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Article 371(2) and the Receding Demand for Vidarbha State

Ajit Kumar

The receding demand for statehood for Vidarbha in Maharashtra presents a striking contrast to the violent agitation in neighbouring Andhra Pradesh for a separate Telangana state even though Vidarbhas claim is older and backed by a favourable recommendation by the States Reorganisation Commission in 1955.

I would like to acknowledge the help received from Akash Fulzele in keeping newspaper clippings. Ajit Kumar (ajitokumar@gmail.com) teaches at the MSS Institute of Social Work, Nagpur, Maharashtra.
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he Maharashtra legislative assembly unanimously passed a resolution in 1984 seeking orders under Article 371(2) from the president of India that would constitutionally place a responsibility on the governor of the state to strive for balanced development of its regions. Ten years later, in 1994, the presidential assent led to the formation of three development boards, including the Vidarbha Statutory Development Board (VSDB). It soon became apparent that this constitutional action was unsuccessful in reviving the stagnant economy of Vidarbha and when on 1 November 2000 the new states of Jharkhand, Uttarakhand and Chhattisgarh came to be constituted, a call was given for a bandh in Vidarbha on 27 November demanding a separate state. The pent-up anger of the people saw a spontaneous and warm response to the call. Supported by all organisations and political parties, with the exception of the Shiv Sena and the Communist Party of India (Marxist) (CPI(M)), the bandh seemed to be the beginning of a prolonged violent agitation. The horrendous suicides of farmers in that period offered further testimony of the prospects for Vidarbhas rural economy in the state of Maharashtra. However, the expected outbreak of public anger turning into a series of protests and rallies did not take place. Even the decision of the central government in 2009 to concede the demand for a separate Telangana state could not revive the dormant movement in this region. The claim of Vidarbha is much older. As early as 1938 the Central Provinces and Berar Legislature had unanimously passed a resolution demanding a separate Maha Vidarbha state. This pre-independence claim became stronger and more authoritative when the State Reorganisation Commission (SRC) in 1955 recommended

a separate state for Vidarbha because of its satisfactory nancial position and deep-rooted regional consciousness. In spite of this history the demand for a separate state no longer strikes a resonance with the people of this region today. To what can one attribute this change in public perception in just over a decade? Legislators and Constitutionalism Peoples perception changed with the signicant shift in public policy that emerged when the legislators of Vidarbha united. They formed the Vidarbha Anushesh Nirmulan Samiti Ani Vikas Manch (VANSAVM) an all-party forum headed by B T Deshmukh. VANSAVM petitioned the governor to exercise his constitutional powers under Article 371 (2). In effect, it meant removing the investment backlog of Vidarbha through preferential policies. The concept of backlog had emerged from the study undertaken by the FactFinding Committee on Regional Imbalance headed by V M Dandekar. A district which fell below the state average in any sector was deemed to have a backlog. The actual difference between the state average and the district in any sector was measured and formed the physical backlog of that district. The sum of money required to remove this physical backlog was computed and constituted the nancial backlog. The committee had recommended that 85% of the outlays in the State Pool for Removal of Specic Backlog be earmarked for liquidating backlog in the backlog districts and the balance 15% be utilised for completing ongoing projects and meeting the needs of natural growth for all districts, with or without a backlog (GoM 1985: 337). The Dandekar Committees report was not accepted by the government but some allocations were made from 1985-86 for meeting the backlog. The developed region whose writ ran in the state cabinet continued to usurp funds that rightfully belonged to the less developed ones. The governor in discharge of his functions under Article 371(2) constituted a
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joint committee of the three development boards under the name Indicators and Backlog Committee (IBC). Its mandate was to determine the indicators for assessing the levels of development and to identify the sectors whose backlog needed to be assessed. Based on these indicators and sectors the IBC had to ascertain the levels of development and the backlog in different sectors in every district and where possible the taluka too. The state average was the reference point for this exercise. Finally the IBC had to recommend an action plan for bringing in balanced regional development and suggest appropriate methods for ensuring equitable allocations of development expenditure over the areas of the three Development Boards (IBC 1997: 2).1 The recommendations of the IBC were accepted by the governor and the state government in November 2000 and it was also resolved that while liquidating the backlog assessed by the committee, care will be taken to see that no fresh backlog is created (Kimmatkar 2010: 10).2 From 2001 onwards the governor began issuing directives whereby the state treasury was made to allocate funds to the development boards (DB) of Vidarbha, Marathwada and Rest of Maharashtra. These directives have become routine. In 2007 the governor overruled the state cabinet and slashed the allocation of funds for north Maharashtra. In the same year the water resources department increased the number of backlog districts from 10 to 21, some of which were outside Vidarbha and Marathwada. Following a complaint the governor claried that backlog districts would pertain only to Vidarbha and Marathwada. The governor now has become the nal arbiter in the apportioning of development funds. The formation of development boards under Article 371(2) had placed, in the words of Kogekar
wide powers in the hands of the state governor in exercise of which he will be able to out the advice of his council of ministers. This will be contrary to the workings of the parliamentary system of government adopted under our constitution (1987: 311).

