The state of unity

Raj Thackeray must be rolling on the floor laughing. Congress, which lambasted him until a few weeks ago for his divisive tactics, has gone ahead to announce the creation of Telengana. Worse yet, it had no clue of the simmering discontent within its own ranks, and the issue has become a comedy circus now. If anything, Raj stands vindicated. His actions may be condemnable, but his reasoning that one state cannot subsidize corruption and underdevelopment in other states merits consideration. The independent states movement is simply a corollary of this observation - that one part of the state cannot receive all the development and focus at the cost of others.

I was born and raised in Hyderabad, so I can definitely say that Telegana is the poorer of the three areas that form AP - the other two being coastal Andhra and Rayalaseema. The coastal Andhra is definitely richer in natural resources with fertile plains and rivers whereas Rayalaseema is traditionally wealthy and also has the temple town of Tirupati helping its economy. The Telengana area is part of the Deccan Plateau with mostly barren lands except for some cotton farming. By some freak chance, Hyderabad was made the capital of AP, else this area would have been written off totally. Of course, now, the demand for a separate state is purely a political manoeuver. And it has sparked demands for a bunch of other states. How long before we end up with 500 odd princely states we started with...

Marathi Manoos

I thoroughly enjoyed watching Raj Thackeray interviewed by Arnab Goswami last Sunday. Delighted, in fact, for it provided the rare occasion where Arnab was lost for words, and resembled a castrated cat. Part of the problem, I guess, was that Raj chose to respond in Marathi. It's kinda obvious, but I missed the beginning so maybe Raj offered a particular explanation for not answering in English. And it wasn’t clear whether Arnab understood Marathi or if they ended up using an interpreter, which explains his constipated questioning. (I am ruling out the possibility that Raj doesn't know English.)

Raj, though, was perfectly composed and his answers, while uncompromising, were logical and rational. He basically pointed out that all states have a responsibility to their residents, and Maharashtra in general, and Mumbai in particular, shouldn’t have to bear the brunt of poor governance elsewhere. He also begged to differ from the popular opinion that Mumbai is a commercial and financial hub becauseof its migrant population. Rather, he noted, that because Mumbai had all the characteristics to be such a hub, that people flocked in. On the question of preferential treatment for Marathis, he simply pointed to agitations in Tamil Nadu and Karnataka, where representation for localites has always been an issue. In Bangalore, for example, I recall a recent push by the local film industry to ban screening of Tamil and Telugu films because Kannada films have no viewers! On Chhat puja, he was enraged that, except in Mumbai, the event is not organized at such a scale anywhere else. I think he gave the example of Maldives that has a significant immigrant population.

His analysis of the situation is spot on. The root cause, of course, is the asynchronous pace of development, which also explains the urban-rural (India-Bharat) divide to an extent. But Raj neither has the ability nor the inclination to attack the root so he is simply going after the symptom. One can only question his approach rhetorically and ask, were the tables reversed, then would he, a migrant, accept being subjected to such discrimination by natives? Same goes for the migrants too – would they, as natives, watch in silence when their cities and towns start filling up with migrants?