If anyone get a chance to look at the globes of the era before 1990s, he is bound to be perplexed by what he would say. The world and thus nations look completely different from what they was 2 decades ago. The present fiasco in the telugu land is the latest bead in the necklace. Once again the political map of India is bound to change.
As a north indian, to be frank i am relatively naive to comment on the issue of a separate telangana state. So, at lunch i caught hole two of my andhra friends. So, for the benefits of the readers (like me :) ) , andhra is broadly divided into 3 parts viz telangana, coastal andhra & rayalseema. While the coastal andhra is most propesperous owing to the agricultural prowess, telangana has lot of heritage, with the jewel "Hyderabad" , one of the heriatge city of the world. People of telangana feel that they are inequitably treated and hence are demanding for a new state or it seems so. Telangana is like a proverbial phoenix which rises again and again at the time of elections or some other political activity. It is the bread and meat for the politicians of andhra pradesh.
Before dwelling on pros and cons, i want to understand the dynamics behind it. Are big states destined to be partitioned ?? , well the answer is not very easy. At the time of the independence, India was a confederation of 9 British provinces and 500 princely states. With the help of 'iron man' vallabh bahi patel , the federal system in India was conceived with dual system of centre and states. Initially, established geographically, the later states are conceptualized on the linguistic basis. According to me, this is the root cause of the conflict. If a state is considerably big, then there is bound to be regions with different culture, languages and dialects. Certainly there would be place which will become the economic hub and other places which will left behind in the race. So, in the long run, the clash of the humanity in these states are inevitable. To strengthen the point, we can see that parallel governance system of Maoists started from the states which are struggling to handle their diversity.
So, are the smaller states answer to the problem? Well, the tempting answer wouls be yes !!. Smaller the states, lesser the diversity, lesser the conflict and the utilization of funds would be more effective, common sense huh !!!. Well, sometimes the common sense is very uncommon. To, examine these points, we can always look at the fate of the 3 states viz uttarakhand, jharkhand and chattisgarh. The first one was separated due to the geographical terrain, other 2 due to their tribal base. But the situations is far away from what envisaged. Jharkhand , a state rich in natural resources, still remains the poorest state of the nation, Maoist insurgency is almost uncontrollable in chattisgarh, and uttarakhand although faring a little well , is still under debt of crores of rupees from the centre. These new states , to an large extent , were unable to serve the purpose for what they were created.
we as a country, celebrates our uniqueness of 'unity in diversity'. This is the foundation of our very culture. But by giving into the demands of the creation or more aptly the partition of states, are we not jeopardizing our basic tenet. Did we become so intolerable of the diversity, or whether we always were. Today, it is telangana, tomorrow the voices would be raised for gorkhaland, Coorg, bundelkhand, and god know how many states... We know that, history repeats itself , are we going to see 500 states in India again. Jawahar lal nehru , in his book 'discovery of india' , says that if you see a pathan and a south indian, you will hardly believe that they are part of same country, but if you spend some time with them, you will find a intangible string of indianness which would be binding both.
Is that string is breaking, do our differences have become big enough which can overpower our felling of unity and belongingness, well the future holds the answer... who knows our knowledge may become obsolete when we would teach geography to our kids !!!!
On the finishing note, fasts as a way of protest , was attributed to mahatma gandhi as an unassailable tool of non-violence... in those times, they were for uniting india, now they are done for dividing it, life definitely comes the full circle !!!
No comments:
Post a Comment