Demand for small states linked to polity's evolution

Mayawati's opening gambit in her election campaign was to demand the division of Uttar Pradesh. That this proposal generated more confusion than hostility is significant in itself. It shows how far India has travelled since 1947. One need only be recently middle aged to remember that till the late 1980s the very suggestion to slice an existing state would have been politically ruinous. All such attempts, whether it was for Maharashtra or Andhra or Punjab, met with angry resistance from almost everybody. The first reaction to such proposals was that they would eventually break up the Indian union from which only Pakistan and a few unnamed foreign forces would benefit.

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