'AAPki Dilli'

Much has been said and written about how the fate of the Aam Aadmi Party changed on February 10, 2015. This electoral victory did not only change India’s political narrative but gave an impetus to an alternative style of politics.  From a bunch of anti-corruption crusaders to a political behemoth that catapulted the national stage through its 49-day political coup in Delhi, to the party that was decimated in the national elections of 2014, to the resounding victory enamoured by a clean sweep in the Delhi elections of 2015. The Aam Aadmi Party has come a long way.

Many suggest that the resounding victory for the AAP is simply inexplicable. There is no doubt that the numbers stacked by the AAP were unexpected; a safe majority had been predicted by pollsters, but a clean sweep was far beyond anyone’s expectation. The reasons for this inexplicable and thunderous victory are by far varied. Except for the Sikkim Democratic Front, no party has ever won more than 95 per cent of the seats. Nor has a party been reduced to losing more than 90 per cent deposits in a state where it used to rule just two years ago. If the AAP has resurrected itself spectacularly and the Congress has finally auto-destructed (not Rahul Gandhi’s fault of course), the BJP has been lucky in getting a stern warning early on in the national electoral cycle.  Amid all the nuances of psephology and the complications of sociology, the Aam Aadmi Party’s spectacular victory signifies ‘hope’. Hope that had deserted the Indian voter in the past decade. Indian voters are looking for agents of change rather than stasis, hope instead of easy cynicism, aspiration instead of fear, optimism instead of defeatism, and the future instead of the past.

But has the AAP defied the mighty rhetoric of the Indian politics that casts ideology in binary opposites of caste, gender, economy, religion and class? The Aam Aadmi Party has accepted that it follows a solution-centric and ideology-free approach that is neither left nor right and has openly renounced traditional frameworks of “secularism” and “social justice” through caste based politics.  Has politics now become less about ideologies, programmes, buyouts and freebies and more about psychological compatibility with the electorate?  

The AAP has defined new grammar in the language of Indian politics- the grammar of democratic experimentalism. In Arvind Kejriwal, it has a leader who, even in disagreement, exudes a sincerity that is impossible to match. He did what no politician has done in India. When he made a mistake, he simply said sorry. Psychological compatibility requires the projection of qualities that are not simple to project: sincerity, credibility, perhaps even a sense of adventure.  The AAP was highly successful in this exercise of image building that contributed to the personality cult of Arvind Kejriwal. Which is why politics is always more contingent. Voters are willing to give a chance to those who, at a given moment, best represent this new disposition.

Has Arvind Kejriwal altered the paradigm of Indian politics?  The Aam Aadmi Party has played with a politically straight bat avoiding theatrics and delving deep into the romanticism of ‘bijli paani’. It has sharpened the battle against plutocracy, a major poison in Indian democracy. In terms of long-term structural changes, there are two tantalising possibilities that it brings with it. The first is the creation of a new institutional culture. This includes not just the performative dimensions of the relationship between politics and the people, but also far-reaching institutional changes by means of which authority and accountability could be relocated in ways that are more functional.

 Secondly, in the political gaaliyans of Delhi, it had become fashionable to portray the Aam Aadmi Party as unleashing another populist class war, fiscally imprudent and insensitive to growth. This was a gross exaggeration unleashed by those who were engaging in class warfare and they were proved wrong by the electrifying mandate given to AAP. But the central challenge facing India and more so Delhi, is how to create cultures of negotiation around important issues which does not oscillate between cronyism and populism. In our country, the rich have evaded accountability by raising the spectre of class warfare, and the poor have been cheated by populism. There has to be a liberal critique of oligarchy at the top, and a social democratic critique of populism at the bottom. Let us hope the AAP is the harbinger of this change.

What the AAP is experimenting with is not a grand theory of overthrow or revolution but one of enlarging the public space within the existing structures. It is not premised on upheavals of one sort or another, but on an incremental claiming of rights that have, in practice, been denied to the common people, the aam aadmis. The question that hounds us is; will this experiment evaporate into thin air? There is no guarantee that it will survive the expected onslaught of vested interests. But there is no guarantee that it will succumb to threats or temptations held out by vested interests either. Kejriwal has always laid stress on the sincerity of intentions and shown no sign of wavering from them. But if it is important to keep one’s scepticism alive, especially when it comes to leaders, it is equally important to grant them honesty and commitment to a cause until such time as they contravene it. It is the simple principle of “innocent until proven guilty”.

