From Indias largest newsroom, I'm Arun George and this is the
Times of India podcast. In this election, a major issue
in some states has been that of delimitation.
Essentially, it's the process which decides how many
representatives each state sends to parliament and how
parliamentary constituencies are drawn.
By bringing back this episode we'd released earlier in which
we'd spoken with Doctor Jay Prakash Narayan about the need
for delimitation. Doctor Jay Prakash Narayan is a
former civil servant who founded the Lok SATA party in an attempt
to make politics more accessible in the country.
The process of delimitation is seeing a lot of political
debate, despite the fact that it's not going to be done before
2026. A lot of the southern states in
India are worried that the process of delimitation would
reduce the number of MPs the states sent to Parliament.
It's also feared it will reduce the funds received by states in
the South from the central government.
In today's episode, Doctor Jayaprakash Narayan is in
conversation with my colleague Alka Dukar and me about the
process of delimitation and the need to conduct it.
He also explains why it hasn't been conducted since 1976 and
how it can be done without increasing the political
temperature. What is the delimitation
exercise and why it is needed? Every democratic country has the
constituencies for the election to legislature based on
population. After all, the basic principle
is one person, one vote, so equitable vote, whether I'm rich
or poor, one human being must have roughly the same political
power in terms of voice and voting as another human being.
And our Constitution also clearly provided for
redistribution or delimitation as we call it, of constituencies
based on population. Every 10 years, the Constitution
said a the number of Lok Sabha seats allocated to a state shall
be as closely as possible in proportion to the population of
the state based on the latest census.
And after every census, you must conduct this exercise so that
the number of seats are allocated to a state 1st and as
far as practicable. The second thing the
Constitution said is that once the number is allocated, the sea
service redistributed every 10 years.
Because not only do you require redistribution because
allocation changes from state to state for the Lok Sabha every 10
years, but within a state the population changes within the
ten years. We know in large pockets of the
country increasingly now the rural population is declining at
least where the birth rates are coming down.
Urban population is increasing, therefore delimitation within
the state also. And that happened after 1951
census. It happened after 61 census.
After 71 census, 3 delimitation commissioners worked on this and
everything went off very well. Then came the constitutional
amendment in 1976. It was in 1976 that it was
decided to freeze the Lok Sabha constituencies as they stood at
the time. In 2001, the Atal Bihari
Vajpayee government also decided to keep the constituencies as
they were. Doctor Jayaprakash Narayan
explains the role he played in that and why the government
decided to keep the decision on hold for another 20-5 years.
He admits it's difficult to judge whether the decision to
put it on hold in 1976 was a good one or a bad one, But he
says as far as he knows, there was no Malified intent.
Then Prime Minister Mrs. Indira Gandhi seemed to have genuinely
believed that you must not create perverse incentives for
population increase to punish states which have been able to
contain the population Growth will be reopened.
Only in 2001, they said they thought 20 fives was a long
time. Then 2001 came.
Vajpayee government was in office.
Then some of us particularly later KC Siva Ramakrishnam, the
former Secretary Government of India in Urban Development and
I, we took the initiative because we sensed it that this
is coming and unless we handle it well there will be political
challenges. So we appeal to the government
to allow status quo to continue. Whether it was a good judgement
or not, I cannot say. Well at that point in time we
felt the country was politically somewhat unstable.
If you remember the Watchpay government did not have very
great majority multi party coalition and the economy was
just then they were trying to recover from the difficulties
faced Pocuran explosion, led to sanctions etcetera, therefore
the economy. We are just not then trying to
get back on our feet. And if we reopen this Pandora's
box, the fear was that it will consume all our energy, it will
hurt the economy and the country and the political stability.
And that argument, they bought it and therefore they said the
numbers will be frozen for another 25 years.
We kicked the can down the road. Honestly, I thought 25 years is
a long time. We will see what will happen
then, little knowing that 25 years passes by very fast.
And now we are saddled with that again in 2026.
The normal process is that each person in a democracy will have
roughly equal weightage in terms of the vote or in terms of
representation. Therefore, you cannot really
have any strong argument against going back to the redistribution
based on the census data, so in. Nutshell, are you suggesting
that the North-south divide, which will happen based on
population, is unavoidable? One day or other, we have to
face it when demographic differences are there and they
also accompany economic disparities.
May take Bihar. Bihar has roughly 1/4 of the per
capita income of the better off states like Maharashtra or Tamil
Nadu or Karnataka. Just to clarify, the per capita
income is the income earned by each person in the state.
