisation of states on a linguistic basis in the 1950s. This time, it is Chandrasekhara Rao’s fast whose reverberations are indicative of the fact that another redrawing of the map is on the anvil.
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The results of the last Assembly election in Andhra Pradesh clearly revealed the lack of support for the Telangana Rashtra Samiti (TRS), which sponsored the agitation for the new state. Ignoring this popular verdict, the Centre announced bifurcation of Andhra Pradesh, merely because of the violent agitation that rocked the state. It did not have the common sense to realise that it was opening the Pandora’s box with so many pending claims for the split-up of many other states, too many to enumerate here. Clearly, it is a failure and crisis of leadership. The immediate impact closer home will be the revival of the demand for Vidarbha state that will, in turn, encourage the separation of Marathwada and Konkan from Maharashtra. All these regions have a common grievance that only western Maharashtra has prospered in the last half century. The advocates of the Konkan state will claim Mumbai, saying that Nagpur, Aurangabad and Pune are the natural headquarters for Vidarbha, Marathwada and western Maharashtra, respectively. It would mean more ministerial opportunities for ambitious politicians who don’t hold any official positions now.
It makes no difference to an unemployed young man in Mumbai whether someone else recruited by a local firm is from Pune or Patna. Since there is no effective governance, one may expect many more incidents of violation of law and order in the form of agitation for new states. In a country of more than a billion people with some metropolitan areas having millions of citizens, it is not difficult to organise an agitation with a few hundreds participating, to make it look like a mass movement.
It is time for another States Reorganisation Commission. Its recommendations could be subjected to a referendum in each of the regions concerned to settle the matter.
A Seshan, on email