Jawaharlal Nehru regretted subsequently the timing of the decision. He felt that there were far more important issues that the country could have taken up because the Commission did upset whatever the rhythm of life to which people had settled down.

The Congress should not commit the same mistake again. The setting up another States' Reorganisation Commission can wait. No doubt, it was one of the planks of the party during the Lok Sabha election. But this was undertaking. It can be deferred to some later date. Anything done at this time might begin a kind of border warfare in certain areas and encourage centrifugal forces accentuating the prickly situation the country faces in some parts.

The only two territories that need attention are: Telengana which was primarily responsible for the debacle of former Andhra Pradesh chief minister N Chandrababu Naidu of the Telugu Desam, and Vidarbha where the Congress was routed at the Lok Sabha polls. Both of them can be tackled, one after the other. Their solution does not require a commission but an

understanding among political parties. After all, the three new states -- Uttranchal, Chattisgarh and Jarkhand -- were created three years ago after a consensus.

Telengana is an old demand. The States' Reorgansiation Commission itself recognised the territory of Nizam of Hyderabad as an entity and recommended its conversion

into the state of Hyderabad. The commission could not ignore its peculiar geo-political features extending over 600 years. It is another matter that the then minister without portfolio Govind Ballabh Pant, who was vetting the commission's recommendations, rejected the proposal.

Apparently, the concept of Vishal Andhra that Pant had envisaged has not worked. The people of Andhra Pradesh were not at home with the old Hyderabadi culture which represented in miniature a real sysnthesis and intermingling of Indian people. Probably, the fear of the Telugu-speaking people was that if the Hyderabad model were to be preserved, other areas in the state would come under "the onslaught of Hindi chauvinism."

The reality is that the experiment of Vishal Andhra Pradesh did not click. Fears of the Telengana people that they would lose in Andhra Pradesh their identity seem to have come true. What they said before the Commission some 50 years ago that Telengana might be converted into a colony by the enterprising coastal Andhra stands more or less justified.

The case of Vidarbha too got a fillip when the States' Reorganisation Commission recommended the conversion of areas into a separate state. Although the Congress leaders of Vidarbha dissociated themselves from the demand for separation before the Lok Sabha election, they could hardly convince the electorate. The Congress won only one seat.

It is not yet widely known that the origin of the movement for Maha Vidarbha goes as far back as 1905.

At that time, the demand was for the separation of Marathi population from the Hindi-speaking areas. Later, it assumed the shape of Maha Vidarbha. Indeed, the area was merged into Maharashtra after the states were reorganised.

Still, the fear that Nagpur would be completely overshadowed by the Bombay city has come true. Communalism has also been introduced into the political life of Vidarbha after its integration with Maharashtra. Land and tenancy laws have been modelled

on lines of Maharashtra, without safeguarding the interests of Vidarbha.

That there is a deep-rooted regional consciousness in Vidarbha is there for all to see. The Marathi-speaking districts of Mahdya Pradesh continue to stick out like a sore thumb. If and when Vidarbha were to be constituted as a separate state, it would be the biggest cotton growing area in the country, making it viable. The States' Reorganisation Commission rightly said: "There is prima facie enough evidence to suggest that Vidarbha can be stable and prosperous state even if it stands by itself."

Both Vidarbha and Telengana are a viable proposition. As separate territories, they will catch up with the parent states rapidly. Both of them are sizeable areas, compact and coherent. There is no reason why they will not be financially on their own. The experience shows how Himachal Pradesh and Haryana prospered after they separated from Punjab. Even otherwise, India should have smaller states. They are administratively more accessible to the people.

There is livelier sense of local needs and appreciation of grassroots problems. It has been

observed over the time that there is a closer link between the electorate and its representatives and a real unity of outlook and community of interest between the rulers and the ruled comes to develop.

In fact, the Congress would do well if it were to step out from the debate on small and big states. The party should find out what has happened to the country after the formation of linguistic provinces. This is a more meaningful exercise because the linguistic minorities

in every state have a grievance, although the commission listed several measures to safeguard their interest. In fact, the RSS-led BJP wasted time and energy in scrutinising the constitution. The suspicion that the exercise was to revise the constitution destroyed some good work done by the Constitutional Review Committee.

Even a cursory assessment of the re-organised states shows how the linguistic states have become islands of chauvinism and how those who are not from the state are treated outsiders. The bias of the Shiv Sena against non-Mahartha is notoriously known. But there is more or less similar discrimination in many other parts of the country. The effort of the political parties is to exploit the situation socially and economically.

Water disputes have become common. Karnataka and Tamil Nadu are always in the news over the share of water from river Cauvery. But what is in the offing in Punjab over the sharing of waters with Haryana is too terrible to imagine. Farmers in one area cannot be ruined on the plea that it is the turn of the farmers in some areas to benefit. The integrated approach to

the needs of Punjab, Haryana and Rajasthan is required. But Punjab, primarily influenced by the

Akali Dal, has politicised the issue; it may become communal before long.

Forces, which are voicing their grievance in the name of state, have their own agenda for power. But they should not harm the Union which gives the country political entity and the basis of nationhood.

Nehru once circulated among the chief ministers a letter by Yehudi Menuhin, the famous violinist: "To me India means the villages, the noble learning of the people, the aesthetic harmony of their life; I think of Gandhi, of Buddha, of the temples pf gentleness combined with power, or patience matched by persistence, of innocence allied to wisdom, and of the luxuriance of life from the oxen and the monkeys to flame trees and mangoes; I think of the innate dignity and tolerances of the Hindu and his traditions."

Nehru's own remark was: "I think that there is some truth in what he says."

Kuldip Nayar is an eminent Indian columnist.