Books

OLD HISTORY, NEW GEOGRAPHY by Jairam Ramesh. Rupa Publications, New Delhi, 2016.

WHEN Andhra Pradesh was divided to create Telangana in 2014, India entered new constitutional waters for not altogether clear reasons. While the demand for Telangana was, as Jairam Ramesh reminds us in this volume, ‘old history’ based on long-term grievances, this was the first time that an Indian state had been divided against the wishes of its ‘parent’ state. Over time, central governments have generally been reluctant to use the full force of the powers granted to them under Article 3 of the Constitution to create new states, unless there has been a good degree of consensus about state creation in both the ‘new’ and the ‘old’ state. In this instance, there was plenty of vocal opposition from both legislators and the general public in Seemandhra to the proposed bifurcation. The additional novelty in the case of Andhra Pradesh was that it was the ‘new’ state of Telangana that was to remain host to the state capital, with the ‘old’ state of Andhra Pradesh promised assistance to build a new state capital. What has never been clear is why the Congress Party in New Delhi decided to push ahead with the bifurcation despite the volume of opposition, which proved to be electorally suicidal for them.

Those hoping for an answer as to why the Congress Working Committee took the final decision to create Telangana on 30 July 2013 will not, by the author’s own admission, find the answer in Ramesh’s version. But they will find an unusually frank and illuminating first-hand account of how the nitty-gritty of bifurcation was negotiated by the politician who, to his own apparent surprise, conducted much of the leg- and head-work. Old History, New Geography takes the reader on a tour of the history of the Telangana demand, the historical constitutional status of the region, and Jairam Ramesh’s personal involvement in settling the demand.

As the Rajya Sabha MP who represents Andhra Pradesh explains, he had some prior experience of building agreement involving the statehood demand while he was orchestrating the UPA’s Common Minimum Programme in 2004. The Telangana Rashtra Samithi (TRS) insistence on including a commitment to the creation of Telangana was not acceptable to other coalition partners. Eventually the CMP committed the UPA to considering the formation of Telangana ‘after due consultations and consensus’. But it was Ramesh’s invitation to join the Group of Ministers (GoM) tasked with addressing ‘all the issues that needed resolution at the central and state government levels in the matter’ that made Telangana a central preoccupation. At its peak intensity, Ramesh describes spending at least five hours a day on GoM business (p. 117). At that time, he was serving as Union Minister for Rural Development (it would be instructive to know what effects the GoM arrangement had on routine business in the Rural Development ministry in this period).

When the GoM was established in October 2013, even the borders of the proposed Telangana state remained subject to confirmation. But the most contentious issue was the future status of Hyderabad. Ramesh describes how he proposed the constitutional innovation of a common governor for the two new states, at least for as long as Hyderabad remained a shared capital. The proposal, which was agreed, was that the governor should play a role in facilitating cooperation between new states, and take particular responsibility for the security of Seemandhra citizens in Hyderabad. As Ramesh notes (p. 89): ‘There were grave apprehensions over calls by Telangana leaders and protagonists like "Telangana jago aur Andhrawala bhago" (Wake up Telangana and Andhrawalas go away) and "Hyderabad sirf hamara" (Hyderabad is ours only).’

This was very much a fight over Hyderabad and how – and how much of – the city should function as a shared state capital in the transitional period. To an outsider, there appeared to be little real discussion of the challenges of urban governance in Hyderabad itself: a common problem for India’s mega-cities that generate substantial proportions of state revenues, but find themselves at the mercy of state governments.

Aside from the question of Hyderabad, the other particularly thorny issues related to the sharing of the Krishna river’s waters and the continuation of the Polavaram multipurpose project after bifurcation. The Telangana movement had long argued that the region had been disadvantaged by the diversion of waters to coastal Andhra. These were sensitive subjects to negotiate, and Ramesh describes in great detail the twists, turns and protagonists involved. He notes that there was little precedent for resolving such disputes, and that he found little guidance in the acts that had established the last new states of Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand and Uttarakhand. This is, in fact, a feature throughout the bifurcation process that is detailed in the book. Lessons from previous episodes of state creation do not appear to have provided instructive precedents. This is partly because the issues involved were different – the vexed status of Hyderabad was so different to what had happened in earlier instances of bifurcation, and – as Ramesh notes, water was not such an ‘emotive’ issue in the other instances (p. 95).¹

It is striking, however, that there seemed to be little institutional memory of previous bifurcations – the personnel involved were different, and previous experiences that could have provided lessons were not always recalled. For instance, the ‘domicile controversy’ that undermined the first government of the new state of Jharkhand was directly linked to the question of how the nativist dimensions of the statehood demand were managed as the contours of citizenship in the new state were constructed. And the experience of other states, especially the enactment and hardening of differentiated categories of citizenship in Assam suggests the potential for inter-state learning on this theme.²

The last section of the bifurcation process described in the book is the Reorganization Act’s passage through Parliament, during which Jairam Ramesh was an important player in the Rajya Sabha. Ironically, Ramesh details how the BJP’s support for the act in the Lok Sabha was negotiated after the prime minister made a commitment for a special package for Seemandhra (p. 132). In a statement to the Rajya Sabha, Manmohan Singh went on to commit to ‘special category status’ for coastal Andhra Pradesh for a period of five years. This special status, which was not written into the legislation, came into question after the BJP came to power in 2014 and has become a major bone of contention once again. It is a reminder of the herculean task of implementing state bifurcation even after its basic contours were agreed when the act became law.

Ramesh ends the book by reflecting on the implications of this act of state creation. ‘The results certainly traumatized me,’ he says, ‘But such angst was momentary since I knew very well that the merits and demerits of bifurcation could not be judged by the Congress’ electoral fortunes but had to be measured by more fundamental socio-economic concerns and political factors’ (p. 173). Despite the trials and tribulations of negotiating Andhra Pradesh’s bifurcation, he suggests that further reorganization of states should yet be considered. He considers the reorganization of Uttar Pradesh long overdue, and posits that there is a strong case to be made for Vidarbha too.

The political fudge in response to periodic demands and movements for statehood has often involved kicking the issue into the longer grass by calling for a second states reorganization commission. There appears to be little real political appetite for a comprehensive exercise of that nature, but Ramesh’s book does a good job of setting out the very real issues at stake in the complex negotiations over creating any new state and disentangling deep social, economic and political interconnections. While this is very much a personal account from a participant’s viewpoint, it thereby contributes to a longer-term process of institutional learning. My main regret as a student of the politics of policy processes in India is that more ‘insiders’ do not write such detailed memoirs of how policy decisions are made and place relevant documents in public.

Louise Tillin

Senior Lecturer in Politics, King’s India Institute, King’s College London

 

* Louise Tillin is the author of Remapping India: New States and their Political Origins. Hurst & Co., London; Oxford University Press, New Delhi and New York, 2013.

Footnotes:

1. Although the question of access to hydroelectric power generated in Uttarakhand had been an issue at the time of the passage of the Uttar Pradesh Reorganization Act 2000.

2. See Anupama Roy, ‘Ambivalence of Citizenship in Assam’, Economic and Political Weekly LI(26 & 27), 25 June 2016.