ashok321
ELITE MEMBER
- Joined
- Nov 1, 2010
- Messages
- 17,942
- Reaction score
- 4
- Country
- Location
Rising tempers in the South may soon put Modi exactly where he didn't want to be
It has been 53 years since violent anti-Hindi protests convulsed Madras State (renamed Tamil Nadu in 1969). The aversion to Hindi is nowhere near as virulent now, with the language being taught in schools in the state, and more and more locals, at least in big cities, becoming somewhat familiar with it, thanks to interactions with migrants from the North. But Hindi still hits a raw nerve, as has been made clear in recent years.
It happened in 2014, when political parties in Tamil Nadu opposed the Home Ministry’s directive to bureaucrats to use Hindi on the government’s official social media accounts. Something similar happened a year ago, when Hindi reportedly replaced English on national highway milestones. The hashtag #StopHindiChauvinisim trended on Twitter. Tamil Nadu’s neighbour Karnataka is also prone to bristling at the use of Hindi on signages. In July 2017, pro-Kannada activists defaced Hindi signs at Bengaluru metro stations, forcing Chief Minister Siddaramaiah to write to the Urban Affairs Ministry to waive its three-language rule on the metro. (The Bengaluru metro project is a joint venture between Central and state governments.)
The anti-Hindi agitations are anti-Delhi and anti-Centre, not necessarily against north India, says Narendar Pani, professor at the National Institute of Advanced Studies in Bengaluru. “The anti-Hindi agitation can also become anti-Malayalam or anti-Tamil, depending on where you are.” If there were murmurs of a disconnect between the North and the South following these incidents, they have only become louder lately with the controversy over the 15th Finance Commission.
Where’s the Money?
The finance ministers of Kerala, Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka and Puducherry met in Thiruvananthapuram on April 10 to express their displeasure over a crucial change in the 15th Finance Commission.
(Tamil Nadu and Telangana finance ministers did not attend.) Instead of using the 1971 population data to determine states’ share of tax receipts, the 15th Finance Commission shall use 2011 Census figures. This, the states say, leads to a loss of revenue for them and the commission is punishing them for their population control efforts relative to other states. For instance, Kerala’s population growth between 1971 and 2011 is only a third of Rajasthan’s, and Tamil Nadu’s growth is less than half of Haryana’s.
The 14th Finance Commission was the first to use the 2011 Census, giving it a 10% weightage compared with 17.5% for the 1971 Census. The 15th Finance Commission, on the other hand, does not take into account the 1971 Census at all. Thomas Isaac, finance minister of Left Front-ruled Kerala, says the Bharatiya Janata Party, which heads a coalition government at the Centre, does not believe in diversity or in federalism. “It is using this opportunity to further centralise the governance structure in India. It is undemocratic.” He questions the Finance Commission’s proposal to consider states’ expenditure on “populist” measures.
Another criterion is states’ implementation of the Centre’s flagship schemes. “There has been a trend to impose more conditionalities on the state, forcing the Centre’s vision of development on states.” (See “BJP Doesn’t Believe in Diversity or Federalism”) Rajeev Gowda, academic and Congress MP in Rajya Sabha from Karnataka, concurs. “Every state has its own schemes as well as central schemes. So why should we be ranked on the basis of implementation of central schemes?” EAS Sarma, a former Union finance secretary, believes the spirit of cooperative federalism has been violated. “The very fact that there has been no consultation is the problem.” The BJP is not in power in any of the southern states, and Karnataka is the only state it has ruled in the past (it was a junior partner in the ruling coalition in Andhra Pradesh).
Prime Minister Narendra Modi has termed these criticisms baseless and said that the Union government has suggested incentivising states that have controlled population growth.
But Isaac is not convinced: “The incentives the PM is talking about... would altogether add 2-3% to the whole award. How can this compensate for the loss that certain states are going to face if the base year is shifted? He is trying to mislead the country.” Isaac says the southern finance ministers are planning to meet again in Vijayawada on May 6, hopefully joined by representatives from West Bengal, Odisha, Punjab and Delhi.
