Small states work better

There is obviously a lot of politics to UP CM Mayawati’s announcement that she plans to take the proposal to divide UP into four states to the state assembly next week. There is a lot of symbolism also, given that BR Ambedkar was a supporter of small states—“a population of approximately two crores … should be regarded as the standard size of population for a State to administer effectively,” Ambedkar said. But there’s also economics since, as a study by Indicus Analytics points out, smaller states tend to grow faster than larger ones as, more often than not, these states have found it easier to push through economic reforms—this may be because they are more homogeneous, or it may be because they don’t have as much minerals, say, as larger ones, the reason is immaterial.

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