Small Talk

THE BHARATIYA JANATA PARTY (BJP) found itself surprised when one of its Union ministers, Sanjeev Balyan, at an International Jat Parliament, called for western Uttar Pradesh (UP) to be made into a separate state with Meerut, where the event was being held, as its capital. He said, as quoted in a PTI report, “The popula­tion here is eight crore and the high court is 750 kilometres from here. So this demand is completely justified.” Others in his party were quick to dismiss it and Balyan himself later said it was a personal opinion. And, yet, while he said it to appease the audience before him, the size of UP as an administrative hurdle has long been a recognised problem, a cat that few want to bell.

UP’s population makes it unwieldy. It is around 250 million and still growing at speed because the poorer people are, the greater the correlation to procreate. Not all the prime ministers that came out of the state or the best of bureaucrats who have administered it have been able to bring in develop­ment commensurate with what other parts of India have managed to do. UP remains backward with law and order that is often a function of entirely who is governing it. Any progress is shown to be an illusion if the government changes, or some other earthquake jolts its political firmament. Then there is the presence of caste, which underpins everything from politics to commerce there. UP could be divided into not one but many states and it would still be rational administratively. It is not necessary that smaller states are better run but if there are many smaller states, then some of them might still be able to break out of the negative gravity that currently exerts the undivided entity.

But chances are it will not happen anytime soon because of UP’s extraordinary political importance. The government that toys with any breaking is afraid that it will lose votes from what remains. The experience of the creation of Telangana which the Congress conducted but at the cost of making itself irrelevant there, is fresh memory. Secondly, undivided UP creates the expectation that if the party in power manages to retain the state, then all its bounties come together. This is good reasoning if not for every party having to lose eventually, and then this very premise goes against them because the political heft is now with the others. Currently, with BJP holding both the Centre and the state, there is no reason for them to even entertain such an idea. If it eventually comes to pass at some distant future, it will be when the state and Centre are in different hands. None of this would be needed if UP were to pull itself out of the backwardness morass. But that will still take decades and there will still need to be some radical economic vision to pull it off. Until then, the possibility of smaller UPs will hover around, very near to the touch, but still too far.

administrationDivision of stateSanjeev BalyanUP politicsUP’s population