by the way, darker skin ages more gracefully

In general, I have seen that Bengalis think South Indians are more of intellectual (with less brashness etc), than North Indians; maybe prejudiced by bollywood movies ? But from my dating experience, I have to say that South Indian guys tend to be more respectful towards woman than northie guys, and yeah, there is loooot less eve teasing in the South.

No worries, Amitabh. Come back and give it to me. As I’ve said, my family on my father’s side is Hindu Punjabi — refugees from Lahore. The vociferous regional chauvinisms in the diaspora have driven me to a sort of soft nationalism. I should say that I am firstly an American, but emotional, religious, and economic ties to India (in the form of property, e.g.) make me consider myself a stakeholder in the Indian project, so you should understand that that, and not any personal animus to Sikhs, Dravidian separatists, Kashmiris, Nagas, etc., drives my perspective.

on the other hand, for example, you had the nation of karnataka. what stops a konkani fellow from saying the same thing as above? if you have a nation for konkanis, what stops a saraswat fellow from saying the same thing? how long are you going to split states?

..till we climax to a libertarian wet-dream state of a nation of one. ….’mmmm..do you want to go all the way?’ …’yeah’…. ‘ok, but you’ll have to apply for a visa’..

I totally missed this the first time, but I don’t agree at all. Post-Partition, many states were divided and divvied up by language. By promoting the idea that Hindu Punjabis should speak Hindi, this not only resulted in Punjab losing even more territory (on top of what was lost in Partition), but it also drove an artificial wedge between Punjabi Sikhs and Punjabi Hindus. Punjabi Sikhs in Delhi also spoke Hindi — but their mother tongue was Punjabi. There is nothing wrong with having a regional identity as well as belonging to a national body politic (especially since we’ve already established the “foriegn-ness” of Hindi to many desis language speakers.

I also take exception to the claim that Punjab was somehow intrinsically secessionist. It’s not like Sikhs are some freak renegade group who are “Sikhi and Punjabi uber alles!” I really don’t want to talk about Punjab’s “secessionist tendencies,” but it would be foolish to think this was somehow based in identity only (be it Sikh or Punjabi). An argument rooted in resource access and political representation in (local) politics became reframed as a religious conflict. We see this the world over — struggles over very basic things are reframed in terms of religion, and then it becomes an issue of “fundamentalism” or “extremism” or “terrorism” (all loaded words) instead of a conflict over concerns more common to the group as a whole.

(1) India would be lucky to become the “Mexico of Asia”. Mexico’s per capita GDP is ten times that of India’s today and the proportion of people living in absolute poverty in India is 35% compared to 4% in Mexico. Mexico is in the group of countries that have attained a high level of human development according to the UN, with rank #53 compared to India’s rank of 126 (latest figures).

(2) Before India aspires to become the “Mexico of Asia,” perhaps it should first aspire to be the ‘Nicaragua of Asia.’ With a Human Development Index of 112, Nicaragua is 14 positions higher in terms of Human Development compared to India.

(3) No major country has ever gone from 3rd world impoverishment to first world prosperity in 50 years. I think you will find that the road toe development is a long hard slog. A little more sober reflection on the realities of this world and quite a bit less hubris-laden jingoistic chest-thumping would be welcome.

(4) Have you ever been to Mexico? I have had the opportunity to travel there and I can tell you that it is a far more developed country (infrastructure-wise, educationally, and socially) than India currently is. To become a country ‘like Mexico’ is a noble goal for a country ‘like India’ and I think it will be harder to reach that goal than most people are predicting.

http://hdr.undp.org/hdr2006/statistics/indicators/23.html

let me counter this one specifically. b’lore did become the hub of iisc, iti, hal, nal, raman research institute, iim and several premier organizations. at the time of inception, iit’s were no more prestigious (and still are not more than iisc) than any other institute. all the above are central govt funded (iisc did start out as tata institute, but was groomed to be the flagship science research location as iisc after independence). other cities have similar examples.

The center should not be spending a single rupee to promote Hindi. That is the job of the Hindi states.

i agree—but it is a small objection imo as the amount that goes into hindi pracharan is tiny, and mainly a relic of the past. there should be no more increases till money is spent on other languages as well.

as long as the states get increased rights and federal taxes are decreased so the states can generate their own revenue. The federal government should generate enough revenue to fund national sectors.

we are moving in that direction. the strong central govt suited the socialist india. of late, it is increasingly hard to keep it up, coalition governments are the norm now. coalitions are a way of giving special interests more say than their numbers can, since a party with 12 members in lok sabha can pretty much wield a veto because they are the 12 members who push the coalition past the half way mark. analysts complained in the 90′s about this, but the consensus today is that this is here to stay.

THe problem was for a lot of India’s history, the federal government did not put enough emphasis on the south.

it is true that the union government could have done a lot more for the south. but then, it is also true that the govt could have done more for the urban poor, the eastern states, dalits (as opposed to obc’s) in the northern plains, kashmiri hindus, and a whole lot of others. they are all mistakes, but i want to point out that the mistakes are not likely to persist. every group will argue for itself, that is life—and it will not change even if states secede. but there is also a will to see that no one gets screwed over by this.