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General Forum: NRI - Information | | Small States and Better Government | |
| topic is changed?
we talked about corruption, dowary, caste ,education, blalallalalaaa
all the issues are finished the final encounter is small is better.
Posted by: Mr. M Kumar N At: 22, Aug 2003 3:06:40 PM IST
Yes Well paid, well connected andhra disinformation media
Posted by: Mr. Konu Venkat At: 22, Aug 2003 2:58:17 PM IST
Well paid media i.e in dollars
Posted by: Mr. M Kumar N At: 21, Aug 2003 7:33:18 PM IST
Small States and Better Government
April 10, 2003
India today accounts for one sixth of the world's population of 6.133
billion. If some of its larger states were independent countries they
would be quite high up the list of the larger states in the world, and
needless to say way down in the list of the poor and backward (See
Table 1 below for an interesting cross-section).
Table 1: Large States State Population Population Comparison
Uttar Pradesh (without Uttaranchal) 167 million Only China, USA,
Brazil and Indonesia are larger
Tamil Nadu 62.2 million Bigger than UK or Italy
Andhra Pradesh 76.4 million Close to Germany, Vietnam
Bihar (without Jharkhand) 82.9 million Bigger than Mexico
Maharashtra 92.1 million Has 10 million more people than Germany
Madhya Pradesh 81.2 million More than all the countries in Southern
Africa put together
We have some small states too. Arunachal Pradesh (1.1), Goa (1.6),
Manipur (2.6), Nagaland (1.7), and Meghalaya (2.5) are some of the
smaller ones. In the mid range we have Punjab (22.2), Haryana (20.1),
J&K (10.1), Assam (26.5), Kerala (32.5) and Orissa (36.2). The new
states Chattisgarh (20.8), Jharkhand (26.9), and Uttaranchal (8.5) can
also be categorized as mid sized. Then we have some really tiny Union
Territories like Pondicherry (0.9), Chandigarh (0.9), Andaman &
Nicobar Islands (0.3), Dadra & Nagar Haveli (0.3), and Daman & Diu
(0.2). Delhi is the only exception between UT's with 12.9 million
people.
There does not seem to be any one criterion for dividing India in such
an unequal way. If it were language then UP, Bihar, MP and Rajasthan
should have been one state. If agro-climatic conditions, many of the
larger states like UP, AP, MP, Bihar and even Karnataka and Tamil Nadu
have more than one in each of them. If history were to hold reasons
for the states being what they are, there are few to be found. Tamil
Nadu was never known to be one kingdom just as Karnataka and Andhra
were never single nations or political units in the past. The truth is
that our states were formed on no real and common basis. There are
different reasons applicable for different states. The northeastern
states were formed to suit certain tribal aspirations. Goa had its own
historical antecedents. Punjab was formed to accommodate the religious
sentiments of the Sikhs with Punjabi language serving as a convenient
fig leaf for it. UP and MP were formed for another reason, which
seeing the way they turned out to be could hardly be sensible. The
four southern states were formed for linguistic reasons, just as
Maharashtra, Gujarat, Orissa and Bengal were.
Our political divisions are new. At the time of independence India
consisted of 601 princely states under a common imperial authority
residing in London and four Presidencies, which were directly
administered by the British and farmed for taxation. The way our
states first emerged seemed more shaped by the divisions in the
Congress Party. It seems that wherever there was a dominant leader
there was a Pradesh Congress unit, soon after independence there was a
state. Since power in the Congress party gravitated to the Pradesh
Congress units with the largest representation in the AICC, UP became
the biggest state and so on. Fifty years down the line, with the
Congress Party in UP now a political dwarf, it still tends to call the
shots in the AICC due to its numbers. Next in importance is the Bihar
PCC, now a mere rump seen more in attendance of the durbar of the
Yadav couple whose writ runs there.
It's not important now to wonder why and how our states were formed.
What is important is how large the budgetary outlays have become and
how unmanageable the administrations have become. The AP government in
2001-2 had a Revenue Budget, which had Rs.22,406 crores by way of
revenue; and Rs.26.293 by way of expenditure. In addition it had a
Capital Budget, which had Rs. 10,395 crores by way of receipts; and
Rs.6,531 crores by way of disbursements. Thus, it collected, begged,
borrowed, spent squandered and stole no less than Rs.66,000 crores in
just one year. UP played around with over Rs.82,000 crores. This year
Kumari Mayawati has about ten percent more and she will not be denied
her chance to make hay and she makes few bones about it. The Yadav
couple by comparison has to make do with much less, a mere Rs.31,000
crores, but then in Bihar by tradition the ruler collects more!
