However, a place at the big table comes at a price. Thus, the sine qua non for being a trusted lynchpin in the Washington consensus based model for the new century is to be at home with the idea of being part of a global power elite, with trading vital national interests and bandying information being a standard method of operation. Nevertheless, this can have a huge blowback in the nations the comprador elite inhabit, as the recent uproar in the Indian parliament clearly demonstrates. This article will investigate the wider implications of an alleged comment attributed to the Union Home Minister P Chidambaram, that was perceived to be particularly egregious, leading to calls for his resignation from a wide spectrum of the opposition – especially from the cow-belt.

According to the cables, in 2009, Chidambaram commented to Timothy Roemer, the United States ambassador to India, that higher growth rates in India could be achieved “if it were the south and west only,' and that 'the rest of the country held it back'. By implication, ‘the rest’ would mean the north and the east of India. What is all the more interesting is the sense of the word ‘it’ – the idea that the majority of the population, presumably factitious and unproductive and belonging to the ‘rest’ of the country, was holding the productive minority back from launching into the big league. The extreme lack of rootedness and clearly disparaging attitude that such lines betray are highly unfortunate, especially, wherein whole peoples and their abodes come to be conceived as surplus production units by the GDPwallas. In fact, Chidambaram is on the record with his fantastical statement: “My vision is to get 85 percent of India into cities”. With such a vision, of transforming Indian heartlands into globalised urban utopias, which would in turn act as the extended theatres of Washington-friendly politics, doing the rounds at the helm of Indian national politics, it definitely has the potential to cause incremental social unrest and destroy certain compacts, which for good or for bad, have been an important basis of the Indian Union.

The alleged statement by Chidambaram touches a rather raw nerve in the large sections of the cow-belt, especially those who champion the cause of peoples of Hindi dialects. The Hindi issue, till recently, was a political plank of the socialist formations in the cow-belt, and going by the characters who were the shrillest in condemnation of the Home Minister’s irresponsible and highly biased comment, one does see those forgotten political contours re-emerging in a rare moment of solidarity among the various factions of the erstwhile cow-belt socialists – spanning from the Samajwadi Party, the Rashtriya Janata Dal to the Janata Dal (United). The Bharatiya Janata Party, with its core constituency in the cow-belt, was active too. Political leadership has mostly chosen to not open the can of worms along a North-South divide, and for this, credit is partly due to the politicians of the BIMARU states. There are serious divisions in opinion about the nature of power sharing compacts in the Indian Union. The centre-state relationships in the union as well as the relationship between the North and the South, in terms of power leveraging at the centre, is, at the end of the day, pegged to the parliamentary representation of these zones in the Union parliament. At present, the basis of such representation is that of the 1971 census. Article 81 and 82 and the 42nd constitutional amendment (1976) essentially froze the North-South power relations at 1971 population levels. By the 96th constitutional amendment (2003) extended the 1971 scenario till 2026. Until that time, territorial constituencies, in the Lok Sabha with regard to the number of seats allocated to each state, cannot be altered. The 96th constitutional amendment bill was passed with opposition support, including the cow-belt socialists who were politically more influential in 2003. It was a BJP government in centre, the Janata Dal (United) being the second largest faction of the ruling coalition and Samajwadi Party being the 5th largest party in parliament with 26 seats.

It is important to note the implications of this for the BIMARU states. Population changes between 1971 and 2001 have thrown up newer demographic realities. If parliamentary constituencies were allocated to states in proportion with 2001 census figures, all the BIMARU states stand to gain seats, even after adjusting for cleavage of some of the states in the meantime - Uttar Pradesh (adjusting for Uttarakhand): 6, Rajasthan: 4, Bihar (adjusting for Jharkhand): 3 and Madhya Pradesh (adjusting for Chhattisgarh): 2. This means that in the present parliamentary representation, the BIMARU states are underrepresented by 15 seats – not a small number at all. This also leads to a democratic deficit when the population and representation start having an asymmetric relationship. This scenario of events will continue till 2026. By that time, the skew or the under-representation of the BIMARU states will be more acute, possibly between 25-30 seats, if the present population growth rates are any indicator.

In 2026, if parliamentary representation is brought in line to population proportions according to the 2021 census, we are looking at an adjustment of 25-30 seats in favour of he BIMARU states. The fallout of this shift would depend on the political climate vis-a-vis North-South relationship at that point. Admittedly quiescent in recent years, the nature of North-South relationship has the potential to become tenuous in the face of such a huge shift in power equations in the Indian Union centre. It is in this context that alleged comments made to the US Ambassador have the potential of waking up a sleeping beast. If such antagonisms develop, the Southern states would feel being victimized and squeezed out of resources and power leveraging for having done a better job at population control. We have already heard such grumblings on issues of central resource allocation to states. The Home Minister will do well to remember the Dravida Nadu movement in his own state. That project’s present political nonviability does not predict its future when population truths, however bitter, will hit home. While he might want 85 percent people to be rootless and bereft of sub-national identities, fanning GDP numbers in the cities by then, the tapestry of human plurality of India is much more resilient than urban-industrial fantasies of nothing-but-Indians. That tapestry has numerous untied ends. Chidambaram can choose to pull them at his own peril. (IPA Service)