A Bold Blueprint for Mapping Bharat

The book Delimitation and States Reorganisation by Gautam R Desiraju and Deekhit Bhattacharya takes a deep dive into India's heated delimitation debate, arguing for a radical reorganisation into 75 states to balance representation, correct historical distortions, and create a governance model rooted in the country's civilisational ethos

- Sanjeev Chopra

Delimitation and States Reorganisation: For a Better Democracy in Bharat by Gautam R Desiraju (who earlier authored Bharat 2.0) and Deekhit Bhattacharya could not have come at a better time. Earlier this week, all the Dravidian parties and the INC rallied together behind the Tamil Nadu CM, MK Stalin, in asking for another thirty-year extension of the existing delimitation. My generation of readers (born in the first two decades of Independence) may recall that the current dispensation had been forced upon the country in 1976 as part of the 42nd Constitutional Amendment during the Emergency years. This will, for sure, lead to an emotional and politically charged North versus South debate, in which the 'Bimaru' states will be accused of a disproportionately higher share of India's population bulge—an idea propagated by demographers like Ashish Bose, who received official patronage from then-Prime Minister Indira Gandhi. However, recent research by Ravi Mishra has challenged Ashish Bose's hypothesis by taking census data over the long durée—from the first census of 1871 to projected figures of 2021.