These powers of the governor were soon challenged when a petition was
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led in the Bombay High Court in 2006 by Ramesh Dahigude. It prayed that the directives of the governor be set aside on two counts. One, that Article 371(2) was unconstitutional as it went against parliamentary democracy, and second that the governor was allocating funds without the sanction of the state assembly. The constitutional ambiguity of such an arrangement where power is shared between an elected body and a non-elective ofce was resolved with the Bombay High Courts judgment in 2008. It upheld the powers of the governor and said that Article 371(2) was not in conict with the basic structure of the Constitution because the Maharashtra assembly had ceded powers to the governor by unanimously passing the resolution for constituting development boards. This resolution had been moved in 1984 by the then chief minister Vasantdada Patil and was very strongly supported by the then leader of opposition, Sharad Pawar (Kimmatkar 2010: 9). The emergence of VANSAVM in July 2001 was not fortuitous. It emerged from an all-party conclave of legislators from Vidarbha. The conclave took a decision to set aside the demand for a separate state and stress the development of irrigation and water conservation works. Their key demand was that the backlog in investments should be cleared and a statement to that effect should be made on the oor of the House during the concluding session of the assembly in August 2001. When the irrigation minister refused to make any such commitment a 40-member delegation of legislators from Vidarbha called on the governor in September 2001 and submitted a memorandum. It was the rst attempt by all party members from Vidarbha to put pressure on the Government of Maharashtra and it compelled the then Governor of Maharashtra P C Alexander to pass orders under article 371(2) (ibid: 10). From this beginning in 2001 the governor now approves the allocation of funds which then is included in the budget estimates. For the year 2012-13 it is estimated that the total funds available to the state government for plan expenditure amount to Rs 45,000 crore. Out of this Rs 13,922.14 crore have been
January 26, 2013

set aside for expenditure on works (which will benet the entire state) and also for non-divisible projects. Of the remaining Rs 31,077.86 crore the governor has apportioned 31% to the Vidarbha Development Board, 18% to the Marathwada Development Board and 51% to the Rest of Maharashtra Development Board (GoM 2012-13: 35). This apportioning is equitable and it explains why the demand in this region for a separate state is receding. The development boards, despite many inadequacies, have begun to integrate the complexities of regional inequalities into the governing structures of Maharashtra. The effectiveness of this constitutional mechanism has caught the imagination of other states. A delegation of MPs from Karnataka from both the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and the Congress Party met the union home minister in 2011 seeking an amendment to Article 371 to provide special status to backward regions of Karnataka, in particular the Hyderabad-Karnataka region. This amendment would provide reservation in educational and employment opportunities for the people of the backward region and also ensure funds to remove regional imbalance (The Hindu 2011). Nagpur Agreement The history of Article 371(2) goes back to an agreement known as the Nagpur Agreement arrived at between 11 leaders of the Marathi-speaking areas of Bombay, Madhya Pradesh and Hyderabad states in September 1953. This agreement was in anticipation of the recommendations of the SRC constituted in December 1953. Misgivings remained even after the agreement was reached and to assuage these, a decision was

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taken to accord constitutional status to the Nagpur Agreement.

