The meeting being held at the Home Ministry here is being attended by eight registered political parties in Andhra Pradesh — Congress, TDP, TRS, Praja Rajyam, CPI(M), CPI, BJP and MIM.

As the representatives of the parties arrived to attend the conference, pro and anti-Telangana activists shouted slogans in support of their demands.

Besides, the TRS leader and the Chief Minister, others attending the meeting are actor-turned-politician and PRP leader Chiranjeevi and his associate C Ramachandraiah, K S Rao and Uttamkumar Reddy (both Cong) and Y Ramakrishna Du and R Prakash (both TDP).

Andhra Pradesh BJP unit chief Bandaru Dattareya and his colleague Hari Babu, B V Raghavallu and J Rangareddy (CPI-M), K Narayanan and Malesh (CPI) and Asaduddin Owaisi and Akbaruddin Owaisi of MIM are also attending the deliberations.

The meeting comes a day after hectic consultations involving Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and his cabinet colleagues on the Telangana issue even as the TRS chief demanded an immediate Parliament law to facilitate formation of a separate state.

Singh had discussed the issue with senior colleagues Pranab Mukherjee (Finance), P Chidambaram (Home), A K Antony (Defence) and Veerappa Moily (Law).

Rosaiah, who had arrived here yesterday to participate in the meeting, had met Chidambaram and followed it up with another meeting with the Prime Minister. “I am not here to give any solution. I will attend the meeting as Chief Minister”.

Chandrasekhar Rao has demanded that the Centre should follow up on its promise to create separate Telangana.

“The government has announced its policy on Telangana. It should follow it up with Constitutional process. A resolution should be moved in Parliament,” he told reporters after meeting CPI general secretary A B Bardhan yesterday.

“We will wait till Monday for the Centre’s announcement. If it does not come, we will call for an indefinite bandh from Tuesday,” Telangana Rashtra Samithi (TRS) President, K Chandrasekhar Rao said.

JAC Convenor Kodandaram, however, said the future course of action would finalised at the committee’s meeting, to be held on Sunday. “ We have received various suggestions on how to carry the agitation forward. We will consider all of these views and chalk out a programme,” he said.

Meanwhile, the 13 ministers, who had sent their resignations to Congress President Sonia Gandhi, have decided to visit New Delhi on Sunday.

It’s a bit like George Bush’s famous quip, ‘you’re either with us or against us’. Today, you are either for Telangana or against it. And no, you don’t have to be from Andhra Pradesh to have strong feelings on the subject!

The prospect of similar demands from other states — notably Uttar Pradesh, West Bengal and Maharashtra — where there have been simmering movements for separate statehood, means there’s hardly anybody who doesn’t have a view! And a strong one at that!

But just as the flip-flop on the issue lends credence to the view that the government panicked and conceded the demand without thinking through the consequences, a lot of the subsequent discussion has been impressionistic, off-the-cuff, based on gut feel.
Given our size and diversity, a degree of decentralisation is not just desirable but essential if the fruits of development are to reach the aam aadmi.

Having accepted that there is no gainsaying how many states is optimal.

Back in the 1950s, the States Reorganisation Committee headed by Justice Fazal Ali recommended formation of 16 states and three centrally-administered territories.

The government, however, opted for 14 states and six Union territories. Today, we have gone from 14 to 28 states. Would we have been better off had we stuck to the original 14? Unlikely!

So, to argue, as many have done, that there is some kind of sanctity about maintaining the present status quo: 28 states and seven Union territories is to assume that this is the optimal number.

Is there a basis for this? Unfortunately, international experience is not much use. Thus, if you have countries like the US with a population of just 308 million — against our 1.1 billion — with 50 states, you also have Canada with 10 provinces and three territories while Australia has six states and two territories.

So, clearly, these are issues that countries or rather their people have to decide for themselves.

But we don’t need to look abroad for answers. Whatever the merits and demerits of sub-dividing states — and one can argue on this till the cows come home — if nationhood is about bettering the lives of people, the deciding factor must be whatever configuration is best able to deliver the fruits of development. And on this, the evidence is unambiguous.

Barring the north-east that has special problems, hard data suggests that, in general, smaller states have performed better once they were spun off.

This is true of Gujarat, Haryana and Himachal Pradesh — all three have made rapid progress after they were freed from the embrace of their larger parents — and is equally true of the most-recent reorganisation in 2000 when Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand and Uttarakhand were carved out of Madhya Pradesh, Bihar and Uttar Pradesh respectively.

Per-capita GDP growth rate in all three cases has shot up after they were spun off. The case of Chhattisgarh is most striking, in that not only did the per-capita income growth rate go up almost five-old — from 3.4% prior to being spun off to over 15% in both 2006-07 and 2007-08 — the new state also grew faster than the parent state in both years.

The picture is not very different in the Jharkhand and Uttarakhand either with both recording faster growth post the split.

Not surprisingly, human development indicators have also improved. Infant mortality and enrolment of girls — both good proxies for any measure of human development — are both vastly improved after division than before. The only aspect on which the results seem a bit ambiguous is on fiscal performance where division doesn’t seem to have made much difference.

Culture is often cited as a reason for communities wanting a separate identity. But if Hawaii is happy to be part of the US and Gibralter is happy to be a self-governing overseas British territory despite huge cultural differences, clearly it is economics that dominates.

If people are able to benefit economically by being a part of a prosperous larger entity, then cultural differences take a back seat — else, they come to the fore and form a nucleus around which other demands piggyback.

