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General Forum: Current 'Affairs' | | Not a passing cloud | |
| By Amal Ray
With the reorganisation of States in the 1950s, the
apprehended balkanisation could be contained but there
lay in the process a lurking danger of fresh regional
loyalties being stirred up beyond the purview of
language to disrupt the reconstituted State
structures. This happened recently in the Hindi belt.
Some more States in this or other areas, may
experience now or later the pain of eventual breakup.
Its overall outcome could be a more intensely regional
focus in politics to scuttle the unitary base of
Indian federalism.
The powerful Telangana Rashtra Samiti has taken the
initiative to set up a new all-India platform of all
new regional groups to assert their separate identity
in order to press for separate State formation. How
will this shape and more importantly, how will the
mainline political parties finally respond, looks
uncertain. The Congress leadership has initially
reacted negatively to the fresh regional demands as
its calculation of electoral gain either in Andhra
Pradesh or in Maharashtra does not seem to favor a
conciliatory stance. The party however has started
losing the support of the larger populace in
Telangana. This has encouraged many Congress
legislators from this area to reject the party high
command's counsel not to take up the issue of separate
Statehood for the region. Also, pressure is being
brought in to bear upon the Congress MPs from
Telangana to quit their party and join the current
stir.
With the decision of two senior leaders of
Maharashtra, Vasant Sathe and K P Salve, to leave the
Congress and set up a regional outfit to struggle for
a separate Vidarbha State, the agitation in this part
is likely to receive a boost. Although the party's
national leadership is averse to this move, this
cannot be brushed off as a passing cloud. This has the
potential to develop into a mass agitation to press
for redrawing of the State's boundary is order to
accommodate Vidarbha's long-pending demand. The
campaign, which is brewing in Telangana and Vidarbha,
could spread to other States to stress the need for
constituting a new State reorganisation commission,
bringing in some rival criterion of State formation to
substitute the earlier cognitive mark of language.
Emotional response
The earlier States’ recasting in the 1950s released
certain forces in the direction of deepening the
regional awareness. Firstly, the States had grown into
homogeneous and compact units where emotional response
was likely to be spontaneous and integrated. This was
expected to give an intense and enduring orientation
to the theory of State rights. Secondly, the
reorganisation of the States had encouraged the rise
of powerful local forces whose outlook was primitive
and directed towards extracting the maximum spoils of
growth for their so called 'homelands’, being
oblivious of the macro development needs.
However, as years went by, the concept of linguistic
allegiance could not conceal the fissures built into
the spatial structures of reconstituted States by
their historical evolution and developmental
imbalances. In the course of time the sense of
deprivation came to be manifested in the socially and
economically retarded sub-regions. However, the
resultant alienation varies from region to region. In
Telangana, for instance, the historical setting of
political development is different from that of other
sub-regions; moreover, this part is perceived by the
local leadership to have suffered a considerable
development lag in the State. Hence, the movement for
its separate Statehood has acquired wide popular
support.
In several other States the regional disparities have
seldom been assailed through planning mechanisms in
development with the result that there are
considerable inter-state dissensions. Linguistic
regionalism seems to have lost its edge to contain and
combat sub-regional dissatisfaction which is likely to
grow eventually into a critical issue in national
politics. Neither of the two principal parties with
all-India spread, seems prepared to view this in a
manner that conciliates and compromises the claims at
various spatial levels upon developmental resources.
This does not obtain in the existing party system
since the focus in it is on politics of elections
rather than ethics of nation-building.
Co-operative polity
In this regard there are two prime questions. Firstly,
how can the centre-periphery connectivity be
appropriately conceived in India's political system?
Secondly, how can elite accommodation be brought about
in this exercise? In India's political system the
periphery has always been treated shabbily. This
emanated from the dominant thinking oriented to the
basic idea that the nation state would suffer an
erosion in strength if the centre could not remain
dominant. This lay at the basis of the Congress'
response to the earlier States’ reorganisation as the
periphery then started asserting its innate strength
and vitality. The party's Working Committee in its
"call to the Nation' resolution in 1956 expressed
grave concern as "disruptive forces which were at work
in the name of linguistic States" were threatening
"the unity and solidarity of India".
Because of this attitude, whenever there is some
uprising at the periphery, the ruling classes get
worried and consider this as something dangerous to
our sense of nationhood. This time too the dominant
political response to the new regional stirrings in
unlikely to be much different. The bottom line is that
unless these are accommodated in the political system
and sufficient space can be created to conciliate the
local urges, there could be no proper centre-periphery
adjustment. A country of a continental spread like
ours needs to acknowledge the status of periphery in
its endeavor to set up a co-operative federal polity
to strengthen the sense of belonging together.
Posted by: Mr. Konu Venkat At: 17, Sep 2003 5:21:15 AM IST
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