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for statehood, may not imply the absence of strategic thought in informing political action. Rather it suggests that we should remain alert to the fact that certain political outcomes – such as the act of creating new states – may not be the product of a long-term, relatively linear build up of purposive activities dedicated to achieving those particular, longer term goals. Political action often has shorter term outcomes in sight. As John Dunn notes:

In politics, human beings act to achieve immediate purposes and, less steadily, to serve or secure their more enduring interests. The relation between the immediate and the longer term is seldom very clear or especially reassuring. The main grounds for doubting the quality of human judgment today, from the most intimate and personal of settings to their most extended and political performances, are...doubts about how far immediate purposes dominate longer-term interests (Dunn 2000: 98).

Within a fragmented, multilevel political arena, politicians often find it difficult to calculate the likely consequences of their actions especially in policy domains which require corresponding action at another level of the federal system. They are able to assume, based on experience, that they are unlikely to provoke a response from another part of the political system. Perhaps, equally important, is the fact that politicians have no assurance that they will be attributed responsibility by the electorate for an eventual decision to create a new state. As Pratap Bhanu Mehta observes, one consequence of the centralisation of government functions in India, especially since the 1970s, has been to erode the possibilities of accountability:

The obscurity and complexity of most decision-making is such that it tends to conceal faults and destroy responsibility...Most Indian voters...are unlikely to pay much attention to the individual records of their representatives, because their accomplishments are difficult to identify as being their accomplishments (Mehta 2003: 145).

Allied to the complexity of decisionmaking processes, as Mehta also notes, is the question of inter-temporal accountability. In the context of high levels of turnover among political representative, politicians find it difficult to gain credit for policies whose impact is in the longer term. This is another reason why many politicians place a discount on the future: not just because they might not actually want statehood, but because they may not be in power long enough to see the benefits of state creation, electoral or otherwise. Therefore engagement with statehood debates is fundamentally short-term in nature, in line with the short time horizons of politicians more generally.

This article will offer an explanation for why it seems to have become easy to “play politics” with borders, and why the subject of statehood is commonly approached with an apparent absence of intent or an uncertain commitment by politicians. With a few exceptions, politicians who involve themselves with demands for statehood do not display a “do or die” attitude to achieving a new state, the kind of conviction central to a Weberian sense of political vocation (Weber, Lassman et al 1994: 353-55). The article will focus on the role of the central government over time in helping to create conditions in which demands for the division of states can appear to remain relatively uncontentious issues within statelevel political arenas, or issues which do not require serious political debate. It will be suggested that the bifurcation of policy responsibility for states’ reorganisation, and the operation of distinct spheres of political activity, between the centre and the states can help to explain the relatively limited time horizons with which many actors engage with demands for statehood. The article will go on to look at how the central government’s intervention in the case of the demand for Telangana has profoundly shifted the nature of debate in Andhra Pradesh, and distinguishes the debate about statehood there from recent episodes of state reorganisation and ongoing debates elsewhere.

A Reluctant Actor

Article 3 of India’s Constitution, often described as its least federal provision, places the full responsibility for the creation of new states in the hands of Parliament. State division or boundary change is not a matter that can be decided by state governments alone, nor is there a constitutional provision for local referenda. Central legislation mandating the creation of a new state must be referred to the relevant state legislative assembly but states possess no right to veto a change to their borders, nor an ability to make binding amendments to provisions for the placing or borders or division of assets and liabilities consequent of the creation of any new state.

Nevertheless, despite such centralised provisions, debates about statehood have tended to have a profoundly decentralised character. State creation has never taken place without the agreement, in principle, of the state assembly and favourable public opinion on both sides of a state to be divided.1 Central governments have typically been reluctant to actively involve themselves in decisions about where borders should be redrawn. The idea of further state reorganisation no longer occasions fears about precipitating the break-up of the Indian Union under the weight of fissiparous tendencies.2 But – with the recent exception of the Bharatiya Janata Partyled National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government (1998-99; 1999-2004) – the central government has generally sought to remain neutral about ongoing claims for statehood. Even the NDA government took action to create new states only where the BJP had already laid roots, the state assembly had already passed a resolution agreeing to statehood and where major BJP allies agreed to the bifurcation of their states (not the case for the Shiv Sena or Telugu Desam Party (TDP) in Maharashtra and Andhra Pradesh, respectively).

