For four new States

The course of the BJP Government's plan to create three new States is likely to be a difficult and tortuous one; the formation of a fourth one, Delhi, will also pose its share of problems.

SUKUMAR MURALIDHARAN
in New Delhi

FOR close to four decades, the heartland of Indian politics remained virtually unchanged in its boundaries. Changes were effected at the periphery - the successive divisions of the State of Punjab had particularly fateful consequences for national politics, although the redrawing of the map of the northeastern region did not have implications of quite the same order.

Over the years, representative politics created its own tensions. However, for a while, these were contained within State boundaries, only sporadically creating ripples at the Centre. On balance, the calculus of reorganising State boundaries remained skewed in favour of the status quo - there was the fear that one concession to statehood aspirations would set off a clamour of demands from all corners of the country. Then there was the further realisation that no region of a State could be severed from its long-established association without incalculable costs for both segments.

Where other parties hesitate, the Bharatiya Janata Party plunges on regardless of complications. Its election manifesto had promised four new States by carving up segments of Maharashtra, Uttar Pradesh, Bihar and Madhya Pradesh. And in undertaking to confer the status of a full-fledged State of the Union on Delhi, the BJP was sticking to a long-held position. Post-election, pressure from the Shiv Sena compelled the BJP to retract on the creation of Vidarbha as a separate State. But at the end of June, the Cabinet, on the basis of recommendations from the Home Ministry, approved the formation of three new States - Uttaranchal, Vananchal and Chhatisgarh - which will be carved out of Uttar Pradesh, Bihar and Madhya Pradesh respectively. A decision was also made concurrently to confer the status of a State of the Union on Delhi.

The BJP-led Government has undoubtedly set a precedent in terms of the facility with which it has delivered an election promise. But as the Budget session of Parliament approaches its end, the required legislation remains a distant prospect. The process has evidently just begun. And by all indications, the course is going to be difficult, tortuous and prone to violent contestation at every stage.

A TELLING feature of the new plans on boundary reorganisation is that all the regions designated as new States represent pockets of pre-eminence for the BJP. In the last Lok Sabha elections, the BJP won 11 of the 14 seats in the Jharkhand region of Bihar, which has been designated as the future Vananchal State. Similarly, the BJP won seven of the 11 seats in the Chhatisgarh region of Madhya Pradesh, all the seats in the Uttarakhand region of Uttar Pradesh, and six of the seven seats in Delhi.

Rewarding electoral loyalty is obviously a strong motive behind the BJP-led Government's latest move. But the issue goes beyond partisanship and bears strong links to underlying socio-economic realities. The initial political responses across the spectrum have been hesitant and guarded, when not positive. Alone among the major political parties, the Congress(I) has unequivocally welcomed the decision, although the party's official spokesperson did come up with a few caustic asides on the BJP's motives. If other parties have largely chosen to reserve their comments, it is partly because the process of reorganising State boundaries is a long haul.

First, it has to be referred to the President for his assent. The draft bill would then have to be sent to the States concerned for approval by their Legislative Assemblies. As of now, the Group of Ministers (GoM) that has been put in charge of initiating the process is occupied with the preliminaries. It would have to demarcate the geographical boundaries of the State of Uttaranchal and then consider the economic implications of carving up the States of Bihar and Madhya Pradesh.

Where Delhi is concerned, the GoM would have to consider the apparatus that will be necessary in the administration of two distinct jurisdictions - in one of which (to be called the National Capital Territory), the Central Government would have exclusive powers. The task is a complicated one since law and order would be a divided responsibility within the territory of Delhi and this would raise the prospect of two different police forces functioning within a narrow domain. Delhi would also be devoid of the political influence that comes from being a Centrally administered territory. For instance, inter-State transfers of water and power, which are vital for sustaining civic amenities in the city-State, could no longer be taken for granted. Sharing the water resources of the Yamuna would, illustratively, call for a new agreement between the riparian States of Haryana, Uttar Pradesh and Delhi. As the national capital, Delhi has, over the years, been drawing far more than its share of power from the northern grid. In a situation of parity with neighbouring State governments, it is unclear whether Delhi will enjoy the same privileges in the future.

VANANCHAL and Chhatisgarh represent problems of a similar order for the States that they will be carved out of. Both are mineral-rich regions which have, over the years, attracted vast industrial agglomerations. The Jharkhand region of Bihar accounts for 70 per cent of the revenues earned by the State Government, while Chhatisgarh provides 45 per cent of that earned by Madhya Pradesh. Severing these associations will involve a traumatic loss of revenue for two of India's most impoverished States. Samata Party leader Nitish Kumar's plaint that Bihar should be compensated to the order of Rs.50,000 crores for the loss of its richest region is only one example of the enormous complications involved in the creation of the new State.

Jharkhand has been redesignated as Vananchal in the BJP's scheme for the very specific purpose of stifling the deep resonances the former term has with a broad-based movement of tribal self-assertion. Aside from the 18 districts of Bihar which have been identified as the future Vananchal, the Jharkhand movement took into its embrace four districts of Madhya Pradesh, three of Orissa and two of West Bengal. This larger concept of Jharkhand has been dismissed by the BJP's principal spokesperson for the cause, Babulal Marandi, Union Minister of State for Environment and Forests, as "politically unfeasible".