This is calculated by dividing the state's income by the number
of people living in it. And Bihar is not a tiny state
with a million population. It's a state with the, I don't
know, the current population, but probably about 10,00,00,000.
And normally what happens in countries where migration is
very common within the country, like United States, many more
people tend to migrate within the country than other
countries. There's far greater migration
than India. So migration addresses the
challenges. And also after a certain level
of development, population actually is an asset.
Therefore, more people migrating into the area actually
stimulates economic growth. We're not there yet and
migration does take place in India.
But migration still is relatively not very large in
India from state to state, while it is taking place more than an
hour before. Therefore, that does not
automatically address the demographic problem.
And without addressing the demographic problem and the
political representation, I don't think we can go far.
Southern states like Tamil Nadu haven't quite welcomed the
delimitation exercise. They have called it the
political conspiracy to lower the political representation of
South India. The fear that they have
controlled the population and that's why they will be
punished. How the fear should be handled?
Every state the birth rates are coming down.
Some states are ahead of other states.
Even Bihar which has the highest birth rate.
In India, there's a an expression called fertility
rate. That means the number of
children a woman based during her reproductive life.
Bihar used to be 4 some 1520 years ago.
Now I think Bihar is close to three every state.
The birth rates are declining and fertility rates are
declining. First, I want us to all
understand this panic that my God population is growing out of
control. What will happen is not true.
It's just that some states, because of historical, political
and economic reasons, there have been a little ahead of the call.
But every state is following certain every segment of
population. The rich and the poor, the urban
and the rural, the Hindu and the Muslim and the Christian and
upper caste and the poorer caste.
Every segment of the population, the birth rates and fertility
rates are declining. The 2nd is it's unfair to say
that representation in proportion to population is
political conspiracy. Every country worth mentioning
that the democracy has the same principle.
We adopted the same principal as part of the Constitution.
I don't think that Ambedkar and the Constitution makers indulged
in a deliberate conspiracy to hurt all of us.
Freedom fighters were very learned people.
They were fully aware and yet they had the delimitation based
on census every 10 years. We cannot call it a conspiracy.
Unity of India is paramount in my view.
Unity is critical for order and peace and harmony in society.
We don't have a record of peacefully coexisting as
separate political entities, even a state division, Andhra
Pradesh and Telangana. There was so much of A strife,
only now people are, you know, trying to forget the what
happened. Even now some people feel very
strongly. So we are very volatile.
Therefore, unity to me is the most paramount consideration
because without unity and order in society, there cannot be
economic growth and there cannot be freedom.
And I think all of us must pause a little bit and stop using the
rhetoric. That is a conspiracy.
It's not a conspiracy. Yes, a negotiation is necessary.
Yes, some kind of adjustment is necessary.
In the 1960s, when there were attempts to impose Hindi and the
whole country Tamil Nadu heroically resistant And I think
India's unity was safeguarded because of the wisdom of the
political leadership of the country by ensuring that while
Hindi with the national language, English will continue
to the link language of India and the national language as
long as people of India want that peace forever.
So we require that kind of a negotiation and compromise,
keeping in mind the unity of India, rather than use a very
explosive rhetoric. So, in your opinion, what are
the ways or what are the negotiations that should take
place to avoid the North-south divide?
Population control and population representation in
today's political culture has become the centre stage of the
controversy. Some states, if you take the
current number of Lok Sabha and if you redistribute that in
proportion to the population currently, some states will lose
a significant number of representatives.
Tamil Nadu and Kerala. Most of all, my ballpark number
is Kerala out of 20, may lose about 6:00 or so.
Tamil Nadu out of 39 may lose 8 or 9 other states.
There will be relatively minor adjustments.
States like Maharashtra where they are prosperous and they
contain population because of in migration that may not make much
of a difference and states like UP and Bihar they will get a few
more representatives then they have currently.
So one easy way is can we maintain the minimum number
whatever the current number and therefore to the descent
increase the size of Lok Sabha. So first, there is no sense of
actual loss of constituencies and representation.
I think that's an easy one. I have a feeling that's already
being considered. That's why the new Parliament
premises actually provide for larger capacity, keeping in mind
a growing population and therefore the increasing members
of the Lok Sabha. The second thing is finances.
Everybody is worried about finances.
Now we have to begin practical. Bihar, as I said already, is has
1/4 of the per capita income of the better off states.
Now you cannot have one part of the country, a large part of the
country, suffering from extreme poverty and have prosperity and
peace in the rest of the country.