It is the contention of this paper that the tradition of relative passivity by the central government in response to demands for statehood has effectively created space for the slow evolution of apparent agreement among politicians – whether ultimately for serious or fickle reasons – in favour of redrawing borders within some states. The generally low expectations that the central government will act on demands for statehood within particular regions has tended to mean that there are few reasons for the appearance of movements or even strong public sentiments against bifurcation within the rest of the parent states. The absence of strong anti-statehood sentiments allowed state assemblies in Madhya Pradesh and Uttar Pradesh to pass resolutions supporting statehood for Chhattisgarh and Uttarakhand before the BJP-led NDA came to power at the centre with a commitment to their creation. There was considerably stronger opposition in north Bihar to losing the natural resources of the Jharkhand

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region if the state were to be bifurcated, but even there the Bihar legislative assembly passed a resolution in favour of statehood in 1997. Short-term political considerations could take precedence over the long-term potential reality of statehood, in part because it was assumed that central government action to divide the state would not follow a resolution of the state assembly. To an extent, then, the ease with which politicians have been able to adopt pro-statehood positions with relative impunity has helped to defuse regional conflict over questions of moving borders.

What is different, however, in the case of the current imbroglio around Telangana is that, the central government has actively intervened before any such state assembly resolution was tabled or passed. With the suggestion that the central government could move ahead with the creation of Telangana, the statehood debate has been reinfused with a sense of intentionality. The stakes have become higher as the central government has become an active player. Politicians have become less able to discount the future and must seriously weigh the consequences of any position they adopt on statehood. Because the creation of Telangana has become an issue that is under active consideration by the central government, there have been stronger reasons for the mobilisation of anti-statehood sentiment both within and outside the Telangana region of Andhra Pradesh. Home Minister P Chidambaram’s statement in December 2009 on moving ahead with the process of creating Telangana, whatever the shifts in position since then, profoundly altered the terms of this statehood debate. Rather than remaining a subject for within-state politicking, statehood has become an area of centre-stateregion negotiation.

This paper highlights four different types of non-committal engagement with demands for statehood by politicians at different levels of the federal system. It then looks at how the intervention of the central government has changed the terms of engagement in the statehood debate for regional politicians in Andhra Pradesh.

Typology of Statehood Demands

There are two principal ways in which regional politicians – within a region of a larger state for which statehood is claimed

– are accused of failing to seriously pursue goals of statehood, despite paying lipservice to such goals. The first applies to those politicians who are perceived as raising demands for statehood only for personal gain, typically when they are out of power. A common refrain made in relation with statehood demands that are particularly associated with an individual politician goes something like: “He [usually he] only raises the issue at election time. He didn’t do anything about it when he was in power.” Another oft-heard remark is that these are only “political” or “paper” demands; they are not really “serious”.3

We can label this interpretation the “instrumentalist” use of statehood demands, in which the idea of statehood is perceived as being attractive when a regional politician is out of power or facing the prospect of losing power. Statehood is seen as a vehicle through which to return to power, rather than an end in itself, reflecting for example a challenge to prevailing structures of power and/or political or economic marginalisation. Such politicians are typically seen as lacking the deeper intent to pursue a demand for statehood to its full conclusion. Such interpretations are more commonly offered in places where there has not been deep popular mobilisation in favour of statehood, such as parts of Uttar Pradesh, Chhattisgarh before it was created from Madhya Pradesh, or Vidarbha in Maharashtra. They also tend to be linked to an unease about the motives of politicians in demanding statehood; the sense that statehood demands are only about political self-interest, and access to seats and government berths.4

The second type of non-committal demand can often be seen in regions in which there have been strong popular demands or movements for statehood. In such places, politicians and/or political parties are more likely to be accused of “jumping on the bandwagon” in a bid to make electoral capital out of a broader mobilisation or cultural identity. They may view statehood as providing a symbolic glue bringing together a wide constituency of voters.5 In such situations, political parties are typically accused of seeking to hijack the claims made by non-party popular movements, and to be focused on the short-term

electoral gains to be realised from alignment with pro-statehood sentiment.