More Autonomy
In March, Siddaramaiah wrote a long Facebook post, pushing for more autonomy for states. “From a union of states, we are evolving into a federation of states. Therefore, I don’t think the demands for greater federal autonomy and recognition of regional identity are inconsistent with our nation.”
He went on to add that the southern states are subsidising the north. “Six states south of the Vindhyas contribute more taxes and get less. For example, for every one rupee of tax contributed by Uttar Pradesh that state receives Rs 1.79. For every one rupee of tax contributed by Karnataka, the state receives Rs 0.47.”
Siddaramaiah also referred to his government’s move to have a separate flag for the state, which has led many to question the motive. But Gowda finds no reason for alarm. “We are not secessionist. It’s just that we want to celebrate our culture and language. We can be proud Kannadigas and proud Indians at the same time.”
In the same month, Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) working president MK Stalin said that he hoped that the southern states join hands to demand autonomy for a Dravida Nadu. Shiv Visvanathan, professor at the Jindal Global Law School, does not see this as an attempt to secede. “It is a demand for a new kind of distancing in federalism.” The DMK, in its initial years, had called for a separate state, a demand it subsequently gave up.
Another instance of a southern state crying foul about unfair treatment by the Centre is Andhra which is piqued about not getting special category status (SCS), which was promised when erstwhile Andhra Pradesh was bifurcated in 2014, when the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance was in power. Andhra CM Chandrababu Naidu recently pulled his Telugu Desam Party out of the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance over this issue. Between 1969 and 2010, 11 states were granted SCS, which considered factors such as economic backwardness, hilly terrain and low population density. But the NDA government has repeatedly referred to the 14th Finance Commission’s recommendation to do away with SCS — which meant grants from the Centre and tax concessions — and replace it with revenue-deficit grants.
The government has promised Andhra a special package equivalent to SCS, but with Naidu’s opponent, YS Jagan Mohan Reddy, gaining political capital out of the issue, Naidu had no option but to pull out of the NDA, keeping next year’s assembly election in mind.
Another state election has aggravated Tamil anger in the Cauvery issue. The Modi government has failed to form the Cauvery Water Management Board, as mandated by the Supreme Court in its February verdict on the sharing of Cauvery waters between Karnataka and Tamil Nadu (Kerala and Puducherry are the other riparian states). The Centre sought three more months from the apex court, citing the Karnataka assembly election, which is to be held on May 12. But the Centre was later reprimanded by the Supreme Court for missing the March 29 deadline and was asked to submit a plan by May 3.
The agitation by Tamil Nadu’s opposition parties over the Cauvery issue is gathering steam; Marumalarchi Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (MDMK) leader Vaiko’s nephew died of self-immolation. The protests have led to the Indian Premier League matches being moved out of Chennai.
Maalan V Narayanan, a senior journalist in Chennai, believes the latest Cauvery protests are interesting as “Karnataka has not come into the picture. It’s an anti-Centre agitation”. Narayanan adds that while the anti-Hindi cause is still taken up by some fringe Tamil nationalist parties, it is no longer part of the mainstream discourse. However, he says, there is a perception that the Centre is ruling by proxy in Tamil Nadu through its influence over the ruling All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (AIADMK).
Deputy Chief Minister O Panneerselvam has admitted that he merged his breakaway group with the ruling faction of AIADMK on Modi’s advice. AIADMK has been in flux since its chief J Jayalalithaa’s death in December 2016. TTK Dhinakaran, the nephew of Jayalalithaa’s jailed acolyte VK Sasikala, has floated a new party after winning the bypoll to the assembly constituency represented by Jayalalithaa.
The BJP, a non-entity in Tamil Nadu, has been trying to capitalise on the political vacuum in the state left by Jayalalithaa’s passing, and her rival and DMK chief M Karunanidhi’s dotage. “The BJP wants a single religion and a single cultural entity, which we are against,” says DMK spokesperson TKS Elangovan. Sarma believes the acceptance in the South of cultural elements from outside the region has to be organic, as has happened with Hindi through the popularity of Bollywood movies.
If the BJP has not endeared itself to voters in Tamil Nadu with the AIADMK fiasco, its national secretary H Raja’s comments have only made things worse. In October 2017, he launched an attack on actor Vijay after the latter’s character in the film Mersal criticised the goods and services tax. Raja said the actor is a Christian and the film was a hate campaign against Modi.