Unless we create conditions through federal transfer
resources to improve the infrastructure and provide basic
communities and services to every part of the country, all
of us will suffer. So can we look at the Finance
Commission redistribution in a manner that the genuine concerns
of the four states had addressed without the better off states
feeling that you're rewarding incompetence or profligacy?
That means can we have a better management of resources in in
every state in terms of the transferred money from Union
government, which actually goes only for the capital investment,
education, healthcare, infrastructure and service
delivery improvement? The third is migration.
India still is not seeing enough migration for a country of 1.4
billion people. I'm talking of internal
migration and migrants. Even when they exist, we must
now give them rights after there is some talk about you having
racial card everywhere. But I believe if you migrate for
work or anything, you are a citizen of India anywhere.
Therefore you must have the rights of citizenship, including
voting rights including public distribution, including all
welfare programs of the government.
If that is done, as more and more migration happens because
of economic compulsions, the demographic problems will not
appear to be big and southern states already are realising.
Without these migrant labourers from some of the more populous
states, many things in Bengaluru or Mumbai cannot get done today.
So instead of getting worked up about the interest rate
differences, we will recognise that we actually need the
migrant workers. Typically migrant workers.
Once they are dislocated and uprooted, they work harder, they
have dignity of labour, they don't suffer from prejudices
which are very typical in the local community and they are a
tremendous asset in the economy. So I think encouraging economic
migration within the country to all the development of the whole
country. And finally we can probably have
some kind of an adjustment in the upper house.
If lower house is strictly according to population, can we
have some kind of a satisfactory formula?
It's not going to be easy because we are extremely tiny
states like Sikkim and Mizoram and we have very large states
like UPUP is bigger than every country in the world save 3.
So we have to think very innovatively and figure out some
way of doing something, maybe in the upper house or at the very
least finally. We can give it ironclad
guarantee if necessary by a constitutional amendment so that
no states rights or state subjects or anything will be
affected on account of this division.
Therefore, if right now 2/3 is what is required to amend the
constitution in respect to those subjects, we can say we will go
for 4/5 or even more. That should not be a difficult
thing. So there are I think, ways that
there is goodwill all around. We can address these challenges.
But the most important question of getting the power, and you
have not touched it, but today who is in power is also
important and the whole fight is about that.
Also, if the MPs in northern part of India are going to
increase, that will change the balance.
Alka, the truth is in India. Northern India always dominated
the power structure in terms and numbers.
You take the prime ministers. There are a few prime ministers
in the South, like for instance Mr. PV Nasimha Rao and Mr. Deva
Gowda. But both were prime ministers by
accident, not by political strength.
In terms of real politic, the northern India will always have
dominance. In terms of the power structure
of the Union, there's nothing new.
Let's first accept it. If anything, the government
successively and all parties have been extraordinarily wise.
I know we blame them for many things that are wrong in giving
reasonable representation to the whole country in terms of the
cabinet formation, etcetera. And 3rd, the real government for
the people is the state. If you look at the elections,
for instance on the political behaviour, the electorate, most
people vote according to their perception of the state
government. That means power already has
shifted to the states. The ordinary people understand
the centre of gravity is now in states.
The national government is largely notional.
It's important, it's critical. But in terms of political
discourse, if you really don't have the English speaking
national media talking all the time about the power struggle in
Delhi, people actually are not bothered.
The Assembly constituency is the unit of politics in India and
the state government is the government that people judge
most of the time. And therefore strengthening
federalism and further localising government
decentralisation of government to the third tier, effectively
with accountability, will take away the opposition of national
power. Will actually make us focus on
what matters to our lives in terms of service, delivery,
education, healthcare, the park in front of your house, the road
or the OR the traffic jams and so on.
OK, fair enough. I don't completely agree with
you, but should we bifurcate States?
And could it help to keep away the north-south divide?
There is no way you can have states the size of 20 crores and
15 crores. Call them provinces.
They're too big. I remember making a presentation
to the Prime Minister, Rajiv Gandhi as a district magistrate,
I told him then, Mr. Prime Minister, district in India is
larger than half the nations of the world.
At the time, there were about 160 a 170 countries, about 80
countries were smaller than an average district of India.
I don't think the UP chief minister or chief secretary can
even suddenly name all the districts or name all the
members of parliament in their state or name all the district
magistrates in the in the state. So I think there is a case to to
have a moderate size. You know, I think we must have a
rule that five, five to seven crores.
But we must also make it very clear to our people.