The Delhi election is an apt reminder that in a democracy people’s support is always conditional and subject to continuous assessment. The AAP became an embodiment of this idea and received overwhelming support. So long as this need remains unaddressed, similar political experiments will continue to surface and people will continue to script similar success stories that may baffle the more established political parties

Exploring the alternatives

Coloured by corruption, nepotism, red tapism and blatant misuse of power, ‘politics’ has become a shady pedestrian expression off late. But are there any alternatives to this hackneyed term? Political commentator and psephologist Yogendra Yadav has an interesting prelude to offer in this context. According to him, alternatives with respect to policy can be classified into three broad categories namely: 

·        Alternatives to politics

·        Political Alternatives

·        Alternate politics

Simply put, politics is the twilight terrain where hope and despair live in an uneasy truce. Politics is the only transformation that can bring alignment in ideological bandwidth of millions of lives associated with it. Alternatives to politics will mean alternative to democracy. Democracies all over the world have been dismantled through vocabulary of this kind. But let not the contempt for alternates to politics camouflage the sorry state that Indian politics is plagued with. Politics in our country has been reduced to contesting elections, casting votes and agitation. The need of the hour is to explore alternatives in politics.

 Political alternatives on the other hand signify oscillations within the political establishment. This practice is religiously complied by prostitutes who masquerade as leaders with questionable ideological chastity who seem to be in bed with every other political establishment that pampers them with money and power positions.

However, it is alternative politics that offers genuine differentiation. Alternative politics is more than just denial of corruption, lal battis and scams and scandals. It is reimagining politics in the wider sense of the word. For a long lasting engagement between people and power, the very idea of politics has to be revisited. Politics has to become the amalgamation of aesthetic culture, language, beauty, lifestyle and art. For long it has been perceived as a monologue, but the time is ripe to change it into a forum for ‘public’ discourse. But how can this transformation come about without reorganising political establishments?

The first step in restructuring political parties will have to come through gigantic changes in their ideologies and source of income. Now, let us reason why there is an urgent need to envision a new organisational culture with respect to these two principles. The root cause of nepotism and crony capitalism is the funding of these organisations. Even with ample checks by the election commission in place, candidates spend a fortune in election campaigns with the hope of recovering the money once they are in positions of power. So instead of being accountable to the electorate who voted for them, they owe allegiance to the corporate biggies who sponsored them. The only pragmatic solution to this is that citizens should start funding these political parties in a bid to ensure accountability in the public domain.

Coming to the issue of ideological moderation, political parties have recently claimed ownership of national leaders including Nehru, Gandhi and Patel. These national leaders have become a metaphor for a scathing political war between our two leading parties. But what these political parties fail to understand is that these leaders are a national treasure and cannot be appropriated upon by any political entity. To commemorate the 125^th birth anniversary of India’s first Prime Minister Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru, what ensued was a searing war of words between the BJP and the Congress. While both political behemoths seem to be on a leader shopping spree, it is worth asking that should national leaders be the context of attacking political opponents? It is also interesting to note that the Congress party who claims to own Nehru does not adhere to his own ideologies. Known for his eclectic charm, snaring wit and his subtle sense of humor, Nehru could largely be held responsible for many policy failures that India is crippled with. But he was one of the few leaders who had the audacity to mock himself and laugh over it. There is one particular incident that sheds light on this aspect of his personality and that it is one of the yardsticks by which alternative politics can be judged.

In November 1937, in Calcutta based highly respected magazine Modern Review, appeared an anonymous article on Nehru arguing that men like him are ‘dangerous’ and ‘potential dictators’. “He had gone like some triumphant Caesar, leaving a trail of glory and legend behind him... He calls himself a democrat and a socialist but a little twist and he might turn into a dictator...His conceit is already formidable and it must be checked. We want no Caesars”, said the article. It soon became known that the author of this denunciatory article was none other than Jawaharlal Nehru.  These unnecessary risks and the ability to look over himself made him the apple of people’s eyes and earned him critical appreciation worldwide. India today needs leaders of his stature whose ideologies will be aligned with the idea of India and who will have the temerity to look beyond their stature and bring about a revolution on how politics is perceived today.

