A southern hope......

Are you a south Indian? Is the most general question I face when I get to meet new people. I would have taken the question with much ease, if it were not to be the quizzical look on most of the faces that ask the question. The quiz part is that, I am a fair, tall guy and I shave my moustache. So, what they mean to say is that my appearance did not match with the general presumption of how a south Indian looks. Oh! what a hypocrite bunch we Indians are, who talk about national integration, equality etc. but have so many disparities on whose basis we discriminate and cover it up calling it unity in diversity.

I personally hate the concept of North/South India, I always believed and will always believe that I am an Indian than anything else, but there are more people around me who are interested in the latitude and longitude of the place I am born in and want to attribute me to a race. So, let me not hurt them. Hello people, yes I am a south Indian.

I was brought up, like many other Indian kids, listening to the epic stories of North Indian kings seeking the help of monkeys in south India to kill a demon who lives further south. I also heard of the stories where the gods, by a striking coincidence are always from North and reside in Himalayas and the "asuras" they kill are from south India. But I am also aware of history of a land whose main festival is based on a legend king who is considered to be a demon by others.

Having said that, I made my point, if you ever were to believe me, that most of the Indian epics are skewed/biased versions of history. What is history after all? the story of powerful men conquering land?And if you were ever to read Srilankan folk tales, you will completely hear a different Ramayana. And this bias, because of quintessential human nature has been carried forward and it is a matter of shame that it still exists.

Past is past, now let me give an account of future for south India. Not that I am a south Indian, but this I feel is something inevitable given the liberal economic policies taken by the emerging India.

I hope that in next 25 years there will be a considerable change in demographic situation of India. The strong macro economies of states like Andra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, Maharashtra, Gujarat would continue to grow contributing significantly to India's magical GDP figure 10%. South India would become a cultural and industrial hub. There would be more literacy and population would saturate and poverty would be eradicated. If you doubt this just check out the sales reports of FMCG and consumer electronics sector of India, south's buying power has significantly increased and it contributes to about 60% of sales. The per capita Income of south is 60% more than that of north, south also leads in literacy, per capita expenditure on public health and number of house holds with electricity.

But this is a no good reason for a demographic change, when I said demographic change there is a homogenisation of Indian population there shall be no concentrated cultures fighting for their existence. For this to happen there shall be a whole lot of Indians from North, East, West seeing South as their destination for livelihood. How would this happen?

I see this happening, if not in near future, at least in next 25-30 years. North continues to grow in population as the miners from Bihar and other workers from North east continue to flock Delhi. Delhi in no time would become largest urban conglomeration eating up into Noida and Gurgaon. But few things grew apart from the population. There were more people and lesser jobs and hence the pay was pretty less and only a fool would over look the growing economy that is south. More and more people would realise the better pay scales in South and start migrating, there will be equal number of Biharis, Jharkandis wanting to go to south as there are who want to go to other cities in north. More and more people from Nagaland and Mizoram try finding some livelihood in South and this is what I say a cultural dilution of high proportion. India would then be a more homogeneous place, problems of cultural differences notwithstanding.

Seeing this as a right opportunity, some frenzy would pester the central government to make Telugu as the national language and will be almost successful in passing the bill. Deja-vu?



-AKP