The Report of the Joint Committee to which the Constitution (Ninth Amendment) Bill, 1956 was referred, records as follows: it was urged before the Committee by its members from Vidarbha that the agreement entered into in September 1953, known as the Nagpur Agreement, should, to the extent practicable, be given constitutional recognition. The members from the other Maharashtra areas gave their full support to this proposal. A clause has accordingly been added to the proposed Article with the consent of the members from Maharashtra [GoM 1985: 5 and 330].

the Nagpur Agreement, Article 371(2) of the Indian Constitution, and Maharashtras permanent commitment to the two, announced in the House and in ofcial publications, constitutes the historical basis for the three constituent units to come together to form the new state of Maharashtra (GoM 1985: 6).

The Constitution was amended in 1956 and Article 371(2) was incorporated enabling the president to assign a special responsibility to the governor of Maharashtra to establish separate development boards for Vidarbha, Marathwada and the Rest of Maharashtra and also for: (a) The equitable allocation of funds for development expenditure over the said areas, subject to the requirements of the State as a whole, and (b) Equitable arrangements providing adequate facilities for technical education and vocational training and adequate opportunities for employment in services under the control of the state government, in respect of all the said areas, subject to the requirements of the state as a whole (GoM 1985: 5-6). This Article while spelling out the safeguards for protecting the interest of the less developed regions in the state of Maharashtra also underlined the fact that the proposed unitary state would have three distinct regions as its constituent units. Development Boards A statement of policy was placed on the table of the Bombay Legislative Assembly in 1960 when the bill for reorganising Bombay state into Maharashtra and Gujarat states came up for consideration. It clearly stated the need for development boards for Vidarbha and Marathwada and promised to place before the state legislative assembly every year a report about fund allocation and the functioning of the board. A similar declaration was made through an ofcial publication called Guiding Principles of Maharashtra (1960). The representations made to the Dandekar Committee were categorical in their assertions that
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Less than a decade later the key provision of the Nagpur Agreement was abrogated when in 1969 chief minister V P Naik declared in the assembly that the district, instead of a region, will be taken up as the primary unit of planning since the state as a whole, barring one or two districts, was backward. He further made it clear that no special provision can be made to address the problems specic to Vidarbha since its backwardness is no different from the larger backwardness of Maharashtra. The beginning of the Sixth Plan period (1980-85) saw a revival of the question of regional imbalance in the assembly debates and in 1983 the state government appointed the high level Dandekar Committee. Dandekar submitted the committees report a year later and came to the conclusion that,
The failure, to report to the state assembly every year in terms of the Nagpur Agreement has been a serious lapse on the part of the state government. If a report had been made to the state legislature, as envisaged in the Nagpur Agreement, the matter would have received sustained attention.

