CONSOLIDATION OF INDIA AS A NATION: REGIONALISM AND REGIONAL INEQUALITY

• Regionalism: If the interests of one region or state are asserted against the country as a whole or against another region or state in a hostile manner and a conflict is promoted on the basis of such alleged interests it can be dubbed as regionalism.
• Regionalism could have flourished in India if any region or state had felt that it was being culturally dominated or discriminated against. But, in fact, the Indian nation has proved to be quite successful in accommodating and even celebrating—in Nehru’s words—India’s cultural diversity.
• Many regional disputes, of course, do exist and they have the potential of fanning inter-state hostility. There has been friction between different states over the sharing of river waters; for example, between Tamil Nadu and Karnataka, Karnataka and Andhra, and Punjab and Haryana and Rajasthan.
• Boundary disputes have arisen out of the formation of linguistic states as in the case of Belgaum and Chandigarh. Construction of irrigation and power dams has created such conflicts. But, while these disputes tend to persist for a long time and occasionally arouse passions, they have, as a whole, remained within narrow, and we might say acceptable, limits.

1. Economic Imbalances And Regionalism

• At independence only a few enclaves or areas around Calcutta, Bombay and Madras had undergone modern industrial development. For example, in 1948, Bombay and West Bengal accounted for more than 59 per cent of the total industrial capital of the country and more than 64 per cent of the national industrial output.
• Under colonialism, agriculture had also stagnated, but more in eastern India than in northern or southern India.
• Regional economic disparity was also reflected in per capita income. In 1949, while West Bengal, Punjab and Bombay had per capita incomes of Rs 353, 331 and 272 respectively, the per capita incomes of Bihar, Orissa and Rajasthan were Rs 200, 188 and 173 respectively. 

2. Steps Taken By Government To Counter Regional Imbalance

• Industrial Policy Resolution 1956: the Government of India asserted that ‘Only by securing a balanced and coordinated development of the industrial and agricultural economy in each region can the entire country attain higher Standards of living.’ National Integration Council -the National Integration Council of 1961 urged that ‘a rapid development of the economically backward regions in any State should be given priority in national and State plans, at least to the extent that the minimum level of development is reached for all states within a stated period.
• Finance Commission: From the beginning, the central government adopted a whole range of policies to influence the rates of growth in poorer states and regions so as to reduce their economic distance from the richer states and regions. The Commission decides the principles on which disbursement of central taxes and other financial resources from the central government to the states occurs. Various Financial Commissions have tried not only to do justice among the states but also to reduce interstate disparity by giving preferential treatment to the poorer states, by allocating larger grants to them than their population would warrant and by transferring resources from the better-off states to them.
• Planning Commission: The Second Plan reflected the objective to remove regional inequalities. The Third Plan explicitly stated that ‘balanced development of different parts of the country, extension of the benefits of economic progress to the less developed regions and widespread diffusion of industry are among the major aims of planned development.
• Public Investment: Public investment by the central government in major industries such as steel, fertilizers, oil refining, petrochemicals, machine-making, heavy chemicals and in power and irrigation projects, roads, railways, post offices and other infrastructural facilities has been a tool for the reduction of regional inequality. India has relied heavily on public investment since the beginning of the Second Plan in 1957. Bihar and Madhya Pradesh have gained the most from such investment; Assam, Himachal Pradesh, Jammu and Kashmir and the north-eastern states have also benefitted a great deal from the development of infrastructure, especially roads.
• Incentives To Provide Sector: Government incentives have been provided to the private sector to invest in backward areas through subsidies, tax concessions, and concessional banking and institutional loans at subsidised rates. The system of licensing of private industrial enterprises, which prevailed from 1956 to 1991, was also used by the government to guide location of industries in backward areas.
• Nationalization of banks: Following nationalization of banks in 1969, the expansion of the network of their branches was used to favour backward areas. Banks and other public sector financial institutions were directed to promote investment in these areas.
• Schemes: Also, various ministries have evolved schemes for development of backward areas. In particular, poverty eradication programmes, such as the Food for Work programme and the Intensive Rural Development programme, adopted since the seventies, and to some extent education, health and family planning programmes and the public distribution system have favoured poorer states.

3. Constraints in Decline of Regional Disparity

1. Green Revolution:  disproportionate investment in irrigation and subsidies to agricultural development. This has been especially so since the sixties when the Green Revolution began and investment in rural infrastructure and technological innovation was concentrated in Punjab, Haryana and western U.P., namely areas where irrigation was or could be made available readily.
2. Economic Growth: The major reason, at the all-India level, for continuing regional disparity has been the low rate of economic growth. To make a dent on this requires a high rate of national growth so that large revenues can be raised and devoted to the development of the backward regions without adversely affecting national growth itself.
3. Socio –economic And Political organization: the roots of some states’ backwardness lies in their socio-economic and political organization itself. For example, the agrarian structure in Bihar and eastern U.P. is quite regressive and in many parts of these states land reforms have been inadequately implemented. (This was also true of Orissa till recently.) The feudal mentality is still quite strong. Also, in Bihar and Orissa land consolidation has been tardy, which played an important role in the agricultural development of Punjab and Haryana.
4. Infrastructural Facilities: The backward states have a lower level of infrastructural facilities, such as power, irrigation, roads, telephones, and modern markets for agricultural produce. These are essential for development and have to be developed by the states themselves being mostly State subjects.
5. Less Social expenditure: States also have a low level of social expenditure on education and public health and sanitation, which are also State subjects. Besides, they suffer from a lack of financial resources to meet plan expenditure. Increased central financial assistance is unable to offset this weakness.
6. Political Administrative Failure: Bihar and U.P. are classic cases of states, bedevilled by high levels of corruption, sheer bad administration, and deteriorating law and order. As a result whatever central assistance is available is poorly utilized and often diverted to non-development heads of expenditure. Further, development of infrastructure, including roads and electricity, is neglected and the existing infrastructure is riddled with inefficiency and corruption. All this turns away the private sector, which is a major source of development in the advanced states. The role of greater administrative efficiency is also proved by the better rates of economic growth in the relatively better administered states of south and western India as compared to Bihar and U.P.

