• The statement in the editorial, ‘Three to go’, “small states are not a panacea and one need only glance at Jharkhand to acknowledge it”, is correct. Carving the former Assam into so many states, many years ago, resulted in some ethnic confrontation in the Northeast.

Creating more states will only add to the already high unproductive expenditure in the exchequer by creating more posts of governors, ministers and their bureaucrats. Since units of development must be villages and districts, formation of more states cannot increase the national output and cannot spur further growth. To develop backward regions in states, they must get focussed attention and sincere efforts must be made in that direction rather than trying to find futile excuses.

— K.G. Acharya Mumbai

• In your editorial ‘Three to go’, you have rightly endorsed Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Mayawati’s proposal to break it into three states. True, politically and administratively, UP is too unwieldy.

But there is another reason why this break-up is needed. With this, governments in the four daughter states of UP — I include Uttarakhand here — will also become more competitive in seeking investment and showing their voters how much better they are performing than the others. At the moment there appears to be little incentive in various parts of Uttar Pradesh for the politicians to concentrate on bijli-sadak-pani issues. The emphasis is on building social coalitions.

— R. Chatterjee Pune

In memoriam

... contd.