This lapse and the announcement of region-specic programmes without adequate funds had led to a feeling of mistrust and the demand for invoking the provisions of Article 371 (2) of the Constitution (GoM 1985: 10). These provisions were invoked a decade later to enact The State of Maharashtra (Special Responsibility of Governor for Vidarbha, Marathwada and Rest of Maharashtra) Order, 1994. Regional Consciousness and History VANSAVM is an expression of this regions consciousness. To grasp the nature of this consciousness some historical ground needs to be covered. The beginnings go back to 1817 when the British power defeated the Bhosale rajas of Nagpur in the battle of Sitabardi. Language as a marker of identity in this region began when the British rulers attached the Marathi-speaking Nagpur
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territories to the Hindi-speaking Saugor and Nerbudda territories in 1861 to carve out a new province by the name of Central Provinces with Nagpur as its capital. Not only were the Hindi-speakers more in number and their territory larger but also their region was less developed. Inevitably the colonial citizens living within a particular province organised themselves into counter-poised if not actually hostile constituencies (Ravinder Kumar 2001). It did not take long for the earlier counterpoised communities to turn hostile. The revenue surplus Berar province was attached to the revenue decit Central Provinces in 1903 to balance its budget. Leaders from Berar protested and Dadasaheb Khaparde observed that Bengal suffered from partition at the hands of Lord Curzon, Berar suffered from amalgamation (Phadke 1979: 281). They sought the help of Nagpur leaders who refused to make common cause with them. It was only in 1938 when Congress leader N B Khare was ousted from the premiership of Central Provinces by the Hindi-speaking leaders that Nagpur joined hands with Berar and passed a resolution in the Central Provinces legislature demanding a separate state. The erasure of old frontiers for administrative purposes also served the larger purpose of preventing the cultural and political consolidation of the regions concerned (Sarangi 2006: 157). Broader forces soon emerged to deepen the contestation.
The Congress at its meeting in Nagpur in 1920 accepted the general principle that provincial boundaries should be drawn on language lines and that the political machinery of the Indian National Congress should be organised according to language. The Congress constitution was drafted to make provisions for the vernacular units, which took the form of provincial Congress Committees (PCC), of which twenty-one were created. The importance of this decision can be gauged from the fact that the Congress was transformed from a middle-class assembly of leaders to a mass movement able to speak to the people in their own language (King 1998: 61 and 63).

The decision to make Marathi the accepted language of communication in public life enabled people from the backward castes of Nagpur and Berar regions to enter the Congress Party. Initially, they sided with the Hindi-speaking leaders and
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were successful in ousting the Marathispeaking brahmin leaders from leadership positions. In 1938, after the ouster of Khare as premier of Central Provinces and Berar, caste receded and language became salient in the emerging consciousness of Vidarbha. This is the shared historical experience of the people that shaped their consciousness. The transformation of a geographic area into an administrative province and nally to a distinct sociocultural region is a complex process charted out by a human agency.
The relationship between the rise of the regional elites and their role in selection and standardisation of symbols and values from the regional stock of symbols and values (the elaboration of a regional ideology) is a very complex one, relating to technology, education, access to civil and political roles and the accidents of history and policy (Cohn cited in Gokhale-Turner 1980: 96-97).

ideology has been the city of Nagpur founded in 1702 by the Gond king Bhakt Buland Shah Uikey who at one time had battled emperor Aurangazeb. From 1861 to 1950 Nagpur was the capital of the Central Provinces and Berar. In 1950 this province was renamed Madhya Pradesh but Nagpur continued to remain the capital till 1956 when it joined the bilingual state of Bombay. This legacy explains why in 1903 it was less inclined to make common cause with the Berar leaders and in the 1950s it was not enthusiastic to join the proposed larger province for all Marathi-speakers. Today it is the second capital of Maharashtra, every year it hosts the winter session of the assembly and is the most conspicuous symbol of Vidarbhas identity. Regional Identity In 1969 chief minister Naik rst enunciated the state policy of treating the district and not the region as the primary unit of planning. The setting up of development boards in 1994 was a partial reversal of this decision and just about a decade has passed during which this region qua region is receiving backlog funds. But already moves are afoot to undermine this new policy. An effort was made as recently as 2007 when the

Accidents of history and policy certainly have played a very signicant part in the forming of Vidarbhas consciousness. The 1857 uprising is what led the British power to carve out Central Provinces in 1861 to impose a tighter control on central India. The 1903 decision to attach the Berar region to Central Provinces was taken to meet the revenue decit of the Central Provinces. Equally potent in the articulation of a regional