But the counter argument to this can be that, is it necessary for a political organisation to subscribe to the 20^th century ideologies like Marxism or communism or socialism? Like our mannerisms, shouldn’t ideologies evolve with time? Why do we need to adhere to one of them or seek refuge in the policies of our national leaders? It is time to think afresh, it is time to break free from the shackles of obsolete ideologies, it is time to unlearn and it is time to explore the new world of alternative politics.

The Reluctant Fundamentalist

2014 has been the most anticipated elections this country has ever seen not only in terms of the growing electorate but also because alternative political narratives are promoting an alternative discourse. Narendra Modi’s anointment as BJP’s Prime Ministerial nominee catapults to the national scene the Hindutva poster boy who is seen by his critics as a “polarising” and “divisive” figure after the 2002 Gujarat riots. With ideological moderation and political pragmatism, his campaign rhetoric has defied ideological templates. Isn’t it the tyranny of discourse that once an RSS pracharak has become the face of secular India? His deliberate attempts to underplay the Sangh Parivar’s well-known repertoire of Hindutva has amassed high commendations from the middle class voters and propelled them to vote for this change.

Known for playing the communal card under the secular cloak, Narendra Modi in a bid to increase his pan Indian appeal, surprisingly refrained from crediting “saffron nationalism” or “Hindutva” in his speeches as BJP’s prime ministerial candidate. Hindutva presents BJP’s concept of nationhood. The BJP is a highly ideologised political entity with the RSS ( Rashtriya Samaj Sevak Dal)  as its ideological mentor. Having said that, it is rather surprising that the BJP’s 2014 election manifesto has only a page dedicated to volatile issues coloured by identity politics such as Ram janmbhoomi and Ram Sethu. These issues represent the papering of serious contradictions, given the fact that the BJP traces its origin to the volatile Sangh Parivar. On Ayodhya the BJP takes care to mention that it would explore possibilities of facilitating the construction of the Ram temple within the framework of the Constitution. Ram Sethu and the Sethusamudram project are now issues of cultural heritage and not of religious faith. While the Ganga is described as a symbol of faith in India, the project for the purification of its waters is also justified by pointing to its importance for agriculture, fodder production and drinking water supply. The protection of the cow, another core Hindutva agenda item, is now seen in the context of the contribution of cattle to agriculture, and socio-economic and cultural life. There is no mention of secularism, but the manifesto commits the BJP to the preservation of the “rich culture and heritage” of India’s minority communities. The manifesto thus is an attempt to appeal not only to the core Hindutva supporters but also to the larger populace.

The BJP’s projection of utopia has largely been successful primarily due to the ‘Anything but congress momentum’. Our national political stage has become a compelling soap opera, but let us not confuse the contempt for the Congress as approval for the BJP.  Despite initial fears of polarisation on communal lines this election campaign has so far been secular with developmental issues trumping mandir-mazjid issues. This election is more about personalities rather than issues. With the saffron brigade all set to assume power in Delhi, we might need to introspect that aren’t the Hindu communalists are masquerading as nationalists? But Narendra Modi has an interesting prelude to offer in this metamorphosis from a Hindutva revivalist to a reluctant fundamentalist. In UP and Bihar he questioned the Hajj quota lying vacant while drawing parallelism from Gujarat where Hajj quota is generally oversubscribed.  This reference was largely unexpected from a Hindu nationalist. But the man himself seems to be in a state of dilemma on whether to adopt the imbibed principles of Hindutva for the national narrative or fight the election on the basis of governance.

A civilisation is greater than the sum of its individual values and an election is bigger, more poignant than the sum of its candidates. But the larger than life portrayal of Modi seems to defy this mighty rhetoric. The cult of the Gujarat CM is being assiduously cultivated, maybe at the cost of BJP. This election is being projected as a fight between Modi and political parties that oppose him. The BJP is almost an afterthought. Given the changing focus of the BJP to governance, their marriage of convenience from the Sangh Parivar seems to be on a downfall. As the BJP declines as a party, as the older generation of visionaries disappears, a party in crisis produces a caricature of itself called Narendra Modi. BJP is suffering from political poverty cannot produce more than a mediocre leadership. Mr. Modi seems a solution of an RSS desperate for power rather than a BJP rethinking the possibilities of politics. Nagpur has fettered India for decades to come.