Last month Raja again stirred up a hornets’ nest when he called for “caste fanatic” EV Ramasamy’s statues to be demolished. Ramasamy, or Periyar as he is better known, was the founder of the Self-Respect Movement, to which both the DMK and AIADMK trace their origins. After Raja’s Facebook post, two men were held for vandalising a Periyar statue in Vellore, near Chennai. Earlier this week, Raja was in the news for insinuating on Twitter that Kanimozhi is Karunanidhi’s illegitimate daughter. Raja did not respond to ET Magazine’s calls and messages. The BJP has also been trying to bolster its presence in Kerala, where it managed to have its first ever MLA elected in the 2016 election. But in May 2017, when the Centre banned the sale of cattle for slaughter at animal markets, there were “beef protests” in Kerala and Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan wrote to Modi, saying the move was “against the principles of federalism and secularism”.
PS Sreedharan Pillai, former president of the BJP in Kerala, terms the state government’s opposition to the ToR a political move. “In Kerala, there is a mania (among the Left) against the BJP. Cordial relationship between the Centre and states is the need of the hour.” He says the opposition to cattle slaughter ban, too, was politically motivated. “For the sake of power, they are creating apprehension among minorities.”
South vs Centre
In these cases, it is not as much a divide between the South and the North as it is between the southern states and the Union government or between the states and the BJP. Visvanathan feels the divide is partly rhetorical because politicians realise the mobilising power of such sloganeering.
Even if the states find common cause against the Centre, expecting them to put up a united front is unrealistic. The absence of Telangana and Tamil Nadu at the finance ministers’ meeting in Thiruvananthapuram was a case in point. Moreover, Tamil Nadu and Karnataka have been at loggerheads for a long time on the Cauvery issue. So have Tamil Nadu and Kerala been on the Mullaperiyar dam on the Periyar river. Similarly, Andhra and Telangana are locked in a dispute over sharing the Krishna waters.
Regardless of whether there is reason to suggest an actual North-South divide, the friction between the southern states and the Centre will continue, exacerbated by the BJP’s rise, if at all, in states other than Karnataka.
It has been 53 years since violent anti-Hindi protests convulsed Madras State (renamed Tamil Nadu in 1969). The aversion to Hindi is nowhere near as virulent now, with the language being taught in schools in the state, and more and more locals, at least in big cities, becoming somewhat familiar with it, thanks to interactions with migrants from the North. But Hindi still hits a raw nerve, as has been made clear in recent years.
It happened in 2014, when political parties in Tamil Nadu opposed the Home Ministry’s directive to bureaucrats to use Hindi on the government’s official social media accounts. Something similar happened a year ago, when Hindi reportedly replaced English on national highway milestones. The hashtag #StopHindiChauvinisim trended on Twitter. Tamil Nadu’s neighbour Karnataka is also prone to bristling at the use of Hindi on signages. In July 2017, pro-Kannada activists defaced Hindi signs at Bengaluru metro stations, forcing Chief Minister Siddaramaiah to write to the Urban Affairs Ministry to waive its three-language rule on the metro. (The Bengaluru metro project is a joint venture between Central and state governments.)
The anti-Hindi agitations are anti-Delhi and anti-Centre, not necessarily against north India, says Narendar Pani, professor at the National Institute of Advanced Studies in Bengaluru. “The anti-Hindi agitation can also become anti-Malayalam or anti-Tamil, depending on where you are.” If there were murmurs of a disconnect between the North and the South following these incidents, they have only become louder lately with the controversy over the 15th Finance Commission.
Where’s the Money?
The finance ministers of Kerala, Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka and Puducherry met in Thiruvananthapuram on April 10 to express their displeasure over a crucial change in the 15th Finance Commission.
(Tamil Nadu and Telangana finance ministers did not attend.) Instead of using the 1971 population data to determine states’ share of tax receipts, the 15th Finance Commission shall use 2011 Census figures. This, the states say, leads to a loss of revenue for them and the commission is punishing them for their population control efforts relative to other states. For instance, Kerala’s population growth between 1971 and 2011 is only a third of Rajasthan’s, and Tamil Nadu’s growth is less than half of Haryana’s.