V Ranganathan Committee began work on an action plan for drought-prone tehsils in Maharashtra. Initially 166 such tehsils were identied including 53 in Vidarbha. In Nagpur there was considerable hostility towards this committee since it was viewed as a ploy by leaders of western Maharashtra to scuttle the formula given by the governor and to divert funds away from Vidarbha. A High-Powered Committee for Balanced Regional Development headed by Vijay Kelkar was appointed by the governor in May 2011. Its mandate was to suggest methods for equitable distribution of funds for balanced development of all regions. The 14-member committee visited Nagpur in September 2011 and met a number of delegations who in unison demanded that the parametres set earlier for assessing regional imbalance should not be altered. Recently, the human development index has been incorporated in the formula for fund distribution and under this formula there has been a decrease in the funds being allotted to Vidarbha (VSDB 2010-11: 61). Even in 1983-84 the Dandekar Committee was struck by the anathema that people in Vidarbha felt towards any state policy which undermined their regional identity. The terms of reference required

REVIEW OF URBAN AFFAIRS

December 1, 2012
Urban Poverty in India: Tools, Treatment and Politics at the Neo-liberal Turn Karen Coelho, Anant Maringanti Understanding Poverty and Inequality in Urban India since Reforms: Vamsi Vakulabharanam, Sripad Motiram Bringing Quantitative and Qualitative Approaches Together The Spatial Reproduction of Urban Poverty: Karen Coelho, T Venkat, R Chandrika Labour and Livelihoods in a Slum Resettlement Colony Navdeep Mathur On the Sabarmati Riverfront: Urban Planning as Totalitarian Governance in Ahmedabad New Policy Paradigms and Actual Practices in Slum Housing: The Case of Housing Projects in Bengaluru Lalitha Kamath

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this committee to examine regional disparities district wise and as their report says
We were struck by the antipathy to this notion and we sensed a deep-seated suspicion, in some quarters, that the Committee has been asked to examine the problem in terms of districts as units mainly to undermine the regional identities of Vidarbha and Marathwada (GoM 1985: 16).

Denying a special place to Vidarbha as a region in the economic planning of the state is to deny the historical basis on which the state of Maharashtra came to be formed. On the eve of Independence and just after it when the Nagpur Agreement was being signed the opinion in this region and in Nagpur in particular was not really inclined towards joining Maharashtra.
The majority of the Congress legislators from MP were divided into two groups. One of them was inclined to continue the status quo, i e, the association of the Marathispeaking people with the Hindi-speaking people. Several Congress MLA s who belonged to the other group openly demanded a separate state of Maha Vidarbha. They continued to support this demand even when the CHC agreed to reopen the question of Bombays reorganisation in 1958. They fought a rearguard action when their spokesman, Marotrao Kannamwar urged the formation of Maha Vidarbha in the deliberations of the nine-man committee which recommended the bifurcation of Bombay in 1959 (Phadke 1979: 280).

became possible only after receiving constitutional safeguards in the shape of Article 371(2). The anxiety in Vidarbha hinges on the answers to two questions. Will not this region be treated as one unit when decisions are taken on allocating funds? Will Vidarbha no longer receive preferential treatment in fund allocation since the nancial backlog has been ofcially met in 2010? The notion of nancial backlog has been critiqued on two grounds. To begin with, the nancial backlog calculation was based on the levels of development and costs of 1994. Ination needs to be gured in before the question of meeting the nancial backlog can be answered satisfactorily. Even before this backlog could be removed a fresh backlog has been created because the state average has gone up between 1994 and 2010. The absence of any signicant growth in the rural economy is the other critique. The increased ow of funds has led to the impounding of water in dams but canals have yet to be constructed. The nancial backlog has been met but water has yet to ow into the elds. Meeting the physical backlog is the only way to ensure that the productive potential of the region is enhanced. This distinction between the nancial and the physical dimensions of the backlog concept had not escaped the notice of the Dandekar Committee. Their report says:
Our emphasis throughout will not be so much on the development expenditure incurred as the physical targets achieved in the several sectors. We shall assess the disparities in development and the backlog of districts lagging behind in terms of such physical achievements (GoM 1985: 19).