Just to get an idea as how Government has grown over the years after
independence, see Table 2 below. Not only have the outlays grown the
sheer size of government in terms of employees has grown. The State in
all its myriad forms now employs over 25 million persons. Since the
private industry paradigm seems to make more sense to the present crop
of political leaders, especially people like Chandrababu Naidu who
likes to see himself as a CEO rather than a Chief Minister, or so he
says, it is an old management practice to periodically re-organize
businesses to make them more manageable. They call it restructuring.
Mr. Naidu who seems to have more faith in foreign management
consultancies than in his well-trained and chosen by merit
bureaucracy, would be told by them that this is indeed what they
recommend for hefty fees to their corporate clients. Given the size of
the states, smaller states meaning smaller governments, smaller
bureaucracies, and smaller budgets would be the most sensible thing to
do. It however seems that when it comes to governments, our leaders,
and Naidu is no exception; think that they rule kingdoms for their
pleasure and not administrations to serve the people!
Table 2: The Burgeoning Budget Year(s) Budget Allocation
1950 Rs. 300 crores
1956-61 (2nd. Five Year Plan) Rs. 7772 crores
1997-2002 (9th. Five Year Plan) Rs. 859,200 crores
Quite clearly we need smaller governments, which means smaller states,
fewer departments and more decentralization. Now comes the question of
how to carve out smaller states. The late Prof. Rasheeduddin Khan made
out a case for them way back in April 1973 in the magazine Seminar, at
that time edited by the late Romesh Thapar. He had India divided
according to its 56 socio-cultural sub-regions and a map showing these
was the centerpiece of the article. That picture still remains
embedded in my mind, and whenever I think of better public
administration that map would always appears. Since the subject of
small states has begun to emerge as a major issue again, with the
recent by-poll results in Telangana writing its message very clearly
on the wall, and with Ramadoss raising the banner in Tamil Nadu and a
vociferous cry for a Bundelkhand out of UP, it is a matter of time
before small states will become a major political issue nationwide.
The Congress Party already has a new States Re-Organization Commission
on its agenda. Others too will soon see the writing on the wall.
The Seminar map is a veritable blueprint for the structuring of India.
Out of UP and Bihar eight distinct sub-regions are identified. These
are Uttaranchal, Rohilkhand, Braj, Oudh, Bhojpur, Mithila, Magadh and
Jharkhand. The first and last of these have now become constitutional
and administrative realities. But each one of the other unhappily
wedded regions is very clearly a distinct region with its own
predominant dialect and history. For instance Maithili spoken in the
area around Darbhanga in northern Bihar is very different from
Bhojpuri spoken in the adjacent Bhojpur area. Similarly Brajbhasha in
western UP is quite different from Avadhi spoken in central UP.
India's largest state in terms of area, MP, is broken into five
distinct regions, Rajasthan, Gujarat and Maharashtra into four each,
AP, West Bengal and Karnataka into three each, Tamil Nadu, Kerala and
Orissa into two each, and so on.
As can well be imagined carving out small states and leaving the rest
of the administrative arrangements, as they are will hardly improve
matters. In some of the smaller states more than half the MLA's are
ministers and many of the ministries are little more than a couple of
rooms to accommodate a small staff, and a car with a blue light and
the national flag held in a plastic sleeve. If the CEO of AP cares to
find out from his foreign advisors, he will be told that the
government really needs no more than a dozen ministries. There is no
need to have a ministry each for higher education, vocational
education, and elementary and primary schools; just as there is no
need to have a ministry each for major and minor irrigation. And do we
really need a system that has a half a dozen Chief Secretaries and a
like number of DG's of Police? Small states without small governments
make little sense. The Congress Party is now demanding, even if it be
in a rather muted manner, that a new States Re-organization Committee
look into the matter. Rather than needing a States Re-organization
Commission, what India now needs is a Restructuring of Government
Commission to make our governments smaller as well as effective and
efficient.
Posted by: Mr. Konu Venkat At: 21, Aug 2003 7:30:53 PM IST
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