This was the case, for instance, in both Jharkhand and Uttarakhand, where the BJP sought to position itself at the helm of popular statehood movements. Alternatively, local politicians who have formed regional political parties with the explicit agenda of demanding statehood are often seen as lacking the leadership qualities or commitment necessary to achieve the ultimate concession of statehood from the central government. For instance, a student leader during the protest movement for Uttarakhand in 1994-95, described the leadership of the Uttarakhand Kranti Dal as: “incapable leaders of a very capable army”.6 Similarly, K Chandrashekhar Rao (KCR), leader of the Telangana Rashtra Samithi (TRS), is often described as an unlikely leader of a mass movement, with the question raised as to whether he is “riding a tiger” that he cannot control.7

There is a third kind of response to demands for statehood made by regional politicians who have achieved a position of power across a state, for instance senior state-level party leaders. In this case, currently powerful politicians may worry about being sidelined in a new state, especially where a statehood demand is raised by local politicians belonging to more numerous socio-economic groups as a means of protesting the monopolisation of power within a given region by a small elite. Given the low likelihood that the central government will act to create a new state, members of this small elite may feel able to pay lip-service to a demand if they perceive it as being useful to their retention of power in the short-term by neutralising the threat from a pro- statehood lobby and preventing the emergence of a pro/anti-statehood cleavage as a salient one in electoral politics. Paying lip-service to a demand for statehood, or at least not seeking to mobilise opinion against a demand for statehood, can be useful for a member of a currently dominant political elite particularly where it has the potential to unsettle an attempt by social movements or politicians to associate a territorial demand with a particular ethnic, or “sons of the soil” identity.

We may need to make room, then, for a third category of non-committal action at the regional level: the rearguard strategy.

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At the level of the state, we see another type of casual or apparently cynical politics around demands for statehood, often pursued by chief ministers themselves, or senior party leaders. In many cases, a state-level leader will pay lip-service to the idea of statehood in order to form an electoral alliance, or to make key rivals uncomfortable. Thus in Andhra Pradesh, both the Congress under former Chief Minister Y S Rajasekhara Reddy’s (YSR) leadership in 2004 and latterly the TDP (in opposition in 2009) have extended support to the demand for Telangana in order

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to enter electoral alliances with the TRS.The motives of Congress and the TDP were read as attempts to enhance opposition unity against each other in order to increase their chances of winning power across the state, and not as a conversion to the desirability of dividing Andhra Pradesh.

In Jharkhand, Rabri Devi’s government passed a resolution in favour of the creation of Jharkhand in 1997 (despite the Janata Dal’s historic opposition to the bifurcation of Bihar) in order to secure the government’s survival on the basis of the support of legislators from Jharkhand. Those who have flirted with support for state creation to strengthen their hand over rivals (or even allies) include Nationalist Congress Party leader Sharad Pawar who in 2003 hinted that he might support the creation of Vidarbha; a move interpreted as putting pressure on his allies in the Congress because it was dissident Congressmen in Vidarbha who had been raising a demand for statehood.9

Mulayam Singh Yadav when chief minister in Uttar Pradesh in the mid1990s, played politics with the issue of statehood for Uttarakhand in ways which made life for both Congress (who supported his government from the outside) and the opposition BJP difficult. Of the above political leaders, only Mulayam Singh Yadav was probably relaxed about the carving out of Uttarakhand. In Andhra Pradesh, Bihar and Maharashtra statelevel leaders could appear to sign up to the idea of state bifurcation without any intention of themselves pushing for, or even supporting, the eventual creation of a new state. This fourth category of engagement with statehood demands can be described then as “political management”.

Thus at both the state and sub-state regional level, in the absence of weak or uncertain central government support for state creation, politicians will – perhaps unsurprisingly – play politics with demands for statehood, privileging shorterterm concerns over the ultimate long-term fulfilment of state creation. One consequence of such politics can be the appearance of tacit consensus among local political actors in favour of statehood. Indeed, as suggested, such consensus can be a political good in itself for some politicians because it helps to prevent statehood becoming a factor by which to distinguish between the platforms of different parties. But a change in strategy by the central government can fundamentally alter the calculations made by local politicians. Nowhere has this been exemplified more than recently in the case of Telangana.

After Congress allied with the TRS to compete the 2004 elections, the Common Minimum Programme of the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government promised that they would “consider the demand for the formation of a Telangana state at an appropriate time after due consultations and consensus”. Various committees on Telangana had been formed since 2004 but little progress made on the subject. Unlike all three states created in 2000 – Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand and Uttarakhand – there had been no attempt to introduce a resolution in the Andhra Pradesh legislative assembly on the creation of Telangana. Thus Home Mini ster P Chidambaram’s announcement on 9 December 2009 that the “process of creating Telangana will be initiated”, as a hunger strike by TRS leader KCR took a critical turn, came as a surprise.

