Dividing a State

-Why it hurts most people   

True that it is the home I've known all my life: my memories, friendships, the places, the food, the culture and my way of life are all made there. But it has been several years since I left home to make a life of my own, and that makes nostalgia even more painful.

Having said that, I've seen and read enough of history- business and political- to understand that change is inevitable. In a time when families are turning nuclear, no wonder people would prefer smaller places to govern. As a digression, it pains me to point out that governance and the rulers these days are incompetent to manage large provinces. Come to think of it, we can’t trust such tremendous power in the hands of slobs who can’t look beyond the very short term.

The granting of a request for partitioning of a state would encourage many more similar (or much less-thought-out) petitions from agencies and persons with much ulterior motives. But this is the least of the problems. The problems, in my opinion, lie in the development policies adopted by the governments-central and state- over the past decades. For one, the decisions to direct investments in infrastructure to create one or a few metropolis instead of developing the very many tier-II cities led to concerns as diverse as congested roads and inadequate natural resources.

Why divert entire rivers from hundreds of miles away for providing drinking water, when you have the option of developing several decent urban centers right next to the river bank?

Why bring skilled manpower from far away when it makes much better business sense to shift the industry where the resources are?

Why let millions of tonnes of food supplies go waste in logistic inefficacy and yet fail to feed the migrant population?

Why set the course for a mass exodus into the ‘one’ first-world-like metropolis while the rest of the state is much worse than the third-world, so to say?

All these indicate a failure in strategy, operations and human resource management et al.- of epic proportions. Well, what else can we expect from people who spent their time in colleges doing everything else other than what they were supposed to do? (Innuendo intended)

This brings us round to the state division conundrum- if only there had been equitable distribution in providing amenities and improving the quality of life, if only there had been more ‘cities’ rather than one ‘metropolitan’, if only there had been industry and wealth creation mechanisms where people are willing to put in effort- there would be no petition for partitioning states. Because, in business terms, that would be an ‘unviable proposition with no arbitrage’- to the parties of interest. And if all someone wants is a new name, it would not matter at all to the others- since small is beautiful- and it would've been an easy divorce.

Mistakes of the past and of the present, would lead to a ruined future of a generation. And if those in power are too myopic to see this, they’d be ruling barren wastelands soon enough.

Well well, I'm off to find a new place to call 'home'...