Penalty for population control: Will delimitation silence South India?

Tamil Nadu elections are due in May next year and M K Stalin, 72, Chief Minister is already waging a campaign focusing on the spectre of North Indian domination via the contentious process of delimitation and supremacy sought for the Hindi language.Stalin, in the tradition of his father M Karunanidhi, screenwriter and the founder of the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK), India’s oldest regional political party, dramatically asked the Tamils to have more children to presumably ensure that their state did not lose out when more seats were carved out in the delimitation process.The theory goes like this: the South which has done well to adhere to low population growth will be penalised as the Lok Sabha seats of the North Indian states which already outnumber the South will increase after delimitation of existing constituencies.Delimitation involves redefining the boundaries of parliamentary and state assembly constituencies to account for demographic change. The process ensures that the electoral representation aligns with population shifts and also determines the status of the seats reserved for scheduled castes and tribes. Winners are losersIt appears unfair on the face of it as states such as Tamil Nadu are literally being punished for progress in population control because if delimitation is conducted post-2026. TN which currently has 39 Lok Sabha seats could potentially lose eight of them while the maximum gains will be made by Uttar Pradesh and Bihar which have been laggards in economic and other indices and seen huge growth in population.Stalin says “two scenarios either the redistribution of the current 543 Lok Sabha seats or increasing the total number of seats to 800. Under both the south which has controlled its population growth would lose out if the allocation is purely population-based”. Stalin says “This will suppress Tamil Nadu’s voice in the national political arena, you will effectively punish us for contributing significantly to national development” Star performers The South of India that is the states of Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, Kerala Andhra Pradesh and Telangana significantly outperform the other states of India. After the 1991 reforms, the southern states grasped the opportunity and emerged as “star performers”. In fact, in 2023/24 these states accounted for over 30 percent of India’s GDP. Tamil Nadu is India’s most advanced manufacturing state while Kerala can boast of universal literacy. The South significantly outperforms the North in economic indices, health and education.The North of India is much poorer in all these indices but, has the numbers and this asymmetry is only growing rapidly leading to huge resentment from the South who feel that they are burdened by the bad decision-making and lack of development of North India. The great divideJust consider one figure Kerala’s infant mortality rate is now within striking distance of the rate in the United States while in Madhya Pradesh the rate is closer to Afghanistan and war-torn Niger.Interestingly Karnataka contributes ₹ 2.12 rupees to central government taxes for each rupee it receives from New Delhi. Uttar Pradesh, India’s most populated state, contributes only ₹ 0.56 rupees to the consolidated fund of India for each rupee it receives. The southern leaders now nurse a resentment that they are “subsidising the north of India” as a southern state CM told me.I spoke to six leaders from across India for this column and the great divide is clear and growing. The other issue that chafes the south is what they view as “Hindi imposition” or as veteran Tamil superstar Kamalahasan put it they “don’t want India they want Hindia”.The three-language formula which envisages Hindi being taught alongside English and the mother tongue has also been heavily criticised in the South. Cracking the south code The BJP which is overwhelmingly in power in the north of India and has unitary impulse under the three-term Prime Minister, Narendra Modi has been unable to crack the political code of the south except for Karnataka. Regional party leaders currently using the sub-nationalism plank say that the BJP clearly wants to reward those who vote for it and hence the central government discriminates against the southern part of India.Despite the huge element of hyperbole, it is a compelling story. People in the south learn Hindi if they want to work in North India because Hindi has a huge cultural capital and is widely used even in cities like Mumbai and Gandhinagar. However, several North Indians who work in the technology capital of India Bengaluru feel they have no reason to learn Kannada and huge instances of spats with local resentment spilling over are detailed regularly in mainstream and social media with regular clashes between “outsiders” who refuse to learn the local language and the zealous locals upset with this “attitude problem”.All this is being whipped up in a potent brew to fuel the electoral campaigns and ambitions of both sides of the great divide.Lost somewhere in this identity struggle is the original spirit of our Constitution “We the people of India”..Swati Chaturvedi is an award-winning journalist and author of ‘I Am a Troll: Inside the Secret World of the BJP’s Digital Army’.