Fallout of 9 December Statement

This statement of intent by the central government – at odds with the typical forms of non-committal support offered by government and opposition politicians at all levels of the federal system – led to an outpouring of opposition from politicians and activists opposed to state creation, of an intensity that apparently took the central government and the Congress leadership by surprise. This opposition helped to i nject uncertainty again into the central government’s position, and the Srikrishna Committee, whose report was made public in January 2011, was appointed in an attempt to gain some breathing space.

The slippery commitment of regional politicians to statehood – despite their public pronouncements – makes it harder to accurately judge the depth of pro- and antistatehood sentiments within a state. Until the central government signals its serious intent to move ahead with creating a new state, however, there are few incentives for those who fear losing as a result of state creation to mobilise against a proposed bifurcation. Indeed – as argued above – it may be in their interests to stay quiet or offer their, however, non-committal, support. P Chidambaram himself pointed to the fact that the central government’s intervention in the Telangana debate had caused a shift in the tenor of the debate on the ground in Andhra Pradesh. He implied that it had been difficult for the central leadership to gauge the extent of opposition to statehood in Andhra Pradesh because of the apparent consensus among political parties.

Consensus had emerged among political parties allowing the formation of a new state [ahead of the 9 December announcement]... However, after the statement, the situation in Andhra Pradesh has altered. A large number of political parties are divided on the issue.10

If YSR had still been alive, or conditions in the Andhra Pradesh Congress less fractious, it is possible that the central leadership would have had better intelligence about the likely response on the ground to a declaration on Telangana. Nevertheless, we might still agree with Yogendra Yadav’s verdict that clumsy intervention by the UPA government at the centre reflects a paucity of political judgment: “the UPA’s handling had all the elements of a poverty of politics: bad faith, poor timing, indecision, shoddy choices and loss of nerve” (Yadav 2011).

The story of a decline in political judgment in this context seems, however, to be connected to the parallel process documented by Yogendra Yadav and Suhas Palshikar of the increasing autonomy of state politics from national politics (Yadav and Palshikar 2008). The enhanced auto- nomy of statelevel politics has dimi nished the ability of national politicians to accurately predict the outcome of their actions within states, and vice versa for regional politicians to predict their impact at the national level. Certainly it may have encouraged politicians

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to discount their future impact at other levels of the federal system, or the likelihood that their action will draw a response from within another arena.

Unintentionality and Causation

These sketches of types of political action associated with statehood demands are by nature stylised. They do not capture the full range of political engagement with statehood. There are politicians who have made more clearly reasoned demands for statehood based on a longer term vision, and displayed strong convictions in seeking to achieve them. But the sketches offered here are intended to capture what lies behind a dominant strand of disillusionment with the politics of statehood, by looking at some of the reasons why politicians engage with demands for statehood for short-term reasons.

The preceding discussion does not seek to provide an explanation for why, and when, new states are created. Nevertheless the interpretation of political actions that it presents has implications for the way in which we think about causation. A multilevel political framework presents problems for understandings of causation which rest upon overly linear preconceptions of a connection between actions and consequences, or assumptions about intentionality in political action, namely, that actions are driven by a desire to achieve clear goals – or revealed preferences – that are linked to definable sets of interests. Again, as Dunn notes, “the temptation to think of human beings as bearers of purposes, with real powers of action intimately connected with these purposes, is extremely strong” (Dunn 2000: 267). Many explanations for why states are created (and other types of political outcome) rest too heavily on assumptions about the intentionality of political activity, the linearity of cause and effect, or the assertion (or recognition by the central government) of particular groups with real and definable interests in statehood. They neglect the shorter-term interests and judgments which dominate the field of political action.

It may be objected that the analysis presented here overlooks regional cultural and/ or historical identities, or the local political, economic context, as factors which give rise to demands for statehood (and opposition to it). In other words, my focus on the politics of statehood risks foregrounding the very pursuit of interest and instrumentality that I have sought to problematise. There is the risk of simply replacing the end goal of statehood with a shorter-term set of goals or interests in explaining the motivation of politicians in making demands for statehood. The debate then risks becoming one about identifying the “real” interests that lie behind political action, be they short- or longterm in their horizons. The attempt here, however, has not been to downplay culture or political economy as explanations for the origins of particular demands for statehood. Rather I have sought to examine why, given such origins or possible rationales for statehood, so much engagement in debates about statehood by politicians appears to be fickle and lacking in a serious “politics of intent”.

