India weighs proposals on creation of a new state

Separatists who back splitting of Andhra Pradesh dismiss the suggestion that greater Hyderabad be turned into union territory.

Policemen try to stop the progress of students in Hyderabad, Andhra Pradesh, yesterday.

NEW DELHI // The Indian government is considering several options to one of its many challenges of the new year: Whether to increase the number of states in the country from 28 to 29.

In December 2009, political parties and students had called for a new state - Telangana - to be carved out of Andhra Pradesh, a state in the south-east. At the time, the government dithered before finally appointing a retired Supreme Court judge, BN Srikrishna, to lead a commission to investigate the merits of Telangana's statehood.

The Srikrishna committee report, submitted last month, was made public yesterday, after P Chidambaram, the home minister, called a meeting to discuss it.

The 461-page report sets out six possible suggestions, four of which involve, in one way or another, splitting Andhra Pradesh into two states. Maintaining the status quo, the report reads, is an option, but "it is favoured the least." The best option, it recommends, is to keep Andhra Pradesh whole and to institute constitutional measures to empower Telangana politically and economically.

"I would urge you to read the report and the recommendations with an open mind and be prepared to persuade, and to be persuaded by, people who hold another point of view," Mr Chidambaram said at the meeting.

The parties will review the report before meeting later this month to offer Mr Chidambaram their views on the options.

Already it is apparent, however, that the report's conclusions will not deter parties such as the Telangana Rashtra Samiti (TRS), which was at the forefront of the drive for statehood. One TRS leader, K Tarakrama Rao, told reporters earlier this week that "irrespective of what [the] Srikrishna committee report says", the Indian government should begin the parliamentary process to create a new state.

In Hyderabad, the capital of Andhra Pradesh, demonstrations broke out soon after the report was made public. By mid-afternoon, protesters had burnt two buses.

The call for Telangana dates back to the late 1960s, after the States Reorganisation Committee's suggestion - to leave Telangana and Andhra Pradesh as disparate units - was ignored. Famously, Jawaharlal Nehru, India's first prime minister, called the merger a marriage that had "provisions for divorce."

Since then, the intensity of the demand for Telangana has ebbed and flowed. Only recently, as coalition governments at the centre looked to smaller, state-level parties for numerical support in parliament, have separatist parties been consistently able to raise Telangana as a bargaining chip.

The TRS, and its ideological allies, claim the move makes economic sense. The Telangana region of Andhra Pradesh includes Hyderabad, the state's capital as well as its economic engine. Much of Andhra Pradesh's business and industry are located in and around Hyderabad.

Yet some of the region's districts are among the poorest in India - because, Telangana's proponents claim, successive state governments have funnelled funds to other parts of the state, and because Telangana is underrepresented in the state legislature and the bureaucracy.

The question of what happens to Hyderabad is a volatile one. Hyderabad generates four out of 10 rupees collected by Andhra Pradesh in sales and petroleum taxes, and half of stamp and registration duty revenues. The Srikrishna report's suggestion to turn the greater Hyderabad area into a union territory - belonging to no state - was dismissed by the TRS.

"Other than Telangana, with Hyderabad as its capital, nothing else will be acceptable to us," KT Rama Rao, a member of the TRS, told the Press Trust of India.

The demand for fresh states in India is not new; India's federal structure has never stopped evolving. The three newest states - Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh and Uttarakhand - were created a little more than a decade ago, and the residents of all three states have benefited economically, a private study shows.

A 2008 study released by the Associated Chambers of Commerce and Industry of India, an umbrella association of Indian companies, revealed Jharkhand to be the fastest-growing state by per capita income. Incomes in both Uttarakhand and Chhattisgarh were growing by more than seven per cent. Each of these new states had outstripped its former parent state on this metric.

The central government is, however, reluctant to grant statehood too readily, for fear of spurring similar demands in other parts of the country. For instance, a new Telangana state may revitalise the Gorkha ethnic group's demand for a new state, formed out of a part of West Bengal. In late December, Bimal Gurung, the president of the Gorkha Janmukti Morcha, warned that his group was "closely monitoring the developments of the Srikrishna Committee" and would not be "hoodwinked".

These considerations aside, the Indian government - led by the Congress party - has more immediate political concerns at hand. Its popularity in Andhra Pradesh eroded last year after extensive crop losses. The Congress' state unit in Andhra Pradesh is also facing fission, after a charismatic politician broke away last November to start his own party.