No doubt that Namo is distancing himself from the conventional politics of the Bhartiya Janta Party and bringing in his own version of Hindutva 2.0, a particular variant of neoliberalism that dovetails religious nationalism with economic progress. But Mr. Modi’s Neanderthal model of development in the age of sustainable and human development shows that Mr. Modi is an anachronism, dusted up and presented as technocratic model of development. It will not take long to prove that the Gujarat model of development and the Gujarat model of violence are part of one picture.

And as the BJP says that India is at the cusp of “democracy, demography and demand” and we need to do justice to our nation by attuning all three. This is a time when we cannot afford to let subjectivity camouflage objectivity. This is the time where we have to choose between the past and the future, between an old idea of India and a new one.

Decoding AAP

An anarchist by admission, an aam aadmi by rendition and a strategist in transition.  Yes, Arvind Kejriwal is the man behind these words. Every now and then, this muffler clad man has had the audacity of challenging the system. He is gifted with an uncanny ability of gauging public perception and sifting right through it. From an anti- establishment crusader to a now emerging political behemoth, the Aam Aadmi Party has come a long way. But Kejriwal who has risen like a righteously indignant messiah railing against corruption, corporate nepotism, criminalisation of politics and politicisation of crime is in danger of losing moral high ground.

His populist act of renunciation of the Chief Minister’s chair has plagued the entire nation with scepticism and apprehension not only regarding the future of the Assembly of Delhi but also the way AAP has portrayed itself as the herald of change. India is in a democratic and political metamorphosis and AAP has rightly tapped into this democracy deficit, promising to bring governance closer to the people. But is its abdication of power a tactical masterstroke? It is politics unlimited this electoral season and it remains to be seen whether this gamble will backfire upon AAP or will they reap rich dividends.

Thwarted from introducing the Delhi Jan Lokpal Bill, Arvind Kejriwal resigned on February 14 disregarding people’s mandate and extenuating the goodwill bestowed by the electorate. This act bore testimony to the fact that the ideology of AAP is populist and not pro people. In his defence Kejriwal reinstated that “When we tried to pass the Delhi Jan Lokpal, the Congress and the BJP ganged up to stall it. People from the Congress and the BJP know if this law is brought in, their leaders will end up in jail.” Had Mr. Kejriwal shown restrain in wending out his political weapon, he would have noticed that according to Section 22(3) of the Government of India NDTC Act 1991, “Any bill which involves expenditure from the consolidated fund of the capital cannot be passed by the Legislative Assembly unless it has been approved by the Lieutenant Governor.”In the light of this the Lieutenant Governor of Delhi even consulted the Solicitor General of India, who confirmed that the bill could not go to the assembly without the former’s permission.

This narrative raises severe questions on AAP’s morality and it’s holier than thou attitude. Couldn’t the AAP have pursued the bill lawfully in the Delhi assembly? Or was the resignation always a part of their game plan to garner political capital? The AAP has often conveyed a disregard for rules, suggesting that they are empty protocols that exist to serve a corrupt system. All too often, it has ended up showing a dangerous contempt for the rule of law itself, treating warrants as mere niceties, trying to arm organised crowds with sweeping powers over local government bodies. This time, the Jan Lokpal has simply hit a wall — the law of the land.

 “We end up being exactly who we said we’d never be!” This analogy suits AAP reasonably well.  During its short 49 day stint, the Delhi government did exactly what it has accused others of: favouring its benefactors. The AAP’s 50% subsidy to electricity bill defaulters during their bijli-paani movement could be read as a signal to the electorate that you are either with us, or against us. The AAP’s subsidy goes against the grain of constitutionally mandated principles of equality that the government sanctions relief to its “supporters” alone. The Supreme Court has consistently maintained that there should be an “intelligible differentia” that justifies the state’s favourable treatment of one group over another. Allegiance to the ruling party’s agenda surely fails this test.