The movement for the State of Jharkhand is by far the most enduring of the political aspirations that have now been conceded by the Central Government. Ironically, at the moment of its fruition, the organisation that spearheaded the movement, the Jharkhand Mukti Morcha, is perhaps at its lowest ebb. Fragmentation and intense factional rivalries have played havoc with the JMM, which finally plumbed the depths of public disrepute with the money-for-votes scandal of 1993.

Laloo Prasad Yadav, who was the Chief Minister of Bihar when the Jharkhand movement entered its most assertive phase, was implacably opposed to the idea for long. After being persuaded to climb down by a campaign of economic blockade, he conceded a measure of local autonomy through the Jharkhand Autonomous Areas Council (JAAC) in 1994. Concurrently, he was working away at the many schisms within the Jharkhand movement, winning one faction over to his side, while the other made common cause with the Congress. All this culminated in the complete erosion of the JMM's political capital and the ascendancy of the BJP in the region.

The contiguous region of Chhatisgarh comprises 13 districts, of which two - Sarguja and Raigarh - have traditionally been part of the Jharkhand concept. It has been long believed that it fulfilled all the conditions laid down for constitution as a distinct State - geographical contiguity, economic viability, cultural and linguistic homogeneity and administrative capacity. Yet, recalls Purushottam Kaushik, former Union Minister and convener of a forum that has long been campaigning for a Chhatisgarh State, the States Reorganisation Commission (SRC) in 1956 refused to recognise these demands. This was a transparent concession to local Congress bosses, typified by Ravi Shankar Shukla, who had ambitions of parlaying their local clout in Chhatisgarh into political domination of a larger unit.

The SRC also felt that being part of a larger economic unit would provide a greater depth to the developmental potentialities of Chhatisgarh. Ironically, says Kaushik, this has only meant that the doors have been opened for the untrammelled exploitation of the region's riches, with little by way of reciprocal benefits.

AJIT KUMAR / AP
A demonstration near Parliament House on July 9 by tribal people from the Jharkhand region in Bihar. They were seeking Congress(I) president Sonia Gandhi's help in their fight for a separate State.

Today, the tribal population of Chhatisgarh is far outnumbered by new immigrants. Yet popular enthusiasm for a new State is shared across all sections. The vicissitudes of the movement over the years does give rise to some misgivings. There are expectations that the road ahead will be arduous, with the political leadership in Madhya Pradesh sparing no effort to delay the process. A residual element of optimism stems from the fact that the demarcation of the region is unlikely to be disputed. If anything, there would only be a case for including contiguous cultural regions from Orissa within the new State.

UTTARANCHAL is perhaps the most favoured of the States proposed in the BJP's scheme. Although aspirations towards statehood have existed for some time, they have remained largely dormant. The movement, which is no more than four years old, was provoked by a purely contingent event. As Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh, Mulayam Singh Yadav had, in 1994, decreed that all the educational institutions in the State should set aside a quota of seats for the backward classes. This engendered considerable resentment in the hill districts of the State, where the population of backward classes is sparse and dispersed.

The social and demographic particularities of the hill districts had never been serious issues earlier, although poverty and underdevelopment were. Mulayam Singh Yadav's maladroit moves on reservations brought these to the surface and imparted a new momentum to the demand for a separate State. The BJP, which had sunk deep roots in the hill districts in the turbulent aftermath of the agitation against the Mandal Commission report, was quick to bring the demand for Uttarakhand onto its election platform.

The BJP's nomenclatural preference for Uttaranchal has been read as partly betraying an ideological agenda. But its more immediate problems are likely to be of a pragmatic sort. Although the Rama Shankar Kaushik Commission report adopted by the Uttar Pradesh Assembly in June 1994 had specified the territorial boundaries of the new State, the imminence of its creation has given rise to some misgivings. Particularly upset are some of the agriculturist families that have settled in the Terai foothills of the Kumaon region, a large number of whom are Sikh immigrants from Punjab.

The Shiromani Akali Dal, a partner in the ruling coalition at the Centre, has already taken up this cause. Union Minister for Food Surjit Singh Barnala recently met Prime Minister A.B. Vajpayee to present the demand that Udham Singh Nagar district in the Terai foothills should be retained within the State of Uttar Pradesh (see box). Although the Central Government's decision to submit the question of Uttaranchal's borders to a fresh evaluation was motivated by the demand that Hardwar district should be included within it, there is now a strong possibility of fresh complexities arising. If the movement in Udham Singh Nagar district gathers momentum, it could scupper the plans for the creation of new States across a broad front.

The BJP's allies in Tamil Nadu, meanwhile, opened a new front by pressing Pondicherry's case for statehood. This is a cause that has remained on hold for long owing to bureaucratic reservations about the viability of Pondicherry as a State and also the potential complications arising from fragments of its territory (Yanam and Mahe) situated within the States of Andhra Pradesh and Kerala, which were administered from Pondicherry, the Union Territory's main enclave embedded in Tamil Nadu. Yet there was little time for deliberation on these complexities when the BJP's truculent ally, All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam general secretary Jayalalitha, raised the demand for statehood. It was conceded virtually on the spur of the moment by Parliamentary Affairs Minister Madan Lal Khurana, under pressure from Tamil Nadu members in the Lok Sabha. He claimed to have the approval of Home Minister L.K. Advani, though evidently the Union Cabinet had not quite managed to apply its collective mind to the issue.

With reports from V. Venkatesan in Raipur and Delhi, Venkitesh Ramakrishnan in Bareilly and Kalyan Chaudhuri in Ranchi.

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