South vs North: India’s Great Divide by Nilakantan RSMy rating: 2 of 5 stars
Hooter: A statistics based approach to the positives of the federalism approach of the Indian Union
"One tshirt size truly doesn't fit all" is the summary the author takes to by setting the baseline using 1/3 of the book to read the statistics across various indicators of education, health and economy to showcase how wide a chasm that exists across the different states of India which haven't converged after 75 years of Independence. With Tamil Nadu getting a special mention in each graph, its neighbour Kerala not too far behind , the author has them representative of South India. He then highlights how the standardisation across the nation actually hurts those who are ahead on the curve as it incentivises them to be complacent so that the laggards can catch up.
This goes back to the debate of equity v/s equality in terms of approaches that we usually hear in DEI conversations, but applied at a state level. Not sure if its me but a lot of the book has this heavy tinge of why we Tamilians are paying the price of the rest of the country being unable to catch up hypothesis.
So whilst the statistics make for an interesting reading and baseline framework towards developmental politics, I was hoping for a more forward looking constructive set of examples on how to push the boundaries for everyone to move forward on this developmental front rather than stop at showcasing whose ahead and who isn't and engaging in thought experiments.
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