An Alternative Approach To Delimitation

NO INDIAN politician has ever announced that the nation aims to be the most populous in the world. Nor has anyone proclaimed that we will beat everyone else with our population growth rate.

- Ritesh Vohra

Instead, what we say with pride is that we are the fastest growing large economy worldwide, and that our GDP will grow to 5/10/20 trillion dollars over time. This is not only true for the nation as a whole, but also for the individual states within the union that measure themselves and compete on such economic parameters, rather than on their respective population size.

Certainly, there was a time when the number of inhabitants signified the relative strength and influence of a nation or a state. Obviously not anymore. As the debate continues around the impending delimitation exercise for the Lok Sabha and the current understanding where states with a relatively higher population share will benefit compared to states otherwise - I have been wondering as to why in the 21st century should we be using the parameter of population alone to determine a state's relative importance or influence at the national level?