Three new states bring Gandhi's vision nearer

Uttaranchal, India's 27th state, has come into being. Protesters swarmed across the podium where the chief minister, Nityanand Swami, was being sworn in on Thursday, and blows were exchanged. The cultural show planned to celebrate the new state's birth had to be scrapped.

Uttaranchal, India's 27th state, has come into being. Protesters swarmed across the podium where the chief minister, Nityanand Swami, was being sworn in on Thursday, and blows were exchanged. The cultural show planned to celebrate the new state's birth had to be scrapped.

An ominous start, or teething trouble? Uttaranchal, in the hilly north-west corner of Uttar Pradesh, the most populous state in India, contains some of the most beautiful country in northern India, as well as many of Hinduism's holiest sites.

The hill-dwellers have long felt unhappy under the thumb of the Uttar Pradesh plainsmen and, despite the friction, the creation of the state is the fulfilment of a dream. The next task was to find a generally acceptable site for the capital. Most of the protesters were unhappy about the (provisional) choice of Dehra Dun, considering it too close to sea level.

Uttaranchal's birth is being hailed by optimists as a vital move towards the breaking-up of India into more manageable and democratic units than those inherited from the Raj. Eleven days ago Chhatisgarh state was created from the south-east corner of Madhya Pradesh. Wednesday will see the creation of Jharkhand, from the southern half of Bihar.

Two of the three have been born from the political opportunism of the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), which heads India's ruling coalition, the National Democratic Alliance: the BJP has a majority of state legislators in both Uttaranchal and Jharkhand, and thus creates two useful new regional allies out of nowhere.

Yet many Indians feel the new states bring the hope of less corrupt administrations. As a leading politician in Madhya Pradesh put it: "While wishing Chhatisgarh a prosperous future, we should remember that its creation amounts to accepting the principle that smaller states mean better and faster development."

The birth of Jharkhand state brings to fruition a struggle going back 200 years. A large proportion of the population consists of animistic tribal people who were dominated first by the British and later by caste Hindus. Jharkhand has extraordinary mineral wealth and equally amazing levels of poverty and exploitation: coal, iron and copper are mined, but the local economy derives little benefit. In the new state, tribal people will constitute only 30 per cent of the population but at the very least their wishescan no longer be ignored.

India is still largely as it was when Britain sailed away 53 years ago. Vast states such as Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh were convenient for imperial administrators. But independent India's experience is that the gulf between a teeming and diverse electorate and its rulers gives great opportunity for corruption.

The first big rifts in the Indian map opened in the 1950s, when popular protests forced the slicing of several big states, notably Bombay and Madras, into linguistically homogeneous portions. The so-called Panchayat system of local government was created in 1959, giving villages a measure of control over their affairs. With the new states, the accountability of local politicians to their communities is being matched by the arrival of state legislators who will ignore the wishes of the masses at their peril. That, at least, is the idea.

All three states, however, inherit appalling problems. Uttaranchal has no economic base. Jharkhand has no infrastructure worthy of the name. Chhatisgarh was ceded gladly by Madhya Pradesh because it is infested with Naxalites, ultra-left guerrillas.

But for those who share Gandhi's vision of India as a patchwork of largely self-governing rural communities, the joy is sincere. "It is a real breakthrough," says Dr Prodipto Roy, a sociologist at the Council for Social Development in Delhi. "It is strange that the Hindu nationalists are giving the tribals back their land, but it is good that is happening. I don't think the last map of India has been drawn yet."