Chhota Rajya Samrudh Rajya

Chhota Rajya Samrudh Rajya...

Way back while giving training to Government Employees of kheda District under V- Governance program “Karamyogi Abhiyaan” I came across many stories which made me think that my district, Kheda should further be bifurcated. Kheda district in past was bifurcated into two districts viz Anand and Kheda.

Batch after batch I realized the pain people would take to reach Kheda district headquarter, Nadiad, that was situated more than 50 Kms from some of towns and villages of Kheda district. Many a time After travelling for more than 2 hours when they reached Nadiad, they would come to know that officer was on leave or was not available. One can only imagine energy, time, money wasted in such journeys.

The poor farmer, peasant , old and young, men and women leaving all their work to get some work done going back and again taking leave and travelling all the way from Virpur, Balasinor, Matar and so many other places to Nadiad.

The debate about formation of small states brought back these memories. I went through the maps of many states and felt people of some of these states must be experiencing same problems when they have to travel to their state capital to get some work done.

Take example of Maharashtra, Mumbai is its capital. Person from Nagpur has to travel 841 km, take 13 hours journey by road to reach mumbai. So demand for new state Vidharbh is justified.

In case of Uttar pradesh, area wise biggest state of India, situation is better. Lucknow is almost centrally situated, still to reach lucknow from Meerut it takes almost 7 hours.  seeing current situation of UP, UP if divided will be governed well and will be good idea for the people of Uttar pradesh.

These are some states which are bigger states and state capital location makes its excess difficult to far and wide areas of the states.

Apart from Common citizen’s facing problem, I was wondering how many times in a year chief minister, ministers, Chief secretary and Super class one officers who are posted in State capitals visits these far and wide places???

State capitals, headquarters of districts are the centre of state and district administration and should be easily accessible for the good governance of state or district.

There are many states which have bifurcated and have developed well. Chhattisgarh is best example among recent new states formed. Jharkhand may be exceptional case, problem is not with the bifurcation, but problem lies with leaders of the state and their desire to make Jharkhand a prosperous state.Gujarat which bifurcated from Maharashtra almost 53 years back has now become synonym of Good Governance.

Narendra Modi, who is known for his good governance and administrative skills understood the importance of smaller districts for good governance. Process of 7 New districts by bifurcating larger districts is on and soon Gujarat will have 7 new districts, making total of  33 districts in Gujarat.

My own district, Kheda is further going to get bifurcated into two districts, Kheda and Mahisagar. Its good, now people of virpur, balasinor will not have to travel all the way to Nadiad to get their work done.

As they say all good things comes in small packets,chhota parivar sukhi parivar so can be said for smaller states “chhota rajya samrudh rajya”.