Kavuri Sambasiva Rao, Congress MP from Eluru (hope I got that right) has reacted after Telangana activists lay siege to his house. He was apparently fire and brimstone and if what was reported in the Hindu today is correct then he believes (hopefully, he was being sarcastic, though the correspondent of the paper made it appear that he said it in all earnestness) that what is today Andhra Pradesh, should become 23 states and India should become 500 states. I am sure a lot of you are thinking that I am overreacting to stupidity by making it the subject of a blog post. Maybe I am, but let me give my reasons for the anxiety that I have. I have reported of a discussion that I attended on a TV channel sometime ago. The subject of that was Maoist extremism, but before the commencement of the discussion (if it could be called that), in an informal chat one of my co-panelists used exactly the same figures. Instead of Andhra Pradesh, 23 states and a total of 500. The person's argument was the number of states in India was not set in stone and that 500 years ago, we had 500 states in India. The person insisted that nothing need ever be set in stone about anything political. I suppose that we have to be democracy is not set in stone, that we have to one country is not set in stone, that we should empower people is not set in stone, that we should get rid of social inequalities is not set in stone, that we should work for removal of poverty is not set in stone and I can think of a zillion other things that are not set in stone. Do people even know what they are saying? Was there an India as a cohesive political unit (and not just a physical entity) 500 years ago? With intellectuals and political leaders converging on sheer stupidity, I guess anything can happen in India. After all nothing, except fossils, is set in stone.
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