may not be very far away. The governing structures in the state circumvent the directives of the governor with ease. One of the ways is to release only a part of the sum of the development expenditure sanctioned by the governor to the Vidarbha Development Board while in the case of the Rest of Maharashtra Development Board the entire sum is released. Role of NCP Nationalist Congress Party chief and Union Minister Sharad Pawar in an interview to his partys mouthpiece Rashtravadi pointed out that those demanding a separate state for Vidarbha had never dared to ght a poll on that count and he cited the example of Belgaum where people demonstrate their desire to be a part of Maharashtra by regularly voting for the members of the Maharashtra Ekikaran Samiti (Hitavada 2010, 14 May). But will this state of affairs continue? In 2015 the term of the VSDB will come to an end. It has succeeded in obtaining funds. But to sustain this ow of funds the development boards will have to be given a further extension in 2015. Will Pawars party agree to do so? In March 2010 legislators from the Rest of Maharashtra Development Board united to demand that the policy of giving backlog funds to Vidarbha and Marathwada should be given up since the nancial backlog of these regions has been met. They also demanded the constituting of a separate board for the drought-prone talukas of western Maharashtra which have been awaiting funds for the last 10 years. The irrigation infrastructure of these talukas is much below the state average. The real political force opposing the development boards is the NCP. The heartland of the party is western Maharashtra for which their control over the resources of the irrigation department is critical. Irrigation is equally important for Vidarbha and with the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) rapidly growing in Vidarbha the divide between these two regions and their main political formations is now becoming symmetrical. Eventually, the question of determining the criterion for allocating funds will need to be answered. Should it be underdevelopment in general ignoring regional identities or
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Contrasts often offer deeper insights. Phadke says that unlike the merger of Marathwada, the problem of merging Mahavidarbha with western Maharashtra proved to be a thorny question that needed deft handling (ibid: 288). Both Vidarbha and Marathwada speak the same language. Both were backward regions and their people were in a minority in the Central Provinces and Berar and in Hyderabad state respectively. Despite these similarities they responded differently when the question of joining a single province made up of Marathi-speakers came up. Marathwada merged into Maharashtra unconditionally and even after the merger it has not really witnessed any signicant mobilisation of people on account of a regional grievance. In contrast, Vidarbha joined Maharashtra reluctantly, and even that
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Every year on 1 May, celebrations are held in Nagpur to commemorate the founding of the state of Maharashtra. Many organisations including the Vidarbha Rajya Sangharsh Samiti which traces its origins to the Maha Vidarbha Samiti established in 1940 make it a point to publicly register their protest against the decision of the Vidarbha region to join Maharashtra. Annexation is the word they use to describe this decision. Today these protests have become symbolic but they keep the embers alive for a more fortuitous day which
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policies which give space to regional identities? It can be either one or the other but not both. The hegemony of the Congress Party in Vidarbha has ended. The decline which began in 1999 continues. In the 2009 assembly elections the BJP-Shiv Sena alliance won 27 seats from Vidarbha while the Congress-NCP alliance won 28 seats. In Nagpur, both in its rural and urban segments, the BJPs political base is becoming hegemonic. It controls both the Nagpur Zilla Parishad and the Nagpur Municipal Corporation. In the 2009 assembly elections out of the six seats in Nagpur district three were won by the BJP and one by the Shiv Sena. The Congress was reduced to one seat while one seat was won by the NCP. The BJP won the two seats in Vidarbha in the biennial elections to the Maharashtra Legislative Council held in May 2012. These electoral victories beginning from 1999 are the result of the sustained political mobilisation undertaken by the BJP, its parent organisation (the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh) and their afliates over the decades. The BJP not only takes credit for the creation of Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh and Uttarakhand states during the National Democratic Alliance rule but as a matter of policy now supports all movements for statehood and greater autonomy. They are now ready to infuse political coherence into the amorphous statehood movement in Vidarbha. Preferential Economic Policies A close reading of the Vidarbha statehood movement will reveal that the substance of the demand behind the strident language is for preferential economic policies which accept that Vidarbha has an identity that is distinct and yet a part of the larger state identity. As the Dandekar Committee report says
It has been persistently impressed upon us that the regional identities of Vidarbha and Marathwada as historically evolved sociocultural units do not undermine the unity of Maharashtra. We share that view (GoM 1985: 14).

