NEW DELHI // The government's decision to create a new state in southern India has sparked demands for more changes in the country's map.
Since the Congress-led coalition's approval last Tuesday for Telangana to be carved out of the southern state of Andhra Pradesh, protests have broken out in several other parts of the country to press for similar long-standing demands for statehood.
Train services in the north-eastern state of Assam were disrupted yesterday after protesters called for a statewide shutdown of services to push the demand for a separate state for the Bodo ethnic group.
Pramode Boro, the president of the All Bodo Students Union, said: "We will not stop our agitation at any cost till our demand for a separate Bodoland is met."
One person was killed and 20 injured in Assam on Wednesday after a demonstration for another autonomous state - made up of two central hill districts - turned violent. A curfew was imposed in the town of Diphu following the violence.
Today, the year-old Vidarbha Joint Action Committee will protest in New Delhi to ask that the district of Vidarbha be hived off the state of Maharashtra.
In a letter to the party president, Sonia Gandhi, a Congress MP from Vidarbha complained that "western Maharashtra dominated leadership in the state" and bore an "indifferent attitude" towards his district.
In West Bengal yesterday, colleges, schools and transport services in Darjeeling town were shut down for the second time in a week by protesters pushing for the creation of a Gorkhaland state.
"Telangana was violent. Do we need to follow this path to achieve our goal?" said Bimal Gurung, one of the leaders of the Gorkhaland movement, which is seeking a separate state made up of several districts of northern West Bengal.
A 24-year-old Gorkhaland protester who set himself on fire last Tuesday died in hospital on Saturday, state police said yesterday.
But Mamata Banerjee, the chief minister of West Bengal, said there was "no question" of dividing West Bengal and she accused the national government of "setting the country ablaze when elections are knocking at the door".
Meanwhile, Mayawati, the former chief minister of Uttar Pradesh, reiterated her long-held belief that the state - which with 200 million people is more populous than Brazil - would be better governed by being split into four smaller states.
On Thursday, the Indian home minister, Sushil Kumar Shinde, said the government would not neglect demands for other states.
"We are ready to listen to them," Mr Shinde said. "Wherever workable, the government will take a decision."
Louise Tillin, a political scientist at the King's India Institute in London, said the timing of these demands was significant since they came before next year's elections to the Lok Sabha, the lower house of parliament.
"Deals around commitments to fulfil - or, in some cases, not to fulfil - statehood demands may form part of the bargains struck in pre- or post-poll arrangements between national, state and sub-state political parties," said Ms Tillin, whose book, Remapping India: New States and their Political Origins, is soon to be released.
Telangana will become India's 29th state, up from 16 states in 1971. Many of these new states were created or redrawn along linguistic lines, after a states reorganisation commission submitted its recommendations in 1956.
The opposition Bharatiya Janata Party has called for a new states reorganisation commission, although Mr Shinde has ruled this out.
Observers and analysts have said breaking up some of India's larger states might improve governance. Nitish Kumar, the chief minister of Bihar, said last week that "small states are needed for better administration and good governance".
The business daily Mint, in an editorial published last Wednesday, said: "There is no denying that India needs smaller states. Some states are simply too unwieldy - due to large populations spread over huge areas - to be effective administratively."
India's three newest states are Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh and Uttarakhand, which were created 13 years ago.
A 2008 study by the Associated Chambers of Commerce and Industry of India, an association of Indian businesses, found Jharkhand's per capita income to be growing at 16.6 per cent, the highest in the country. Incomes in both Chhattisgarh and Uttarakhand were growing by more than 7 per cent , the study found.
Each of these new states had outstripped its former parent state in this particular metric.
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