Off On The Wrong Foot

Scant attention has been paid to one of the most crucial ingredients of success in the new states "" leadership

Size matters, but it is not all that matters. This is the wisdom of the ages. But it does not seem to have been sufficiently absorbed by India's political classes. So most of them have assumed that merely by breaking up Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh and Bihar, the people of these benighted states will come a few inches closer to heaven.

The result is that scant attention has been paid to one of the most crucial ingredients of success in the new states "" leadership. The BJP thinks it is perfectly all right to make a man in his seventies the chief minister of Uttaranchal, quite regardless of the fact that if the state is to succeed, it needs a leader with boundless energy, if not vision. Nityanand Swami, who is likely to become the chief minister of Uttaranchal, may be a nice man to know but it will be very surprising indeed if he makes a go of his new charge.

It is not on account of age alone that the BJP has got things wrong. In Jharkhand it has sent one of its own partymen, Babulal Marandi "" inevitable, it says because the BJP is the majority party there "" while the party that led the movement for Jharkhand has been left out in the cold. Its leader, Shibu Soren, has voted with his feet and joined his old enemy, the amazing Laloo Prasad Yadav.

What devil's brew these two will cook up and what that brew will mean for the stability of the new state government is anyone's guess. But one thing is for sure: this is not the way to ensure the economic success of a new state.

Nor is it the BJP alone that has got it wrong. Even that more seasoned warhorse, the Congress party, has sent off Ajit Jogi to be the chief minister of Chattisgarh whereas it should have made someone more closely associated with the movement for Chattisgarh the leader there. Mr Jogi will be as acceptable as Mr Marandi is going to be. So trouble there as well.

All this is in sharp contrast with the last two occasions when the states were reorganised, in 1956 and 1966. On the first occasion, India was barely a decade into independence; the glow of freedom still suffused those rosy political cheeks and Jawaharlal Nehru was there to tend to the flock. So leadership wasn't quite as much of an issue then.

But things had changed by 1966, when Haryana were carved out of Punjab and Himachal Pradesh given full statehood after having been carved out earlier. Leadership had become important but fortunately, Himachal had V S Parmar and Haryana, Bansi Lal (from 1967). Both were dynamic men of vision and they erected the foundations "" a good administration and clear policies "" on which the two new states could be built.

Can one realistically expect the same from Messrs Marandi, Swami and Jogi? As we've seen, Mr Swami is simply too old, and Mr Marandi is from the wrong part. Mr Jogi is the likeliest to succeed, if his partymen leave him alone, but that is unlikely. It would not, therefore, be overly pessimistic to suggest that all three states have got off on the wrong foot. One can only hope that the errors will be corrected quickly.