The state identity must not be so incredibly polarizing that no
many people feel it's a matter of life or death, Particularly
because of linguistic reorganisation.
And given that, we must come to some agreement by which there
will be 0 difference in terms of our lives and there will be fair
redistribution of resources. As we have seen in
entrepreneurship, big city now goes to one part of the country,
one new state, the other states will feel often.
Therefore, we have to figure out a way in which those city
revenues for a final period can be actually shared by all, or
you can even have a completely different pattern of governance
for the big cities in the country.
So a lot of political negotiations required.
But I think the short answer is yes, we have many of our states
are too big and therefore smaller states, by common
consent, without upsetting the constitutional balance in terms
of English city organisations, etcetera, is both necessary and
welcome. And it will help the
delimitation exercise also in some way.
If the problem is beyond language you don't feel
culturally otherwise subjugated, then it's easier to have a more
rational public discourse and more peaceful resolution of
issues. What would you say in this
current scenario where you have, as you said, little room for
conciliation between the political parties and there is
also a very clear political divide in terms of which parties
in power and which isn't at the centre?
So how does that even go forward then?
Should maybe it again be kicked down the road for 25 years?
From purely from don't touch the applecart point of view, down
the right to man. Actually by that time I will not
be there. I'm sure 25 years later I will
not be answering these questions, So it's a very
tempting option. But two things.
One, whether you like it or not, when there is a majority stable
government at the national level whose political interest
probably will be better served by getting political weightage
in proportion to the population, because the regions where they
seem to have certain political strength, they are the ones
which probably will gain the political clout in terms of
numbers in the parliament. It's somewhat unrealistic to
expect. That the party in power will act
against self-interest. It is one thing I learnt in
life. It is that a reformer must never
argue with a political leader to hurt his own interests.
We must craft the agenda in such a manner that their own sense of
their political interest and our sense of the national interest,
they both coincide. That is when real results
happen. The second thing is one day
rather we have to grapple with this and luckily, particularly
in the last 25 years, for 30 years in India in particular,
but for broadly all over the world, we've learned that while
population is a huge challenge, human society, we are coming to
terms with that. In such a changing world, I
think we must address this intelligently and calmly, in an
unheary deliberation, rather than both sides between
apocalyptic, you know, one side we'll talk about democratic
rights and defy them. Another side we'll talk about
subjugation in term because of the minority, and punishment
because of population control. You can argue either way, but
that's not the issue. We have to find an answer we can
live with. That's the way I would like to
approach it. Given the timeline between now
and the proposed delimitation period is a very short one, what
do you expect to see happen? See, a lot depends on the wisdom
of the political leaders. It is not the people.
People of India are extremely sensible.
In my judgement, people of India are extremely conciliatory.
Accommodation, adjustment, coexistence, survival,
compromise. It's part of our blood.
It is politics that polarize us for their own gains.
Tribalize us and that creates, you know, yes or no, black or
white situation. So a lot depends on the wisdom
of the political leaders, particularly those in doubt at
the state or national level. If they recognise the interests
of their respective states is perfectly legitimate or
nationally, they have some point of perfectly legitimate.
But if they do it in a calm manner, based on evidence and
logic, and with an intention to resolve the issue rather than to
polarise the people, I think we can find a solution.
But if they deliberately provoke animosities and make it a very
loud and contentious issue, then all bets are off.
Doctor Jayaprakash Narayan says there is a validity to the
regional party's fears that they will not be consulted during the
delimitation process, especially the Modi government returns to
power after the 2024 polls. However, he does have some
advice for a BJP government if it does come to power again in
2024. My advice to the government
would be if anybody cares to listen, look, it's not in your
interest to polarize the country in this manner, particularly in
issues like this. Any issue polarisation is not in
your interest. But issues like this ultimately
will be difficult to your own political future.
If BJP has stakes in Karnataka, if BJP wants to grow in
Telangana, if BJP is now making some efforts, let's say in Tamil
Nadu, these are not states where you can write off, right?
So it's not in your interest to permanently marginalise
yourself. And two, you believe and I
believe you believe in the unity of India, your sense of
nationalism. While we may disagree on some
specifics, but we all want one thing and if BJP is genuinely
patriotic, then BJP must want unity of India.
So my advice to them would be plea in their interest not to
make it a polarising issue and to meet the the concerns of the
people who are worried about what might happen halfway and
reduce the temperature. Today's episode was produced by
Jayaraj Singh and Anuja Singh. For a daily spotlight on people,
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