Thaths wrote:
On Fri, Jan 22, 2010 at 3:45 AM, Kiran K Karthikeyan
<[email protected]> wrote:
[1] http://www.newsweek.com/id/228843
The U.S., with 308 million people, has 50 states; India, with 1.17
billion people, currently has only 28. Some of these are massive:
the biggest state, Uttar Pradesh, has more than 175 million people,
which would make it the world's sixth most populous country. These
giant states find it difficult to respond quickly to the needs of
their remote regions.
India's size is about a third of the United States'. When looked at
in terms of geographic size, 28 states seem too many.
The states in the United States were formed originally around colonial
hubs -- that is to say, good harbors with access to agricultural land.
As the US expanded west, the states became successively larger, and were
based on random lines of latitude and longitude more often than rivers
and ridges found in eastern states.
Perhaps a better example is found in US counties (the political
subdivision between city and state). These also grow in size as one
moves west, but with the interesting facet that rugged terrain
correlates with smaller counties.
In most states, this is due to the pragmatic issue of travel to the
county seat. When a county got too large to manage from a single
location, it tended to split. Improvements in transportation and
communication have largely reduced this incentive, though post 1950
county splits have largely been driven by either vastly increased
population or urban/suburban/rural divisions.
Perhaps the most interesting state for county boundaries is Tennessee,
which began as a county of North Carolina to the east. At statehood,
there were three counties created (still evident in the political and
social divisions in the state, and recognized by the three stars in the
state flag). These counties began to subdivide quickly. Some borders
being a line drawn equidistant between two cities, some followed natural
boundaries like large rivers, and some are circular, being all land
within a certain distance of the county hub. The mixture of these tools
of division have left a most interesting patchwork, the largest number
of counties of any state other than Texas, and some of the smallest
county populations, with perhaps a third hosting fewer than 5000 souls.
It will be interesting to observe if India goes on a binge of state
creation, as we observe which of the above forces, and those unique to
India, end up having sway over the boundaries created.
Cheers,
Bruce