The 14th Finance Commission was the first to use the 2011 Census, giving it a 10% weightage compared with 17.5% for the 1971 Census. The 15th Finance Commission, on the other hand, does not take into account the 1971 Census at all. Thomas Isaac, finance minister of Left Front-ruled Kerala, says the Bharatiya Janata Party, which heads a coalition government at the Centre, does not believe in diversity or in federalism. “It is using this opportunity to further centralise the governance structure in India. It is undemocratic.” He questions the Finance Commission’s proposal to consider states’ expenditure on “populist” measures.
Another criterion is states’ implementation of the Centre’s flagship schemes. “There has been a trend to impose more conditionalities on the state, forcing the Centre’s vision of development on states.” (See “BJP Doesn’t Believe in Diversity or Federalism”) Rajeev Gowda, academic and Congress MP in Rajya Sabha from Karnataka, concurs. “Every state has its own schemes as well as central schemes. So why should we be ranked on the basis of implementation of central schemes?” EAS Sarma, a former Union finance secretary, believes the spirit of cooperative federalism has been violated. “The very fact that there has been no consultation is the problem.” The BJP is not in power in any of the southern states, and Karnataka is the only state it has ruled in the past (it was a junior partner in the ruling coalition in Andhra Pradesh).
Prime Minister Narendra Modi has termed these criticisms baseless and said that the Union government has suggested incentivising states that have controlled population growth.
But Isaac is not convinced: “The incentives the PM is talking about... would altogether add 2-3% to the whole award. How can this compensate for the loss that certain states are going to face if the base year is shifted? He is trying to mislead the country.” Isaac says the southern finance ministers are planning to meet again in Vijayawada on May 6, hopefully joined by representatives from West Bengal, Odisha, Punjab and Delhi.
More Autonomy
In March, Siddaramaiah wrote a long Facebook post, pushing for more autonomy for states. “From a union of states, we are evolving into a federation of states. Therefore, I don’t think the demands for greater federal autonomy and recognition of regional identity are inconsistent with our nation.”
He went on to add that the southern states are subsidising the north. “Six states south of the Vindhyas contribute more taxes and get less. For example, for every one rupee of tax contributed by Uttar Pradesh that state receives Rs 1.79. For every one rupee of tax contributed by Karnataka, the state receives Rs 0.47.”
Siddaramaiah also referred to his government’s move to have a separate flag for the state, which has led many to question the motive. But Gowda finds no reason for alarm. “We are not secessionist. It’s just that we want to celebrate our culture and language. We can be proud Kannadigas and proud Indians at the same time.”
In the same month, Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) working president MK Stalin said that he hoped that the southern states join hands to demand autonomy for a Dravida Nadu. Shiv Visvanathan, professor at the Jindal Global Law School, does not see this as an attempt to secede. “It is a demand for a new kind of distancing in federalism.” The DMK, in its initial years, had called for a separate state, a demand it subsequently gave up.
Another instance of a southern state crying foul about unfair treatment by the Centre is Andhra which is piqued about not getting special category status (SCS), which was promised when erstwhile Andhra Pradesh was bifurcated in 2014, when the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance was in power. Andhra CM Chandrababu Naidu recently pulled his Telugu Desam Party out of the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance over this issue. Between 1969 and 2010, 11 states were granted SCS, which considered factors such as economic backwardness, hilly terrain and low population density. But the NDA government has repeatedly referred to the 14th Finance Commission’s recommendation to do away with SCS — which meant grants from the Centre and tax concessions — and replace it with revenue-deficit grants.
The government has promised Andhra a special package equivalent to SCS, but with Naidu’s opponent, YS Jagan Mohan Reddy, gaining political capital out of the issue, Naidu had no option but to pull out of the NDA, keeping next year’s assembly election in mind.
Another state election has aggravated Tamil anger in the Cauvery issue. The Modi government has failed to form the Cauvery Water Management Board, as mandated by the Supreme Court in its February verdict on the sharing of Cauvery waters between Karnataka and Tamil Nadu (Kerala and Puducherry are the other riparian states). The Centre sought three more months from the apex court, citing the Karnataka assembly election, which is to be held on May 12. But the Centre was later reprimanded by the Supreme Court for missing the March 29 deadline and was asked to submit a plan by May 3.
