On Thu, Jan 21, 2010 at 7:51 PM, Suresh Ramasubramanian <[email protected]> wrote: > Kiran K Karthikeyan [22/01/10 01:15 +0530]: >> >> I read this article[1] by silklister Salil Tripathi a few days back, >> and today I was told that unless I register with the local Karayogam, >> I can't get my marriage registered. Karayogam is the name of local >> chapters of the Nair Service Society. I made an attempt (feeble in > > One thing he missed is a tendency to gerrymander new states on caste and > language lines, so telengana shuts out the chowdarys / rajus etc powerful > coastal andhra feudal castes, the old andhra pradesh shut out tamils / > tamil nadu shut out telugus, jharkhand was a mostly tribal area with a > tribal first CM etc.
Thanks... I had severe space restrictions while writing the piece. I do think smaller states will be good for India, and yes, creating them along caste lines would make divisions more concrete. My assumption though is that with greater urbanization a reality in India, it will get harder to divide polyglot regions into exclusive ethnic enclaves. Maybe this is my optimism running wild, but I do see the emergence of cities - and the fact that people from different parts of India become more mobile, and move not just to Bombay, Delhi and Bangalore, but to Pune, Hyderabad, and "smaller" towns like Surat and Baroda, it will become more difficult to carve out regions that are exclusively this or that caste. It is true that more states mean more money-making opportunities for the dudes who want to become chief ministers. But the critical part of creating such states is to sever the umbilical cord which connects them to the Reserve Bank of India - reduced overdrafts, for example - so that they have to pay for the deficits they run. Anyway, as the piece was written for Newsweek International, it would have been well-nigh impossible to squeeze all of that in the 650 words I was told to write... Thanks again; Salil