The central government intervention in the debate about Telangana has meant that regional politicians have become less able to discount the future, and instead have begun to engage with somewhat greater intent. This has also meant that opposition to state creation has also become vocal. The new situation, however, calls for a politics of vision: an ability to articulate long-term goals, and act in ways that make it more likely they will be achieved. It is unclear whether parties have such a vision, partly because they are so accustomed to playing a shorter term game in which statehood demands are kept alive but not seriously addressed in political debate. And by contrast, in other parts of India, statehood debates continue to bear all the hallmarks of a lack of intent. This helps to explain the growing calls for a second States Reorganisation Commission or assessment by the central government of the rationale for smaller states. After all, India has – by some distance – by far the smallest number of states per capita population of any federal system in the world. Any such move towards a more substantive engagement in the question by the central government would infuse the politics of statehood with a stronger degree of intentionality. But it may also have the consequence of making such a politics more divisive.

Notes

1 On adherence to this informal principle in the 1950s and 1960s see P Brass (1974), Language, Religion and Politics in North India (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press).

2 For the classic statement of this view see S S Harrison (1960), India: The Most Dangerous Decades (Princeton UP: Oxford UP). On why this is no longer a preoccupation of elites at the centre see M Chadda (2002), “Integration through Internal Reorganisation: Containing Ethnic Conflict in India”, Ethnopolitics, 2(1): 44-61, E Mawdsley (2002), “Redrawing the Body Politic; Federalism, Regionalism and the Creation of New States in India”, The Journal of Commonwealth and Comparative Politics, 40(3): 34-54.

3 Alternatively, it is sometimes suggested by political observers that agitations are only “performed” for the media.

4 It would, however, perhaps be surprising if such considerations were ever absent in demands for statehood.

5 This might be seen as one among a number of “post-clientelist” strategies used by state-level politicians, an idea set out by J Manor (2006), “The Changing Character of the Indian State”, Waheeduddin Khan Memorial Lecture, Centre for Economic and Social Studies, Hyderabad. On similar lines, Pratap Bhanu Mehta notes that given the constraints on politicians in adopting longterm horizons (because spending on schools and hospitals for instance does not yield immediately visible benefits), politicians tend to be searching for methods to consolidate constituencies either through the use of short-term handouts or on the basis of symbolic issues (often identity-based) that can bind potential blocks of voters. P B Mehta (2003), The Burden of Democracy (New Delhi; New York, NY: Penguin Books), p 159.

6 Interview in Srinagar, Uttarakhand, 3 May 2007. 7 See, for instance, “Is KCR Riding a Tiger?”, Times of India (Hyderabad), 7 December 2009. This editorial was written at the time KCR was undertaking a hunger-strike to push a demand for Telangana. 8 The TRS was set up by KCR after he left the TDP in 2001 in protest at his demotion from cabinet by Chief Minister Chandrababu Naidu. 9 “Pawar Adds Punch to Vidarbha Plan”, The Economic Times, Mumbai, 15 September 2003; “Pawar Ready to Back Vidarbha Statehood”, Times of India, 15 September 2003. 10 http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/south_asia/ 8429354.stm. Minutes of a meeting of floor leaders of political parties in the Andhra Pradesh Legislative Assembly on 7 December 2009 indicate that all parties, except the CPM and Majlis Ittehad e-Musaleem, offered their support if a resolution on statehood be introduced. But these commitments were never tested with the introduction of a resolution in the legislative assembly. Thanks to Gautam Pingle for sharing his notes entitled, “What the Srikrishna Committee Did Not Consider”.

References

Brass, P (1974): Language, Religion and Politics in North India (Cambridge University Press: Cambridge).

Chadda, M (2002): “Integration through Internal Reorganisation: Containing Ethnic Conflict in India”, Ethnopolitics, 2(1): 44-61.

Dunn, J (2000): The Cunning of Unreason: Making Sense of Politics (New York: Basic Books).

Harrison, S S (1960): India: The Most Dangerous Decades (Princeton UP: Oxford UP).

Manor, J (2006): “The Changing Character of the Indian State”, Waheeduddin Khan Memorial Lecture (Hyderabad: Centre for Economic and Social Studies).

Mawdsley, E (2002): “Redrawing the Body Politic; Federalism, Regionalism and the Creation of New States in India”, The Journal of Commonwealth and Comparative Politics, 40(3): 34-54.

Mehta, P B (2003): The Burden of Democracy (New Delhi, New York, NY: Penguin Books).

Weber, M, P Lassman, et al (1994): Weber: Political Writings (Cambridge, New York: Cambridge University Press).

Yadav, Y (2011): “Decline of Political Judgment” Seminar, 617.

Yadav, Y and S Palshikar (2008): “Ten Theses on State Politics in India”, Seminar, 591.

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