Does this mean we must keep dividing states, amoeba-like? Not necessarily — remember there are many states where there are no such demands. Also, even in states where there are demands, it is largely in pockets where people feel they are not part of the economic mainstream and do not share equally in the prosperity of the larger entity.

If smaller states address that sense of economic alienation, there is no reason why emotion should be allowed to come in the way.

The political crisis in Andhra Pradesh over the Telangana issue intensified today with the number of MLAs resigning climbing to 117 as protests broke out in non-Telangana regions over the Centre’s decision to split the state.

Twelve more MLAs submitted their resignation to Speaker Kirankumar Reddy. In all 67 MLAs from Congress have resigned, 37 from TDP and 13 from PRP in the 294-member assembly, according to PTI.

Amid a debate over whether or not to continue assembly proceedings in the wake of the en masse resignations of legislators, the Speaker adjourned the House till Monday.

The Speaker made it clear that he has to speak to all those who quit before taking a decision after ascertaining if they resigned due to their own volition or due to any compulsion.

In view of the crisis, the state government is holding consultations with the Attorney General.

Chief minister K Rosaiah has called a meeting of floor leaders of all parties to take stock of the situation.

At the start of the proceedings, the Speaker announced that 103 MLAs of Congress, TDP and PRP have resigned and that he will go by the rule book while taking a decision on them.

Meanwhile, incidents of violence and stoning of buses were reported in towns of coastal Andhra and Rayasaleema against the Centre’s decision to carve out Telangana state.

Buses of the Andhra Pradesh Transport Corporation (APSRTC) went off the roads as political activists, students and other groups opposed to the division of the state took to the streets, IANS reported.

Shops, business establishments and educational institutions remained closed in most parts of the 13 districts — nine districts of Andhra and four districts of Rayalaseema region.

In the coastal city of Visakhapatnam, and commercial hubs like Guntur, Vijayawada, Machilipatnam, Nellore, Kurnool and Kadapa, roads wore a deserted look as the APSRTC suspended all bus services.

Protesters conducted rallies raising slogans against the proposed formation of a separate Telangana state and demanded that the central government drop the proposal.

In Rayalaseema, various groups called for a shutdown to oppose the division of the state. They, however, want separate statehood for their own region in the event of the formation of a Telangana state.

Police said they have made elaborate security arrangements to prevent violence. Students of various universities in both the regions had damaged several buses during the protest on Thursday.

Telangana, which witnessed violent agitation for a separate state, is now calm. Hyderabad and nine other districts of the region have returned to normal after 11 days of protests and shutdowns.

The Telangana Rashtra Samiti (TRS) plans to conduct a victory rally in Telangana districts to celebrate the announcement by the central government that the process of forming a separate state would be initiated by tabling a resolution in the state assembly.

In June, when then Andhra Pradesh chief minister Y S Rajasekhara Reddy asked Telangana Rashtra Samiti (TRS) president K Chandrasekhar Rao where he would hide after the humiliating electoral defeat, few would have thought that the goal of a separate state would be achieved in just six months.

Through his 11-day fast-unto-death supported by mass protests, the 55-year-old achieved what other leaders from the region could not in five decades.

For the TRS chief, who called off his fast late Wednesday and broke down while paying tributes to those who laid down their lives for the formation of Telangana, the sudden demise of Rajasekhara Reddy in a helicopter crash in September removed the biggest hurdle in achieving his goal.

YSR, as Rajasekhara Reddy was popularly known, was belligerent in his attacks on Rao. With his iron-like grip over the government and Congress and the kind of rapport he had with the central leadership, he never allowed Rao to dominate.

In October, when the Supreme Court declared Hyderabad a free zone in matters of recruitment to police department, KCR, as the TRS chief is known among his supporters, saw it as a golden opportunity to strike.

The death of YSR and the court order provided much needed oxygen to TRS reeling under the rout in March-April elections.

The TRS founder gave the slogan of “Telangana waley jago, Andhra waley bhago ((Arise people of Telangana, run away people of Andhra)”. A frail-looking KCR has always been a crowd puller. Known for his acerbic criticism of his rivals with a mixture of Telugu and Urdu words, he attracted a huge crowd at the public meeting at Siddipet on Oct 21, where he threatened civil war for achieving separate state.

It was in 2001 that KCR quit as deputy speaker of the assembly and resigned from the Telugu Desam Party (TDP) to float the TRS. The former minister hailing from Medak district revived the decades old movement, which has almost died after the violent agitation of 1969.

His rallies proved an instant hit and the party made an impressive electoral debut in local body elections. In the 2004 elections, which TRS fought in alliance with Congress, the party had bagged 26 assembly and five Lok Sabha seats. Though he succeeded in taking the Telangana issue to the centrestage and extracted promises from Congress-led UPA government, he failed to achieve his goal.

His flip-flop on the issue, the repeated deadlines he fixed for achieving the goal, his perceived dictatorial attitude and controversial decisions disillusioned the party cadre and 10 legislators staged a revolt.

KCR pulled out of coalition governments and threatened to expose the Congress for betraying the people of Telangana. However, his gamble of going for by-elections last year boomeranged as the TRS could retain only seven assembly and two Lok Sabha seats.

He found a new ally in TDP after it backed the demand for separate Telangana before the elections early this year. TRS contested 50 of the 119 Assembly seats in the Telangana region but won only 10. YSR interpreted this as the vote against bifurcation of Andhra Pradesh.

KCR’s critics, including revolutionary balladeer Gaddar, said he was weakening the movement by running after votes instead of launching a mass movement.

Gaddar, who had also announced plans to launch his own party, was proved right as KCR succeeded in achieving through agitation what he could not through votes.