Regional Justice Perspectives and the Issue of States Re-Organisation in India;A Revisit

The paper contends that demands for state reorganization and creation of new states have to be viewed basically as issues arising out of regional injustice. It is argued that a full-fledged theory of regional justice is yet to emerge in the literature. Most of the initiatives for conceptualization of issues of justice including Rawl’s Theory of Justice mainly focus on ‘individual’ justice issues rather than the issues of ‘regional’ justice. Amartya Sen’s contributions on justice provide opportunities for ‘extension’ of his approaches to analysis of regional justice. After a brief examination of the concept of ‘regional justice’ and also whether the rulers of the past in India had adopted regional justice perspectives the paper focuses on the recent initiatives to tackle the problem of regional injustice in the case of Karnataka, particularly through a High Powered Committee on Redressal of Regional Imbalances under the chairmanship of Dr DM Nanjundappa. After a brief critical analysis of the report of this Committee and subsequent developments in the state the paper concludes that creation of new states may not necessarily serve as a permanent solution of the problem of regional injustice.