Don’t reignite doused fire

The war of words between the dmk led Tamil Nadu government and the union government is escalating and neither side wants to be seen as conceding. What started as a confrontation over the refusal to implement the new education policy by Tamil Nadu citing concerns over Hindi imposition in garb of three language policy, has now spread into other dimensions like the concerns about delimitation and the disadvantage to Tamil Nadu and southern states in general. Chief minister Stalin has today called for an all party meeting of the state and called upon
to form a common forum of all the 5 southern states. The delay by the union in holding the census due in 2021 is baffling and has raised suspicions about its relation with delimitation which can be carried out after a post 2026 census. The southern states are going to lose disproportionately as their bloc in the parliament would fall from 24% to 19%. They are already aggrieved by the lower share of central grants in proportion to their tax burden and this political marginalization would further alienate them. Unlike the evenly spread Muslim population which in a first past the post system becomes ineffective, the linguistic states are the basic democratic blocks. The bjp’s stance of Hindi Hindu Hindustan can lead greater polarization. States like West Bengal and Punjab would also lose out. The best way out for the union is to immediately declare the census and absolve itself from such allegations