So what exactly is the difference between the regional and the national?

India is a polity and an entity that grew and strengthened during the course of an anti-colonial struggle. There have always been ideational debates over the idea of India, someone famously calling it:India is a state of mind. The nationalist elite that politically led India to her freedom, although it came from different backgrounds, had one thing in common - they strikingly believed in a united idea of India. However, while India, as a newly independent political space was drifting from the colonial hangover to become a modern post-colonial state; politics, with the great triumph of democracy, embedded the grass roots of Indian society. In fact, that very triumph of democracy gave voice to a myriad concerns that saw the emergence of a whole new spectrum of political organizations and leaders. The postcolonial leaders were no longer the old school nationalists that had put the country together in the first place. The deepening of democracy ensured that new leaders came to power representing a particular community, tribe, caste, religion and region. A Jat leader from Haryana will by all means fight for the reservation of his community at the national level, even defying his party line; almost a month back an Indian union minister of the Congress, openly dared the central government to hang him for fighting for the institutional reservation of Muslims. In the new coalition era in India, there are of course hazards in such politics, where the numerically strong allies will increasingly assert their preferences with supreme indifference to the welfare of the other marginalized regions and peoples. Coalition politics itself has come to be known as Collision politics. Such action at times might lead to disruptions in cohesive governance and socio-economic policy making, when securing ones own political interests becomes the priority for the allies. Trinamool Congress leader Mamata Banerjee, the nightmarish ally of the Congress at the centre, in the last two weeks went hammer and tongs all out to demand a rollback of the train fare hikes, primarily to woo her local voterbase in West Bengal. A few days back, DMK, the cultural nationalist Tamil party (that has been ruling Tamilnadu alternatively with AIADMK), again an ally of the Congress in New Delhi, has forced the UPA government to vote against Sri Lanka (a friendly neighbour with India) in a UN resolution on human rights violations during the civil war in 2009. Things become all the more chaotic when one finds 40 political parties in the Indian parliament today. A large number of these parties came into existence with legitimate demands from underrepresented regions and backward peoples. These parties claim to represent regional interests with moderate success but the real issues in such central-state, central-region and central-people confrontations can barely be addressed by them in the present centralized set up of the nation state. At the end of the day, these parties too, succumb to political compulsions, most times becoming agents of noise rather than that of stability. While there can be a healthy equilibrium between regional and national parties, the principal focus should rather shift to the structure, that is the root of allreal movement.

There emerges a second and the most important option for an India that can no longer be ignored at the wake of this new pan-regionalism. It is radical but worth implementing before things get out of hand. That is that India must now fulfil its six decades old promise of federalism to the truest extent. Ever since the country became a republic, there was a systematic erosion of the federal content that has fuelled anger and loss in diverse political dimensions. The Sarkaria commission, set up in 1983, recommended among other things, that enforcement of Union laws, particularly those relating to the concurrent list, be secured through the machinery of states. Its reports largely remain unfulfilled. On the other hand, misuse of the constitutional articles such as 355 and 356 has led to an overbearing New Delhis abrupt dismissal of elected state governments by regional parties. Then there are far more inflammatory issues in Indias complex political landscape such as financial, administrative and legislative disputes that need to be resolved in a federal framework. Turbulent protest movements, whether they are socio-economic or environmental, have occurred in Indias history, largely due to a gradual manipulative encroachment of state subjects by the centre. Demands of greater redistributive intervention, from regions that felt exploited, found strength in extremist militant movements. The one that India sees as its greatest internal security threat- the Maoist Movement in the heart of Central India strongly echoes such voices. There is a subnationalist dimension to the debate as well. Many of the regional parties, covertly or overtly exhibit subnationalist tendencies which can change from time to time. In his last election campaign, Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar increasingly asserted a Bihari Asmita (subnational Bihari consciousness). This was remarkably significant because for the first time, the socio-cultural willingness to be seen distinctly from the others in the North Indian Hindi Heartland was articulated in Bihars democratic politics. Similar rhetoric works wonders especially in the politics of states like Assam, Maharashtra, Tamilnadu, Andhra Pradesh (the Telengana region) and Kashmir, where cultural or linguistic nationalism is a dominant mobilizing force. Much of such politics shares greater autonomist visions, whether socio-cultural or socio-economic in nature. Indeed throughout postcolonial history, newer ideas of India have emerged in different locations of the country, where the regional vision of itself was central.Notably, such subnational or regional challenges could also be seen as a challenge to a Hindi hegemonist centralized idea of India, seeking to replace monopoly with pluralist multi-cultural visions. Political scientist Sanjib Baruah, the pre-eminent scholar on conflict and Northeast India, too argues for a restructured federalism in the case of such durable tensions between subnationalism and pan-Indianism. In his well acclaimed book, India Against Itself, assessing the turbulent politics in Assam, he proves how a decentralized form of governance and strong federalism could have averted violence and much of the secessionist movement that had rocked Assam for three decades. However he finds out that in the case of the troubled Northeast, federalism simply meant creation of more states, without restructured economic policy. This he terms Cosmetic Federalism, where the space is nationalized with

little likelihood of incorporating local visions of the future. As a result, Northeast India is still an enduring theatre of low intensity separatist guerrilla war. Indian Army atrocities and human rights violations deserve an an essay of their own As regional parties dominate the landscape, Indian democracy should claim success in this upsurge of pan-regionalism. But seemingly, this upsurge is perhaps more focused on petty manipulations over the 2014 General Elections or maybe a midterm poll. If that becomes the case, India will surely lose a great opportunity to modify and deepen its democracy by revisiting its promised federalism. Historys lesson that catastrophe follows when a strong centralized state wants to hold on to the illusion of power, was most emphatically vindicated by the collapse of Soviet Union. India cannot afford to live with that illusion. For it must realize that a large and loosely decentralised federation with all the vibrancy of diverse and even conflicting regional and sub regional interests, make for a colourful democracy, a better home for liberty and a safer haven against tyranny. This perhaps is the time to liberalize, pluralize and modernize the idea of India, if it must not go against itself!

Although it may sound as a clich, its true that we live in a country of immense diversity. No doubt, over the years, the traditional political parties have successfully exploited these differences, our fault lines to garner votes in the name of religion, caste, region, language, et al. Also on the other hand, some political leaders have no qualms about using the money and muscle power to induce voting in their favours, moral ethics be damned.
Dont you wonder why?

Well, we live in society that has become flexible on the matters about morality. Many of us salute and celebrate the success, conveniently forgetting about the questionable means that have led to such an astonishing result. Presently, we live in a society and an economy driven by greed, consumption, and self-interests; no doubt our own ethical compass has been compromised that we dont want to differentiate between the Good and the Evil. At the end of day we simply want our own piece of cake, without ever thinking about scores of people who sleep an empty stomach. Somewhere, in the last few years, all this has changed in India. Maybe, it has something to do with the highly moralistic Jan-Lokpal agitation led by

Anna Hazare. It stirred and posed discomforting questions to all of us. His agitation captured the imagination of common public and it appealed to people cutting across their age, religion, caste, region, language and social standing. They all found a common enemy, Corruption and they forgot their differences to unite, to fight this demon. No wonder, in 2014, the wave of this anti-corruption movement may push the Communalism, Casteism, Regionalism, other Divisive political issues, Money and Muscle power in the background.