Friday, September 14, 2012

An interesting article on A.P.

During one of the several agitations about Telangana, there were several articles suggesting that democratic representation and efficiency should be criteria for new states rather than sub-nationalism. Then there was Srikrishna report recommending status quo with some more guarantees for the various regions. But the movement has not died down. A recent article by Dr. G. Vijay of University of Hyderabad describes cornering of wealth from elites of other regions and obstructions to further development by concentrating on short time again. He seems to suggest that since the Telangana movement is a popular movement in which many marginalized people took part, once the state is formed, there are possibilities of more equitable development. Perhaps, as one the earlier articles suggested:
"... we see that an increase in regional consciousness at the sub-state level would be equivalent to an increase in the cost of managing intra-state diversity and may suggest that the optimal size of states is becoming smaller.  As states get more involved in large-scale social protection programmes like the NREGA and RSBY, it may be desirable to increase investment in state capacity to deliver services effectively and one way of doing this may be to create new state administrations with more manageable jurisdictions. Smaller states can also experiment more easily with innovations in governance and service delivery, which can be replicated across states if found to be successful.   "
Perhaps, one can even think of these possibilities starting with A.P.   even three to four states in place of the current state of A.P.?

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