United States of India

The breaking news of today is the Government of India has agreed to introduce a bill in the state assembly for the creation of the new state of Telangana. For the supporters of the cause, this is a great news. I had not been in favor of the Telangana state because of the fact that I do not want divisions within the same set of people. The Andhra and Telangana people speak the same language, have same traditions, have same history and legacy and on some level are siblings from the same mother. The people of Telangana feel there is no development in their areas because of Andhra and they feel Andhra people are depriving them of their right to develop. They feel having a state of their own will help them be more prosperous and developed and successful.

This situation is straight out of the "Hum Saath Saath Hain" movie. We had a happy family with the father, mother, three sons and their families living together in a big house. After a while the second son feels he does not have enough independence and privacy and wants to move out. He says he will be visiting the family often and by living on his own he feels he and his family will have an opportunity to grow.

Initially parents do not agree to it and try to convince him that he can have all the independence and privacy in this house. They are doing this because they know once one member of the family moves out, others will follow. But they can only resist to a certain point. If the son is so adamant what can the parents do? They can only hope that they do visit once in a while and still be part of the family.

In the same way I wish that in spite of being in a separate state, Andhra, Telangana and Rayalaseema people do not forget that they are telugu people first of all and they be a part of that family. As with my above analogy, after Telangana, who wants to move out? Will it be Rayalaseema, Vidarbha, Gorkhaland? In every state of our country you will be able to find people who have a unique identity based on the region, linguistics or thru some other measure. Now if you start dividing the country based on each unique identity, then we will end up with hundreds of states. Technically each district can be divided into a state. You will find so much unique in each district. Then we should change our country's name from Republic of India to United States of India. I hope they stay united.