On corruption, it failed to move towards instituting transparent processes or reducing practices of discretion, preferring showy sting operations instead. Most troublingly, its law minister’s moral policing, and the AAP’s insistent and self-righteous defence of it, showed up the party’s disregard of due process and its tendency to go with an illiberal majority consensus rather than defend human rights. Instead of tilting the state towards becoming more accountable and non-arbitrary in various areas, the AAP simply claimed that it knew best. And anyone who critiqued its decisions and actions was placed on a steadily lengthening list of the Corrupt.

I’m no big fan of the BJP or the Congress. But the method, timing and motivation behind Kejriwal’s resignation raise suspicion. If this abdication of power was not on the docket, then why did the AAP not seek a vote from the electorate like it did when it assumed power? Also, it can be well argued that now since Delhi is no longer their concern, it will give them ample amount of time to prepare for the 2014 Lok Sabha elections. Given the time and the resources they had, maybe this is the best Kejriwal could have done. It was a well planned, shrewd, morally arguable and politically right decision.

 It is ironic that even after becoming a nationalised political party, the AAP still chooses to be anti-system with the ideology of undermining the system. But instead of taking to the street, the Aam aadmi Party should head for a recourse for it is democracy not mobocracy. The romance of campaigning is being courteously swapped away by reality of governance. AAP is being populist and not pro people and it cannot afford to conflate the two this electoral season. How to combine an anti-system impulse with governance will remain the AAP’s fundamental political dilemma.

Culture of Silence

2012-2013 has been the most evocative year for sexual prejudice. Be it the Nirbhaya conundrum or the insanity that drove the criminalisation of India’s “minuscule” LGBT population according to the amended Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code. The growing dogmatism and apathy towards India’s minorities is not a sign of a healthy democracy. What kind of India are we heading towards? Our founding fathers envisaged India as a country where equality would flourish across the confines of religion, caste, sex and sexuality. After all democracy is all about minorities, sexual minorities included.

Sometimes it takes a tragedy to become the bedrock of a social revolution. It was Nirbhaya’s tragic tale and her nasty tryst with destiny that shook the conscience of the entire nation. Since then, there has been a paradigm shift in perception. The number of reported rape cases has doubled in the capital while there has been a fivefold increase in the reported molestation cases. Not that there has been a sudden upsurge in crime against women, but the culture of silence has broken.

 The stranglehold of sexual harassment is following women everywhere from newsrooms to courts, from public transport to our own houses!  Earlier, I believed that only education could curb the atrocities on women and that only education could bring about a mindset transformation in predators. But the recent turn of events with regard to Justice Ganguly and Tarun Tejpal have beguiled me. These powerful predators have faced heat of the law with public wrath. Both of them were educated elitists, active contributors in our society and a part of our academesia but yet they outraged the modesty of women. How much so ever progress we may have made on the education frontier, our mindset in still engulfed in the patriarchal regime. It is the entitlement of masculinity that turns men into beasts or more so, not being able to take no for an answer. Alas! We have become a deeply sexist society.  Banning the use of word” sex” or censoring intimate scenes from TV will not prevent sexual aggression. Mindset transformation might!

But the question arises how complacent we are with the romanticization of sexual violence and how obsequious we are with the beasts in our midst?  Though it may sound like a platitude of political oratory, ours is a Madonna whore society where a man will sleep with a sexually beautiful woman for lust for but he will never consider her as marriage material nor will respect her as a "wife".

There has been deep routed acceptance to building a society that is deeply insensitive. We do not hesitate to hurl abuses which are gender biased, neither do we falter in calling a guy names with feminine attributes. We do not stammer to gibe at a guy who walks effeminately nor do we dither to look down at the gay community. For those of us who wish to break this barrier of silence and show solidarity, we are muted by the fear of being reprimanded by peers and community

 According to the recent Supreme Court judgement, homosexuality between consenting adults is a violation of law. As a devil’s advocate, I perceive it as a violation of the fundamental right to live, right to liberty and right to privacy. It is an individual’s prerogative of whom to love and with whom to make love with.  The state has no business in our bedrooms. But for those of us who vouch for this draconian law, advocate that sex between individuals of same gender is unnatural because it does not generate new life. But we need to contemplate that sex is not only for procreation but also for recreation. Already the third gender is vulnerable to bullies, lives a life of desperation and badgering and to add more to their woes, they have been criminalized by law! One shouldn’t forget that before the onset of this Victorian morality, India was a pluralist democracy. While the world has been celebrating gay marriages, India still remains handcuffed in antiquated ethics and archaic laws. The least we can do as liberal Indians is to show more compassion to them as a society, as a nation. We need to take cognizance of the fact that alternate sexuality is not an aberration, neither it is an insidious quantum of an individual’s character, it is just a way of life! This law does not pertain to constitutionality anymore. It is now a battle between a retrograde law and resilient love. 

