South vs North and Inspiring Conversations
Reccos galore- books, podcasts and tv shows
Please give me a minute to whine about how I have not been reading lately. My life has been cycles of small bursts of satisfactory productivity followed by long spells of meaningless existence. Hopefully, this post helps me kick-start one of those tiny bursts of the satisfactorily productive phases of my life cycle. Okay, let us get this started.
Book Reccos
Sometimes, probably like most others, I get a feeling that I would agree with most of what the book is going to be about before I click the "buy now" button on Amazon. South vs North: The Great Divide is one such book. The title was reason enough for me to get the book.
I was not entirely wrong. As someone interested in federalism and States’ rights, one is more or less aware of the arguments that the book puts forward- and I strongly agree with those arguments. We will get to the them in a bit. But before that, there are two things that I hated about this book.
First, the third section of the book. From being practical and analytical in the first two sections, the third section felt like it was political fiction. In a political system where even marginal cession of power is unheard of, the author is fantasizing about "gamified direct democracy". To stress this point, I like to tell the story of CCA again and again. Turns out, CCA, a government body in Tamilnadu had demanded funds in the mid-60s. What is this CCA, one might wonder- It was something that was set up during the second world war to procure cigars for Churchill who was not able to procure his usual Cuban cigars due to an embargo. Churchill had found that cigars from Tamilnadu were the next best thing that he could get his hands on, thus CCA. The Allies won, Hitler shot himself, the Americans nuked two full cities, the Brits left India, and we wrote ourselves one fat constitution but still, CCA was not just merely existing but dared to demand funds. We come from a such rich tradition and nobody will suddenly be ready to try ‘experiments’ with power.
Change has to be marginal (sometimes marginal change is looked down upon by people. To my mind, marginal change is the only kind of change that is desirable). Something like getting back to the drawing board to relook at how Rajya Sabha seats are allocated between the states could be a starting point in solving at least some of the problems that the book talks about. Talking about some structure in some European countries was only off-putting, to say the least.
Secondly and more importantly, the tables. I cannot understand why none of the tables was sorted, in ascending or descending order. One had to spend at least a minute trying to understand the numbers and make sense of what the author is arguing. For a book with so many tables with important insights, the fact that they have not been ordered is just wasteful.
Now on to the good stuff.
The first two sections of the book describe India’s federal problem quite efficiently. The first section is a comparison between the northern ‘Hindi belt’ and the southern states on foundational development indicators like health, education and the market. As many would already know, the southern states outperform the northern states in these indicators. There could be many reasons for it, some of which the author explains in the book as well. But the argument that the author is primarily making, using basic data, is that there is no "one size fits all".
Every state is in a different development trajectory. Some have developed better than others-could be due to various historical, geographical and political reasons- and this warrants different sets of policies for a different set of states. Some states say Tamilnadu, might have a > 50 % enrollment ratio in territory education while in some other states, the same metric can be at < 10%. These two states cannot have the same policies.
The author also argues that the Union does not just hijack states' rights using the infamous centrally sponsored schemes (CCS) but also does it inefficiently. Apart from being inefficient, the bigger problem in the Union government introducing schemes and policies in matters relating to the states is that it confuses the public. Who is responsible for what? Is prime minister Modi responsible for building toilets across the nation? Obviously not. The PM office JD does not include building civil infrastructure. These are things that the State and the local governments are responsible for. If a voter is not clear on who is responsible for what, it creates a lacuna between power and accountability. One of the main reasons why elections have become only about abstract things is because we do not have not properly delineated power between the governments.
The second section of the book dwells deep into the problems facing the southern states. The most important of those is one of the 2026 delimitation and loss of political power.
A short context for people who might not be aware of the delimitation exercise- Parliamentary seats are allocated based on population. Currently, the number of seats has been frozen based on the 1970 census. This is because states which had brought their population under control could be punished as the percentage of seats they held would decrease. This means punishing good performers. But if seats are not allocated based on population, it no longer means that all votes are equal. Now, in 2026, the delimitation exercise is bound to happen and thereby the proportion of seats in the bad-performing states will increase. We are surely in a pickle and the author explains using data how the southern states have been punished just because their population is growing at a slower rate due to economical growth.
(While at it, in the middle, the author also talks about how Malthus and his theory of population explosion are proved right. I do not think this argument holds any merit. Every human is a resource and blaming the population for bad governance is as bad as the last season of game of thrones. )
The last thing I wanted to discuss is the revenue-sharing proportion between the Union and the states. The finance commission arrives at the formula to decide on what basis the revenues have to be shared. Apart from the fact that the southern states get very little to every one rupee compared to the northern states, the author points out two other interesting things.
One, as per the finance commission, the proportion of tax revenue to be shared with the states has been increased to 41%. But even with this raise, the total amount paid to the states did not see much increase. This is because the Union started increasing the proportion of cesses to the overall revenue (sometimes even in matters relating to the state) which they do not need to share with the states.
Second, the finance commission’s bad formulation of the horizontal distribution formula.
The proportion in which the states share the 41% of total revenue is also formulated by the finance commission. On the premise of not punishing the southern states for their declining population rates, the finance commission introduced a factor to take into account the good performance. However, the factor has been scaled as per the 2011 census. For example, imagine there are two states, one with a 100 population and the other with a 10 population. Even if the second state has a performance factor of 0.9 compared to 0.4 of the first state, the final score would be 40 vs 9. This puts the second state only at a disadvantage.
On the whole, I would recommend it to anyone interested in federalism and politics in general. That being said, I think everyone must at least try and skim through the book or just read the following book reviews to understand the basic arguments that the book espouses.
Links:
South vs North: The Great Divide: Apples and oranges from The Hindu
The Paradox of India's North-South Divide from Business Today
One last thing before I close- it must be said that even with all these comparisons between the north and south of India, the author does not resort to attacking the people in any way. This is a critique of the political system and governance structures and not of the people in any way. After all, we are all from the same country and we want the best for each other.
Podcast Reccos
Teesta Setalvad is an inspiration. Please listen.
Show Reccos
https://www.hotstar.com/in/tv/neeya-naana/1584/migrant-workers-vs-natives/1100082746
This week’s Neeya Naana is a banger.
Host Gopinath moderates an intense debate between migrant workers and the public. Later, writer Sa Balamurugan joins the show and shares his thoughts.
Go for the politics, you’ll stay for the stories.
That’s all folks.
Eat well. Drink water. Sleep well.
Until next time!
Written very well, surely checking the book.