Bengaluru, Feb 12 Former Deputy Chairman of the erstwhile Planning Commission Montek Singh Ahluwalia on Wednesday advocated carving out two to three states from large States like Uttar Pradesh to give a new impetus to urbanisation.
He also suggested picking up some tier-2 towns and developing them into "near-metros".
Ahluwalia shared his views at a fireside chat with economist and author Salman Anees Soz on "Resilient Pathways: Charting Economic Growth Amid Global Challenges" at the Global Investors' Meet 'Invest Karnataka 2025' here.
"We should seriously consider cutting down many of the larger states into two or three," he said.
Ahluwalia recalled that former Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister and BSP leader Mayawati had suggested splitting her state into three.
“Had this been done, there would have been a political willingness instantly to create three new good cities. People have said this could be done in many other states. In Maharashtra, for example, there are people who said that the Vidarbha region should be made a separate state with Nagpur as its capital,” he said.
"The main reason we have to think about this is that the resistance to doing....building a new city....land acquisition that it involved sharply goes gown when whoever is doing it says that it's a capital of a new state," Ahluwalia said.
But he also acknowledged that interesting reforms and tough decisions such as this are not politically easy.
Ahluwalia also noted that all the states in the country are highly centralised.
However, he pointed out there is evidence to suggest that the performance of new states has improved.
Responding to a question on rising public debt, he said the states have all become fiscally very weak because of scale of debt relative to both revenue generation and their gross domestic product is too high.
He expressed the view that the nature of reforms needed for India to achieve an eight per cent annual growth for two decades to realise its vision of 'Viksit Bharat' by 2047 has not been spelt out and said there are some challenges to achieve this goal.
“Earlier in 1991, initiating reforms was easy because the world was speaking one language. We started the reforms after Eastern Europe had abolished communism…there was only one thing to do which was integrate with the global market. That has become much more complex now," he said.
Ahluwalia said geopolitical tensions are now rising, the US has its own problems not only with its closest allies, like Canada and Mexico, but also with China. China is cosying up to Russia. Russia is becoming more dependent on China. Europeans are very scared of Russia. They are not that bothered about China.
“India is faced with a world all of a sudden fragmented. We didn't have that problem in 1991 at all. If India is to grow at eight per cent then the urban population is going to grow very rapidly,” he said.
"I think you have to recognise that India will not be 'Viksit' if it does not largely reduce the numbers staying in villages," he said.
He added that good Gandhians should recognise that this is not undermining the views of Mahatma Gandhi, who expressed these views 100 years ago but did not mean that it will continue to do so 100 years later.
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