This law not only shows India in poor light but also highlights our hypocrisy in our responses to sex. We fail to bring marital rape under the ambit of law but we have the audacity to question love between two consenting adults. Isn’t this an exemplary example of our hypocrisy and insensitivity?

In a country where every move on part of a woman is measured by a social barometer, we still remain entangled in the prudish era of righteousness. We have to build an inclusive society so that the LGBT (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexuals and Transgender) community and women can live a life of dignity and self respect. A culture of silence still prevails! We have to end the conspiracy of silence. Otherwise there will be repercussions. We all have to find a way to speak and it can be the best tribute to the unheard victims, to the oppressed! Let us all contribute to create our “shining” India.

Between the fault lines: Riots and Wrongs

47 dead and 40,000 people have been displaced in Muzzafarnagar violence.  This strife ridden area questions our visceral conjectures on secularity and diversity. The government’s inability to anticipate communal violence, the deadly combination of criminality, communalism and administrative incompetence of the Samajwadi Party, sordid propaganda of the VHP, the irresponsible rabble rousing of the MLAs across political divide, the ineptitude of the ruling Congress and the fact the principal opposition party’s Prime Ministerial candidate cannot speak with much moral authority on the subject. All these factors have equally contributed in inciting this communal conflagration. But where does the buck stop for such kind of carnage?

In the backdrop of incinerate statements and insidious intentions over 450 incidents of communal violence have been reported this year. If scrutinized carefully, one can find a very tantalizing context to such occurrences.  For one, there is no doubt that the phase of identity politics is resurfacing. There is extensive polarization on the basis of religion and caste. The Hindu-Muslim equation still determines the political equilibrium of this “progressive” India. In case of Muzzafarnagar, the Jat-Muslim combination proved fatal for the Samajwadi Party. Their gamble of polarization has backfired upon them. But the sociological trend that is worrisome is, the violence is increasingly rural. In the face of new economic mobility, development and youth empowerment this moral opportunitism is most likely to be considered an all party crime by the people of India.

1984 anti-Sikh riots, 1993 Mumbai riots and then the devastating 2002 Gujarat riots successfully polarised the masses on both sides of the religious divide. This resulted in creation of fault lines who’s gargantuan tremors can be felt even today. The very same seems to have happened in Muzzafarnagar. The camaraderie which prevailed between Jats and the Muslims before the onset of this strife lies in tatters now. Do the Muzzafarnagar riots mark the return of 90s era where development politics was a chimera which was masquerading identity politics?

Does Muzzafarnagar challenge our assumption or are we being too simplistic about the relationship between growing income and diminishing communal violence? Fundamentally, Muzzafarnagar riots depart from our existing understanding of Political theory. It is widely observed that economic differences tend to aggravate fault lines. So, a certain degree of economic and civic engagements will promote amity and break down the pre existing fault lines. Also, when government largely depends on the votes of minority communities, frequency of communal violence becomes low. We came to believe that contingent political alliances between communities are harbingers of secularism. But it is indeed intriguing that democratic, secular and sovereign country like India defies even this political theory.

There is a very complex (‘complex’ is underrated here) relationship between diversity and tolerance. India is one of the few ethnically, culturally and linguistically diverse countries. While we as Indians take mammoth pride to in its medley of cultures, it is a harsh reality that we lack the tolerance to face the consequences of being a multicultural secular nation.  Diversity if not elaborated in context of freedom can be a fetter producing a suffocating discourse of identity.

