REGIONAL IMBALANCES

Regional identity ,some times running but often in competition with, if not in opposition to the national identity needs to be analysed in terms of social and cultural forces  that have been at work .Through the term region is contextual one , regionalism  has acquired through successive phases as world  be discussed below , a distinct connotation in an academic of all the indian politics  .The term is now used to indicate an agglomeration of all those  forces that have generally considered to be centrifugal , polarised to centralism and nationalism.

The original of regionalismin India can be historically traced to many of the factors like cultural heritage , geographical isolation, ethnic loyalties etc . For a political theorist however it is more to be viewed as the complex of political conciousness , expandingparticipation and increasing competition for scarce resources .Economic grievances that may be real or perceived have often  been articulated in the form of resistence to the economic policies of the centre promoting deprivation of one region at the cost of favouring anotherregion .The grievances  related to this peocess of internal colonialism are often fused with the feeling of cultural anxiety , over language status and ethnic balance .It is this fusion that constitute  the core of an individuals  identity and when politicised takes a politicised takes a potentially virulentfrom providingregionalism its potency.

it follows that the general factors behind the growth of regionalism are the cultural , ethnic and linguistic diversiry of India.It is in the recognition of this diversities that federalism as an institutional  mechanism has been treated as the cornerstone of Indias democratic system that has enabled  the regionalism  social groups  ethnic , linguistic , tribal and cultural  to obtain  a share of resources  and satisfy  their demands  for recognition .Indeed  the frequency with which identity  based politics has asserted itself at the regional level has invested Indian federalism with  a substance not found in many putatively  federal political system , and has provided an important decentralising tendency that has run like a thread through politics since independence.

However there have been ,as we shall describe later,features of india fedreal system that have engendered regional conflict. A significant aspect of the issue of regionalism has been the dialectic of centralisation and decentralisation between the centre and the state , the appropriate pattern of devolution of power . Then the unevennessof economic development  has negated  the promise  of balanced  regional  growth  inherent in the agenda of national building  and national integration . The introduction  of the new economic policies  in 1991 has further widened the gulf between the rich and the poor region as the latter have gailed to attract  the private  investments  both domestic and foreign . Beside these other factors  like the increasing  electoral strength of the regional propriority classes and also the federalisation of political party  system in the coalition politics  that has emerged in the aftermath  of the congress as the dominant  party system can be counted as the factors  leading to the growth of regionalisation  of Indian democratic politics.

CONCEPTUALISING REGION AND REGIONALISM ;

How do we understand the concept of regionalism . Regionalism is a complex socio political phenomenon and as much scholars . While analysing various dimensions of the phenomenon have developed different conceptual  frameworks in order to understand it.

Before engaging the discussion on regionalism as a concept at the theoritical level . It is pertinent to understand  the term region . The concept at the theoritical level , it is pertinent to.understand the term region . The concept  of region , in essence , lies  at the very core of any conceptualisation of rgionalism in the sense that is the concept provides the existential basisfor the  emergence of the phenomenon of regional loyalty provides the basis for partial understanding  of regionalism  the social  scintists. Have been more concerned 

 with the non geographical factors , as, for them , regionalism has always been more an analytical category than a geographical entity.