Pro-Telangana supporters celebrate in the streets (Reuters).

Okay, big news — a few days late (sorry!), but nonetheless important.  On December 10th, the Indian government accepted the bid for statehood of what will be India’s 29th state: Telangana.  In a culmination of a nearly 50 year movement, Andhra Pradesh, one of India’s southern states, will be carved into two states of Telangana and Andhra.  The fight for statehood, in recent weeks, was marked with violent protests and the 11 day “fast until death” on the part of Telangana party leader K. Chandrashekhar Rao. As expected, Andhra Pradesh’s split has caused an array of reactions, both positive and negative.

It’s critical to acknowledge the roots of the statehood movement. After India’s first state elections in 1952, then Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru and the States Reorganization Committee pushed for the drawing of state lines on a linguistic basis. As a result, Telangana and Andhra – two states with the Telugu language in common – were merged into Andhra Pradesh. Since then, the less-developed Telangana feared that its citizens would receive fewer opportunities than those in Andhra and that state-collected taxes woul help one region more so than another.  Without a doubt, then, the Telangana statehood movement is critically tied to economic development.

Thus far, 132 out of 294 elected legislators have resigned in protest, signifying that this case is far from closed. I can see the intrinsic argument against Andhra Pradesh’s split lying primarily with the Hyderabad, the capital and most populous city in Andhra Pradesh. Hyderabad also – oh so conveniently — lies within Telangana and would be part of the new state. The anti-Telangana, obviously, doesn’t want to have to find a new capital.  That, however, is only the surface problem.  For those unfamiliar with major Indian cities, Hyderabad, like Bangalore, is a hub for the information technology and pharmaceutical industries.  The city alone is the largest contributor to the state’s GDP and the consequent strength of the IT industry has boosted real estate and other sectors of the economy.  With companies like Dell, Google, IBM, Microsoft, HP, Yahoo, and a much longer list based in Hyderabad, the concern is understandable. It’s kind of like Detroit’s deterioration from the power hub it once was — see the effect it had on the state of Michigan?

More than that, Telangana’s statehood movement has propelled other Indian politicians to push for the creation of other small states… which, quite frankly, is a poor idea. Creating a state is quite the serious venture and will have consequences.  Consider the violence currently going through Telangana; now imagine that occurring across India.  For a country which gained independence only sixty-some years ago, borders are still contentious. (Oh, just think of all the thought put into the Indian-Pakistani partition! Oh wait….)  For that reason, I hope the Indian government stands ground and carefully analyzes the repercussions of Telangana’s creation before answering the onslaught of calls for new states.

As someone without a developed knowledge of India’s states, watching this continuing to unfold will be both very interesting and quite the learning experience.