The increasing regional disparities in the country and the emerging rural-urban divide make the imagery of one nation a difficult and fraught one. Unless it is recognized now that the constructions of ‘one nation-wonderful nation’( Ek Bharat- Shresht Bharat) take this regional and urban-rural disparities into account and build social and economic policies in terms of addressing the disparities we may face many difficulties in the path of constructing a single unitary nation, if at all that is normatively warranted at this stage of the development of the country. It is a cliché to say that we are a diverse country. The diversity is linguistic, religious, ethnic and regional. This brief article deals with the last in the list: regional diversity.
The formation of India as a nation involved coming together of the three colonial presidency regions, the central provinces and the 562 princely states. V.P. Menon’s magisterial study of the integration of the Indian states clearly demonstrates this. The act of the integration of India from all these states was a tour de force achieved by Sardar Patel, Nehru and their associates. However, it is time we retrospect on how far the national integration and nation building has been achieved. When the nation was put together the colonial presidency areas were ahead of the princely states in many respects, courtesy their interaction with the colonial powers and institutions, including educational institutions. The princely states owing to their feudal background were to catch up with the presidency regions. After the formation of the nation, for a long time, the hegemony of the presidency regions over the rest of the country continued. The point simply is the development of the regions within the Indian nation was not uniform. The development was not uniform even during the dirigiste days of Nehru and Indira Gandhi. The ‘Hindu rate of growth’ was uneven across the regions and economic sectors.
The question of regional disparities acquired a new poignance after the liberalization process started. The benefits of opening- up of the economy and the economic and governance reforms were not uniformly adopted allowing for balanced growth of the nation in entirety. It is well known some states and regions have grown faster than others. The Southern and Western states have adapted to changing ecosystems of reforms far better and faster. The eastern, central and northern states have lagged all along. In this laggardness, even the erstwhile advanced region of Bengal too was a part. This obviously led to internal migrations of skilled, semi-skilled and unskilled workers from the eastern, central, northern India to Southern and Western India. This has often led to competition for jobs between the locals and migrants. With bitter subterranean feuds taking the shape of ethnic conflicts, hate crimes and increasing regionalism within the country. This is not only a macro question of the entire economy or country. The question is also that of regional disparities within the states. Karnataka’s own intra-state disparities and the application of Article 371J to Kalyana Karnataka is a case in point. Some of these questions of lack of development and the question of migration of population to more developed states was at the forefront of the political discourse in the recently concluded Bihar state elections.
There is a different aspect of regional disparity that is fast emerging in the country. That is the disparity between the city and the countryside. The urban-rural divide is real and staggering with urbanization primarily taking place around the metropolises and their sub-urban regions. The nature of the economic development taking place in the country since the liberalization has largely been around the cities with service sector playing the role of the major recruiter for jobs both skilled and unskilled. This trend of service sector and urban-led economic growth has created devastating divide between the rural and urban regions of the country. This is an important dimension as to how we imagine the nation. The major imageries constructed today of the nation are that of the urban service sector-led ones. Thus this dimension adds to the already complex regional disparities making the unified national imagery a complex one. That we did not have a national Census since the 2011 makes it difficult to mention the figures of rural and urban populations in different states. The fact however is there is fast urbanization and growing rural and urban divide making the nation look very different when viewed from these two different prisms.
On the other hand, the discourse of ‘one nation-one everything’ is equally problematic. For example, the efforts at imposing Hindi as the official language for all the states has been a failure. The economic and governance reforms too cannot be carried out on similar patterns in all states. For some northern states the first question is the law and order. The government of the day may well remain quite busy with the law-and-order questions of these states, leave alone taking them onto a growth path, improving incomes and curbing migration. Therefore, the attempts at imposing a uniformity of language and development, and language of development, across the nation is likely to meet formidable hurdles.
From the point of view of founding fathers/mothers of the nation, the excessive regional disparities and consequent provincialisms are uncalled for. Nehru was initially against linguistic states. The Constitution makers, that is, the entire first generation of leadership after Independence thought in terms of the nation in its entirety, by and large. This, following the unifying character of the anti-colonial movement. And at the same time there was also a gradual recognition that diversity cannot be given a go by. There was no way to steamroller the diversity of the country into a monolithic pattern. Federal institutional arrangements were made precisely to address the issue. It is about time the founding principles of federalism revisited in addressing the relationship between the region and nation India. I am in this article addressing the relationship between the nation and the region, because excessive emphasis on the side of the nation, as the Hindutva nationalists do, and excessive emphasis on the regions as many regional party regimes do, both are problematic. However, given the politics of the country today, the excessive uniformity and double engine governments are more problematic than the ones championing the regional diversity, although these too need to be cautious-- that the regions always have sub-regions leading to endless regression and retrogression.
