Telangana tangle: Whips, free voting or referendum

With fear in my mind, I switched on my TV set on July 30, 2013, to hear about news of Telangana. My worst fears were before my eyes – Telangana was getting formed. I felt sad, dejected and helpless owing to the manner in which the decision was taken. What is this kind of democracy in which the citizens have no say on such important issues?

I do realise that personal feelings of sadness have no place in democracy; as it only takes the majority view into account. However, my dejection was due to the fact that this issue was not considered fit for referendum; and even the voting on this issue in Parliament is going to be a sterile affair, where MPs will vote under the party whip – forced to follow the whims and fancies of a few leaders. Such a voting on issues of national importance ridicules the very concept of peoples’ representation – where an MP is supposed to represent the collective view of the people who have elected him.

The formation of a new state would involve creation of non-productive infrastructure and government machinery requiring massive capital and revenue expenditure, an expenditure which will not contribute anything to increase our GDP. To top it up, the central government has chosen the most expensive way to create Telangana by not choosing Hyderabad as the permanent state capital for both; and lakhs of crores of rupees would now

THERE SHOULD BE A REFERENDUM ON SUCH ISSUES WITH, MAYBE, DOUBLE THE WEIGHTAGE FOR THE LOCAL PEOPLE.

have to be spent in creating infrastructure twice, once at Hyderabad and then on the new capital.

An average Indian’s requirements are increasing day by day. We also need money for social uplift schemes. All this can only be achieved if our GDP increases.

Let us face it. The world is not going to provide us goods and services for free. We have to work ourselves and increase our GDP to meet our requirements or sell the future of our coming generations by selling our mineral wealth. Nonproductive expenditure in creating new states will only increase inflation, besides creating Kaveri types of problems.

I do understand that the wish of the local people should have greater weightage, but considering that the expenditure involved in the creation of Telangana will come from the rest of the country, they also should have some real say.

There should therefore be a referendum on such issues with, maybe, double the weightage for the local people. However, the minimum that we should have in this case is free voting in Parliament, sans whips.