4. How Far Succeeded In Reducing Regional Inequality

• There has certainly been a decline in inter-state industrial disparity, especially in the organized manufacturing sector. There is also less disparity in terms of social welfare as represented by life expectancy, infant mortality and literacy, though a few states like Kerala and Tamil Nadu have moved far ahead.
• The increased disparity in agriculture is also gradually getting redressed though the rainfed dry areas are still lagging behind.
• While the percentage of people below the poverty line has steadily declined in all the states it is in the advanced states that maximum progress has been made, so that the inter-regional disparity in the distribution of poverty has been growing.

Sub Regional Movements

• It may be mentioned that disparities in development also exist within each state.
• In many cases, this inequality has become a source of tension and given birth to sub-regional movements for separate states within the Indian union, or greater autonomy for the sub-regions within the existing states, or at least special treatment and safeguards in matters of employment, education and allocation of financial resources.
• Examples of such sub-regional feelings are the movements in Telengana in Andhra Pradesh, Vidarbha in Maharashtra, Saurashtra in Gujarat, Chhattisgarh in Madhya Pradesh, Uttarakhand and Bundelkhand in U.P., Darjeeling district or Gorkhaland in West Bengal, Bodoland in Assam, to a certain extent South Bihar or Jharkhand in Bihar, and the areas consisting of the old princely states of Orissa.

5. Sons Of The Soil Doctrine

• Since the fifties, an ugly form of regionalism has been widely prevalent in the form of ‘the sons of the soil’ doctrine.
• Underlying it is the view that a state specifically belongs to the main linguistic group inhabiting it or that the state constitutes the exclusive ‘homeland’ of its main language speakers who are the ‘sons of the soil’ or the ‘local’ residents.
• All others, who live there, or are settled there and whose mother tongue is not the state’s main language, are declared to be ‘outsiders’
• ‘The sons of the soil’ movements have mainly arisen, and have been more virulent, when there is actual or potential competition for industrial and middle-class jobs, between the migrants and the local, educated, middle-class youth.
• The friction has been more intense in states and cities where ‘outsiders’ had greater access to higher education and occupied more middle-class positions in government service, professions and industry and were engaged in small businesses, such as small-scale industry and shop keeping.
• Active in these movements have also been members of the lower-middle class or workers, as well as rich and middle peasants whose position is unthreatened, but who increasingly aspire to middle-class status and position for their children
• Some groups could then take advantage of ‘the sons of the soil’ sentiment for gaining political power.
• More recently, because of the higher salaries and education and skill involved, competition between migrants and the ‘locals’ has tended to develop for employment in the technologically advanced industries.

6. Constitutional Provisions

• Article 15 prohibits any discrimination on the grounds of religion, race, caste, sex or place of birth
• Article 16 prohibits discrimination in the employment or appointments to any office under the state on grounds of ‘descent, place of birth or residence’.
• However, the parliament, though not any state legislature, can pass a law laying down the requirement of residence within a state for appointments under that state.
• Under political pressure and taking advantage of the ambiguity in the Constitution, many states, in fact reserve jobs, or give preference for employment in state and local governments and for admission into educational institutions to local residents. The period of residence is fixed or prescribed in such cases.
•  Also, while the Constitution permits reservation or preference in state jobs only on grounds of residence and not language, some state governments have gone further and limited the preference to those local residents whose mother tongue is the state language.
• They have thus discriminated against long-term migrants, their descendants, and even the residents who can speak the state language but whose mother tongue is a minority language in the state.

7. Sons Of Soil Movements

• These militant anti-migrant and ‘sons of the soil’ movements were mainly centered in the urban areas of Assam, Telengana in Andhra, Karnataka, Maharashtra and Orissa.
• The movement led by the Shiv Sena which appealed to extreme regional chauvinism and assumed fascist proportions.
• Founded in 1966, under the leadership of Bal Thackeray, the Shiv Sena demanded that preference in jobs and small businesses should be given to Maharashtrians, who were defined as those whose mother tongue was Marathi. Raising the slogan of ‘Maharashtra for the Maharashtrians’.
•  The Shiv Sena organized a militant,, and often violent movement against the South Indians, especially the Tamils, who were declared to have a disproportionate share of office jobs such as clerks and typists in private firms and small businesses such as tea shops and eating places.
• In 1969, the Sena gave the Bombay city a taste of fascist violence when it organized arson and terror against South Indians, looted and destroyed their tea-stalls and eating places, overturned cars of Tamils and tore off Tamil signs from shops. 

Hindi and English are growing as all-India languages. Regional movements like the DMK have been doused after 1967 and are content to rename Madras state, Tamil Nadu and Madras as Chennai. Tribals feel secure in the Indian union regarding their cultural and economic autonomy; have also gained greater strength themselves, as also political support in the country over time. The process of nation-in-the making is being pushed forward. A national identity that of being Indian has come to be accepted by all on the subcontinent, and the fact of Indian unity is irreversible.