The agitation by Tamil Nadu’s opposition parties over the Cauvery issue is gathering steam; Marumalarchi Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (MDMK) leader Vaiko’s nephew died of self-immolation. The protests have led to the Indian Premier League matches being moved out of Chennai.
Maalan V Narayanan, a senior journalist in Chennai, believes the latest Cauvery protests are interesting as “Karnataka has not come into the picture. It’s an anti-Centre agitation”. Narayanan adds that while the anti-Hindi cause is still taken up by some fringe Tamil nationalist parties, it is no longer part of the mainstream discourse. However, he says, there is a perception that the Centre is ruling by proxy in Tamil Nadu through its influence over the ruling All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (AIADMK).
Deputy Chief Minister O Panneerselvam has admitted that he merged his breakaway group with the ruling faction of AIADMK on Modi’s advice. AIADMK has been in flux since its chief J Jayalalithaa’s death in December 2016. TTK Dhinakaran, the nephew of Jayalalithaa’s jailed acolyte VK Sasikala, has floated a new party after winning the bypoll to the assembly constituency represented by Jayalalithaa.
The BJP, a non-entity in Tamil Nadu, has been trying to capitalise on the political vacuum in the state left by Jayalalithaa’s passing, and her rival and DMK chief M Karunanidhi’s dotage. “The BJP wants a single religion and a single cultural entity, which we are against,” says DMK spokesperson TKS Elangovan. Sarma believes the acceptance in the South of cultural elements from outside the region has to be organic, as has happened with Hindi through the popularity of Bollywood movies.
If the BJP has not endeared itself to voters in Tamil Nadu with the AIADMK fiasco, its national secretary H Raja’s comments have only made things worse. In October 2017, he launched an attack on actor Vijay after the latter’s character in the film Mersal criticised the goods and services tax. Raja said the actor is a Christian and the film was a hate campaign against Modi.
Last month Raja again stirred up a hornets’ nest when he called for “caste fanatic” EV Ramasamy’s statues to be demolished. Ramasamy, or Periyar as he is better known, was the founder of the Self-Respect Movement, to which both the DMK and AIADMK trace their origins. After Raja’s Facebook post, two men were held for vandalising a Periyar statue in Vellore, near Chennai. Earlier this week, Raja was in the news for insinuating on Twitter that Kanimozhi is Karunanidhi’s illegitimate daughter. Raja did not respond to ET Magazine’s calls and messages. The BJP has also been trying to bolster its presence in Kerala, where it managed to have its first ever MLA elected in the 2016 election. But in May 2017, when the Centre banned the sale of cattle for slaughter at animal markets, there were “beef protests” in Kerala and Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan wrote to Modi, saying the move was “against the principles of federalism and secularism”.
PS Sreedharan Pillai, former president of the BJP in Kerala, terms the state government’s opposition to the ToR a political move. “In Kerala, there is a mania (among the Left) against the BJP. Cordial relationship between the Centre and states is the need of the hour.” He says the opposition to cattle slaughter ban, too, was politically motivated. “For the sake of power, they are creating apprehension among minorities.”
South vs Centre
In these cases, it is not as much a divide between the South and the North as it is between the southern states and the Union government or between the states and the BJP. Visvanathan feels the divide is partly rhetorical because politicians realise the mobilising power of such sloganeering.
Even if the states find common cause against the Centre, expecting them to put up a united front is unrealistic. The absence of Telangana and Tamil Nadu at the finance ministers’ meeting in Thiruvananthapuram was a case in point. Moreover, Tamil Nadu and Karnataka have been at loggerheads for a long time on the Cauvery issue. So have Tamil Nadu and Kerala been on the Mullaperiyar dam on the Periyar river. Similarly, Andhra and Telangana are locked in a dispute over sharing the Krishna waters.
Regardless of whether there is reason to suggest an actual North-South divide, the friction between the southern states and the Centre will continue, exacerbated by the BJP’s rise, if at all, in states other than Karnataka.
