There is little to distinguish sub-nationalist movements from nationalist ones, other than the historical circumstances of their origins and the self-limiting nature of their political aims.
Whether it is in the promotion of an idea of shared history and territory, or in the practice of identity politics based on language, ethnicity, and religion, sub-nationalists mimic nationalists in every sense. But while nationalist movements are glorified for their success in the anti-colonial struggle, sub-nationalists are often derided for their divisive politics, and for latent secessionism.[break]
In India, the reorganization of States on linguistic lines after Independence was a defining moment. Unlike Partition on the basis of religion, the reorganization of States saw no large-scale dislocation of people. No surprise: people speaking a common language, as is only natural, live in geographically contiguous areas.
The agitation for a Telugu-speaking State, independent India’s first sub-nationalist movement, was instrumental in the creation of new states in 1956; language was quick to gain acceptance as the basis for a people to demand the right to a sort of “limited” political self-determination within the confines of the Indian nation-state.
The clamor for new states was never likely to end with 1956. But the most significant reorganization since then had to wait till 2000 when Chhattisgarh (from Madhya Pradesh), Jharkhand (from Bihar), and Uttaranchal, now Uttarakhand (from Uttar Pradesh) became separate states. It was not language, but tribal, forest and hill region identities that fuelled these demands, helped along by the political calculations of the Bharatiya Janata Party, which headed the government at the Center.
Contrary to the belief that dividing big states makes for administrative ease, Uttarakhand took away only a small, north-western part of Uttar Pradesh, which is still the largest state by far. A sense of alienation aided the feeling of social and cultural distinctiveness of the people in these areas. In Jharkhand, rich in minerals, those who pushed for statehood stressed on the lopsided development in Bihar -- the tribal areas contributed the highest share of the State’s revenues but received the least funding.
Telangana’s distinctiveness lies in its political history as a part of the Hyderabad State under the Nizam, but the statehood demand, like in Jharkhand, arose from a perception of lopsided development.
The decision of the Congress to back the case for a Telangana state has predictably given an impetus to statehood demands in other parts of the country. India’s northeast is a mix of peoples belonging to different ethnic groups, and the strongest agitations for new states have come from this region. Gorkhaland and Bodoland are only the most prominent of long-pending demands for separate states.
Many of the states in the northeast are small, both geographically and in terms of population, and their territorial claims overlap, but this does not seem to be a damper on those wanting statehood for their regions. Economic viability is the main argument against smaller states. If smaller states do not have avenues for requisite revenue generation, and cannot meet the costs of administration, then, the argument goes, they are not economically viable. But this line of reasoning can hardly convince those who want a state “of their own” on the basis of their ethnic identity. After all, such arguments of political and economic instability were used against nationalist movements by the colonialists too.
Theoretically, demands for new states are as valid as any nationalist project. Or, to put it another way, any nationalist movement is only as legitimate or valid as a sub-nationalist or regional movement for a separate state. What is really important, then, is that the new states should not result in internal displacement of people.
Modern democratic nation-states are based on the presumption of the right of people to self-determination. But the right to self-determination, whether as a nation-state or as a more limited state within a nation, does not flow from a people’s assertion of their ethnic, religious, linguistic, cultural, or any other social identity.
The political legitimacy of a people’s right to self-determination, in whatever form, comes from universal, inalienable human rights. And, almost by definition, it is acceptable only so long as it does not infringe on the similar right of another people.
(Since the formation of new State of Telangana, and with the statehood movements of Gorkhaland and Bodo in Assam gaining momentum, Indian daily The Hindu revisited federalism issue in its Sunday edition on August 25. As Nepal continues to delve on carving out federal states, we re-produce here some sections of the story.
Size does matter, but so does politics
Did the splitting of three big States in 2000 help their backward former regions that became independent, small States? An analysis of a series of district-level data suggests that while the split did help, politics and policy matter more.
Since the official source of India’s GDP numbers, the Central Statistical Organization, does not compute district-level data, the Delhi-based independent economics research firm Indicus, which estimates district domestic product, shared its numbers with The Hindu. The numbers show that while the districts that would later become Uttarakhand, Jharkhand and Chhattisgarh grew slower than the districts that remained in Uttar Pradesh, Bihar and Madhya Pradesh in the five years preceding the split (1995-2000), the smaller States grew faster than the parent States in the five years immediately after the split (2000-2005). But - and this is where policy and politics come in - there is a significant exception in the most recent five years: Bihar. Between 2005 and 2010, Bihar was the only parent State to buck the trend, growing at nearly double the pace as Jharkhand.
No State has had quite the sort of revolving door to the Chief Minister’s office as Jharkhand in the last five years: two Chief Ministers from 2000 to 2005; and from 2005 to 2010, changing hands six times, with two rounds of President’s Rule thrown in. In contrast, Bihar has had a stable government with good governance and development as its priority since 2005. “The first job was to make the administration functional. Then, Bihar raised substantial internal resources, in addition to sizeable devolution from the Centre,” Shaibal Gupta, founder member-secretary of the Patna-based Asian Development Research Institute, told The Hindu.
A sector-wise break-up of GDP data shows that Bihar lost substantial natural resources in the split from Jharkhand, and its primary sector growth - particularly in mining and quarrying - tanked as a result in the years immediately following the split. While the gap between Bihar and Jharkhand in manufacturing output has narrowed substantially over the last ten years, what really fuelled the parent state’s growth was construction; from 2001 to 2011, Bihar’s construction output has quintupled.
For the other two pairs - Uttar Pradesh and Uttarakhand, and Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh - the story has been one of convergence; the gap between the GDPs of the parent and new States narrowed continuously over ten years since they split.
On human development indicators, the new States have done a slightly better job of improving their numbers over the 2000s than the larger parent States; Jharkhand reduced its Infant Mortality Rate from 70 (per 1,000 live births) in 2000, which was higher than the national average, to 39 in 2011, far lower than the national average, while Bihar went from being substantially better than the national average to just about meeting it. Chhattisgarh and Uttarakhand both started from a better position than their parent States in 2000, and have kept up the gap.
In 2001, Uttarakhand had two districts with primary school dropout rates over 40 per cent, while Uttar Pradesh had three. By 2011, the three Uttar Pradesh districts still had drop-out rates over 40 per cent, while all Uttarakhand districts had graduated from this benchmark. The smaller States all have far better pupil-teacher ratios than the bigger ones. The new smaller States were able to increase spending on health and education as a proportion of their total budgets to a point that all three smaller States spend a larger proportion than the parent States.
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