Why Southern India Is Rallying Around a Battle Over Population and Power

A looming delimitation exercise is focusing minds on how the south might end up with less say in federal politics despite being the country's growth engine.

- Ravi Velloor

Like China's coastal provinces, India's booming southern states — all save one of which have direct access to the sea — are major growth drivers of the world's most populous nation, which is set to become the world's third-largest economy by 2030, just behind the US and China.

All the southern states are highly globalised. Tamil Nadu, for instance, is a major manufacturing and export centre for Hyundai. Bangalore, Hyderabad and Chennai, which are state capitals of Karnataka, Telangana and Tamil Nadu, respectively, are technology hubs.

Like ocean-facing American states such as California, Washington and New York, these Indian states serve as important centres of openness against the frequently inward-looking, protectionist instincts of the northern Indian heartland.

Office space in their main cities are in overflow mode as they house the proliferating global capability centres of multinational firms, whether it is a big finance name such as Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan, a hallowed engineering firm such as General Electric, or a consulting firm such as Deloitte.

Then there is Kerala. The tiny state just above Sri Lanka has three international airports, a reflection of the buzz of activity as millions of its people seek their fortunes in far-flung places abroad, particularly in the Gulf states of West Asia.

India's southern states are also notable for being much better performers on social development indices, compared with its big population centres of Uttar Pradesh, Bihar and Madhya Pradesh in the north. Kerala, for instance, was the first Indian state to attain full literacy, and it did so as early as in 1991. When India pushed family planning and birth control as a national policy from the early 1970s, the southern states were early adopters; today, their total fertility rates are below replacement levels.