We live in an India where a rumour legitimises a discourse of revenge, the same old propaganda of Muslim guys out to ensnare Hindu girls or vice versa is given free reign by the politicians, the standard blame mongering over which community started it, the morally sick metrics over which community got more sympathy and then the creation of thousands of refugees.  This is an India where Electoral secularism + politics have proven to be a vicious cocktail for its citizens. A cocktail with a deathly hangover!

In the name of secularism we have been doing the appeasement of Hindu communalism and Muslim communalism. But time and again, we fail to understand that no minority community wants to be a bonded labourer of secularism. We need to move from a discourse of diversity to a discourse of freedom and human rights. The underlying structure of potential conflict remains sensitive to the slightest political perturbation.

But are we raising fake alarmist conclusions about this politics of polarisation? Or has the era of identity politics returned to haunt India? These questions have to be discussed and deliberated in the public domain. Surely, other political parties do not realize the counter narrative of fanning these riots, but it will be long before Akhilesh Yadav gets to wipe off this blot of disgrace from his political career.

UNITED STATES OF INDIA

India was created by a consolidating hundreds of princely states. And yet again there is a pushover for creation of newer states. The 29^th state of India was born on August 1, 2013 by bifurcating the state of Andhra Pradesh into Telangana and Seemandhra. This division was a result of decades of agitation by the people of Telangana demanding a separate state.

But was this division inevitable? Or is it a consequence of electoral compulsion? Lets us take a closer look at it. Bifurcation leads to smaller states and smaller states ideally imply strong governance due to administrative ease. Also smaller states are found to be more progressive, have higher literacy rates and higher growth rates. States like Kerala, Haryana, and Himachal Pradesh are good examples. But on the other hand states like Jharkhand (carved out of Bihar) haven’t done well on the same parameters. Pro- division people argue that a country as large and diverse as India needs smaller units for governance. Creation of new states is not simply the acknowledgement of the cultural aspirations of the region but also an amalgamation of social and political factors.

The downside of creation of newer states is that instead of making borders irrelevant it is making them more and relevant. Often, the creation of political and administrative boundaries, become social and economic barriers. Issues like resource redistribution, sharing of water bodies, sharing of revenue system between the newly divided states sours the celebratory atmosphere and often becomes a bone of contention.   

Recently India witnessed agitations involving the creation of Telangana and demanding the creation of newer states of Bodoland (by dividing Assam), Gorkhaland (by dividing West Bengal) and Haritpradesh (by dividing Uttar Pradesh).  But the question arises that why the clamour for creation of new states is so sudden?

Apart from providing administrative ease, smaller states result in decentralization of power. After the division, the new government has to concentrate on smaller area with lesser population. It makes the government more effective and responsible. This decentralisation of power is purely based on the Panchayati- Raj system which is the basis of governance in India. Also, division results in regional similarities like sharing a common cultural history or a common language or belonging to the same caste or religion. These factors enhance the probability of living harmoniously in that region.

The state reorganisation committee listed linguistic barriers as the foremost basis for considering division of a state. This is why the state of Haryana was carved out of Punjab in 1996 owing to cultural and linguistic differences. But social, political and economic factors also hugely determined the creation of new states. Owing to trust deficit in the government of Uttar Pradesh and cultural differences between the hill tribes and backward castes, Uttaranchal was born in 2000. Similarly, Economic disparities, caste distinctiveness and uneven distribution of natural resources led to the creation of Chhattisgarh from Madhya Pradesh.

But in the case of Telangana, none of the above mentioned criterion holds true. It is purely the Telugu chauvinism at its peak. The creation of Telangana is also seen through electoral prism and the political fraternity remains sceptical about it. Many alarmist propagators conclude that this disintegration might lead to the reversal of history and bring to light the divide and rule policy of the British. UPA-II is also accused of putting the unity of the country in jeopardy by a so-thought reckless decision.

But the question arises, are the newer state agitations strengthening federalism? This is because the turbulence concerning the bifurcation may not necessarily be separatist. Whimsical parallelisms are often drawn about the states being like two couples asking about two private rooms.

But is our democratic structure strong enough to withstand this disintegration in the unity of our country? Or are we heading towards United States of America? These questions remain unanswered will stand the test of time. No doubt the creation of Telangana has opened up a Pandora’s Box. It may seem small and innocuous at the beginning but the aftermath may be perilous.