When Telangana Chief Minister Revanth Reddy said the President and the Prime Minister were from the “north” he was factually and geographically incorrect. President Draupadi Murmu is from Odisha, an eastern state of India while Prime Minister Narendra Modi is from Gujarat, a western state of India. Reddy conveniently chose to ignore that Vice President of the country CP Radhakrishnan is from Tamil Nadu, a southern state. So, where is the “northern dominance”, that Reddy was crying so hoarse about during a ‘southern India’ newspaper conclave.
“The President is from North India. The Prime Minister is from North India. We do not want to live as second-class citizens, paying taxes and saluting Delhi,” he was quoted having said at the conclave. This is not defiance. It is a divisive and subversive statement to suggest as if an alien government is in power in Delhi. The southern states have as much participation as the northern states, as also the eastern and the western states, in electing the government in Delhi.
Would Revanth Reddy raise a similar question if and when Rahul Gandhi becomes the Prime Minister of the country? It is obvious and a foregone conclusion that if and when the Congress or Congress-led coalition forms the government at the Centre, Gandhi will be the natural choice to be the Prime Minister. Will Reddy object to that as well? Obviously not, unless he wants to write his own political epitaph.
Although as a saving grace the Congress currently has its president Mallikarjun Kharge from Karnataka, another southern state, but everybody knows who is in actual control and command of the party. Revanth’s outburst against the “north” may be linked to his own party that has mostly been dominated and controlled by leaders from the north, barring a few occasions like when PV Narsimha Rao became the Prime Minister and also the Congress president.
Leaders like Reddy and Stalin have been falsely putting up a narrative as if the “northern states” are parasites and only the southern states are the proverbial “cash cows”. Western states like Gujarat and Maharashtra are as prosperous and revenue generating as states like Tamil Nadu and Telangana. If these states are progressing, they are not progressing in isolation. They have certain advantages like direct access to ports. Besides, because they remain deep inside the country and do not share borders with any hostile country, they enjoy complete peace. The “north” that way, remains their first line of defence.
The problem of leaders, such as Stalin and Reddy and many others from “south India”, is with states like Uttar Pradesh, Bihar and West Bengal. Because these states are more populous, which enables them to send more MPs to the Parliament, by virtue of which they have, according to people like Reddy, greater say in power. This again is a myth. The “southern states” like Telangana, Tamil Nadu and Kerala enjoy disproportionately more power than their northern counterparts like Uttar Pradesh and Bihar. Based on the population ratio, these southern states have proportionately more MPs than any northern state be it Bihar, Bengal or UP.
Also read: Half-time score in Telangana: Cong struggling on a bouncy track
Besides, the huge workforce that contributes in industrial production that eventually leads to economic prosperity and development comes from the “northern states” only. As also, the “northern” states, given their large population, remain top consumers of the products that are manufactured in the “prosperous” southern states.
This is again a myth that “only” the southern states pay taxes, as Reddy would make everyone believe. Yes, some states are paying higher taxes than others. It can never be uniform. There are multiple factors responsible for that. But to suggest that the “northern” states pay no taxes, is not only incorrect but also comes apparently from some sort of pathological hatred for everything “northern”.
That the northern states are quite populous, is obvious. It is not that everyone in these states is poor and depends on the “alms” of the taxes of the southern states. The northern states have a huge middle class “consumer” population, who consume the products manufactured in the southern states. Each one of them pays indirect taxes through the GST.
There is a broad “ideologically” political divide between the “southern” and the “northern” states. In fact, except for Karnataka, other four states in the south, including Tamil Nadu, Telangana, Andhra Pradesh and Kerala have so far not accepted the Bharatiya Janata Party.
Compared to that, almost entire India, whether north, east, west or central, has gone along with the BJP. Punjab and Jammu and Kashmir remain the only exceptions in the north where the BJP has not been able to form the government although it has sound footprints.
Leaders like Revanth Reddy and MK Stalin, by raking up an imaginary “north-south divide” are actually trying to equate the BJP’s dominance with that of the north, which actually is not the case as the BJP has spread everywhere across the country barring few southern and two northern states.
Reddy has every right to resist the advent of the BJP into his state, but he should avoid identifying an entire region as “hostile” towards the south. In fact, Uttar Pradesh, the largest state in the country which also falls in the north, has sent more opposition MPs to the Lok Sabha than those belonging to the BJP. Just because you don’t agree politically or ideologically with some people does not mean they are in any way inferior or hostile to you. Leaders like Reddy must note that.
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