Word: indias
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...prospect of Telangana's creation has buoyed similar causes elsewhere as calls for secession echo in nearly a dozen states in India. A four-day strike is under way among the picturesque hills and tea estates of Darjeeling, in northern West Bengal, with protesters intensifying demands for a new state of Gorkhaland that would better address the needs of the area's ethnic Nepalese population. More than 100 activists have begun what they call a "fast-unto-death." On the other side of the country, in the vast desert state of Rajasthan, a caravan of some 5,000 demonstrators...
...root of this looming crisis lies the still unresolved question of how the world's largest democracy ought best to govern itself. Independent India was at first a patchwork of former British provinces and princely states threaded together into a federal republic. Some of its states remain huge and unwieldy - for example, the north Indian state of Uttar Pradesh, with its estimated 190 million people, would be virtually tied with Brazil as the fifth most populous country on earth but it would also possess 8% of the world's population under the global poverty line. With a country of India...
...when three largely remote and impoverished regions were elevated in status. At least two of them - Chhattisgarh and Uttarakhand - have shown marked progress since their inception. Small states like Kerala in the south and Haryana in the north, both with populations under 30 million, boast some of India's highest development indicators. Backers of further decentralization even point to the original, idealistic Gandhian vision for India - of a republic brought together not by a strong central government, but an "ocean" of egalitarian and self-sufficient villages...
...desperation of a movement shorn of much of its real political capital. "Having the government buckle to this kind moral blackmail is not a healthy way to go about things," says Madhukar. "There shouldn't be this sword of Damocles hanging over peoples' heads." A young India may have come of age through such dramatic acts of Gandhian sacrifice, but a more mature nation needs more measured habits. -With reporting by Nilanjana Bhowmick/New Delhi...
...pictorial timeline of events that shaped modern India...