for setting up an agricultural university in Akola in Vidarbha. The successful Vidarbha bandh on 27 November 2000 led to a urry of political activities where a conscious decision was taken to ght for policies which will lead to a balanced growth of regions. It was not aimed at the demand for separating Vidarbha from Maharashtra. Even at the height of the movement for a separate state when a public meeting on Akhand Maharashtra Parishad was held in Nagpur on 1 December 2000 by the Nagpur district committee of the CPI(M), it was attended by large numbers. In 1938 when the legislature of Central Provinces and Berar passed a resolution demanding a separate state called Maha Vidarbha the grievance was against the Hindi-speaking community. Today the other is a region: western Maharashtra. Even this can change in 2015 when the term of the VSDB ends unless, of course, this region reaches some parity with the state average in irrigation infrastructure. The grievance in the past and which continues is not only on account of the low productivity of Vidarbhas rainfed rural economy but also the discrimination and inequality between regions.
Notes
1 This quotation has been excerpted from a report (1997) titled: Report of the Indicators and Backlog Committee (Volume I): On relative Levels of Development, Backlog and Removal of Regional Imbalances. The governor had designated B A Kulkarni

expert member of the Marathwada Development Board as the convener of the IBC. This quotation has been excerpted from a report titled The Saga of Vidarbha: A Report Prepared by The Expert Committee on Vidarbha, Nagpur. Advocate M G Kimmatkar was the chairman of this committee. This report dated 9 October 2010 was submitted to the Vidarbha Rajya Sangram Samiti in Nagpur. Advocate M G Kimmatkar is an expert member of the Vidarbha Statutory Development Board and for decades has been single-handedly espousing the cause of Vidarbha and its developmental needs.

References
GoM (1985): Report of the Fact-Finding Committee on Regional Imbalance in Maharashtra, Reprint (Mumbai: Planning Department). (2012-13): Financial Statement (Budget) of the Government of Maharashtra for the Year 20122013, Presented to the Legislature under Article 202 (1) of the Constitution of India. Gokhale-Turner, J (1980): Region and Regionalism in the Study of Indian Politics: The Case of Maharashtra in N K Wagle (ed.), Images of Maharashtra: A Regional Prole of India (London: Curzon Press). Kogekar, S V (1987): Maharashtra: Development Boards and the Governor, Economic & Political Weekly, Vol 22, No 8, 21 February (311-312). King, Robert D (1998): Nehru and the Language Politics of India (New Delhi: Oxford University Press). Khekale, N R (1999): The Pressure Politics in Maharashtra (India) (Mumbai: Himalaya Publishing House). Kumar, Ravinder (2001): Sizing up States: Federation Is Order of the Day, The Times of India, 11 January. Phadke, Y D (1979): Politics and Language (Bombay: Himalaya Publishing House). Sarangi, Asha (2006): Ambedkar and the Linguistic States: A Case for Maharashtra, Economic & Political Weekly, 14 January (151-157). The Hindu (2011): Chidambaram: Decision in 15 days on Amending Article 371, The Hindu, 10 August. VSDB (2010-11): Annual Report (Nagpur: Vidarbha Statutory Development Board).

Survey
August 27, 2011

Experimental Economics: A Survey

by

Sujoy Chakravarty, Daniel Friedman, Gautam Gupta, Neeraj Hatekar, Santanu Mitra, Shyam Sunder Over the past few decades, experimental methods have given economists access to new sources of data and enlarged the set of economic propositions that can be validated. This field has grown exponentially in the past few decades, but is still relatively new to the average Indian academic. The objective of this survey is to familiarise the Indian audience with some aspects of experimental economics.
For copies write to: Circulation Manager, Economic and Political Weekly, 320-321, A to Z Industrial Estate, Ganpatrao Kadam Marg, Lower Parel, Mumbai 400 013. email: circulation@epw.in

The 1968 agitation which erupted in this region was a protest against the state governments decision to locate an agricultural university in western Maharashtra. The subsequent agitation has been
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