Exploring the implications of independent states in India

India. A couple weeks ago, I did a video about the languages in the continent of Asia. As I went through the various regions of the continent, there was one that caught my attention, especially due to the incredibly large amount of languages that it had, India. Save the prevalence of Hindi in the north, almost each Indian state has their own main language. If they were their own countries, many of them would have their own main language, not to count the thousands of other dialects that exist on a local or regional level. So this got me thinking, are there any other significant differences between the various Indian states? And what if these differences were enough to make them want to separate from each other, those are the two topics we're going to cover in this video by answering the hypothetical question, what if India broke up? The idea isn't completely insane. For a big part of its history, India was ruled by many different empires, but it also had various periods of vast regional independence. And even during the times of the British Empire, for instance, the British Raj, which also included Pakistan and Bangladesh, was made up of a great number of princely states. Areas that weren't directly governed by the British, but rather by the local people. There were officially 565 princely states when India and Pakistan became independent in 1947. So let's get into the hypothetical scenario today. First, the basics. We would not only have one country in this area, but would instead have 37. The number of states, 28, and union territories, 9. this is assuming that none of the states would group up into unions. If we were being realistic, this would probably be most likely, especially with the smaller and less developed ones. But the point of this hypothetical scenario is to learn about each state individually and how they compare among themselves, so let's go with the 37. Also, in case you don't know, I didn't either before this, the difference between a state and a union territory of India is that the state has its own government and a degree of autonomy, while a union territory is administered directly by the national federal government of India, sort of like Washington DC for the US or Brasilia for Brazil. Puducherry and Delhi are the two exceptions and they have an elected legislature and government since they were granted partial statehood status. In the scenario that all of them would become independent, this would immediately pose a challenge to most of the territories because unlike the states, they have no established government structures and organizations. Speaking of those governmental organizations, the most likely scenario in this case is that each of the new countries would become an independent republic, likely full-on democracies as India is today, with their own parliament and their own president, with a balance of power between the two, maybe varying in each case. India is one of the biggest, if not the biggest democracy in the world, so I think it's unlikely that any state would become non-democratic or revert back to a monarchy similar to those of the princely states, even if in a constitutional democratic monarchy like Norway or Sweden. It's also important to note that all of them would likely struggle, and unless there was a very long transition period or continued collaboration between independent states, there would be big economic issues. For instance, Uttarakhand apparently provides electricity to Uttar Pradesh, who in turn provides cereals and vegetables to most of India. So every state's GDP depends on their exports to other states. Maybe larger, more populated and developed, richer states would do best, but still, I believe that all of them would struggle with independence. What about the flags of these new countries? Today, each Indian state or territory has its own flag. However, all flags consist only of a white field with the state's emblem on it. The emblem is usually a seal or coat of arms of sorts with local elements and a choice of colors. Should each of the states become independent, then these would likely have to be redesigned into full-on flags, taking into account the colors and symbols used to represent each region. Most of the states use the national emblem which depicts these three lions. If a United India disappeared then these would likely be removed and some states actually only use it as their symbol so in those cases full-on new flags and symbols would have to be chosen. This got me thinking that it would be a good idea to have a flag contest to redesign India's state flags. If you want to participate just go to my twitter and reply to this tweet with your flag proposal and after a couple of weeks the flags with the most likes will win a prize of a hundred euro steam gift certificates. Speaking of population, how would these different states differ in that regard? Population density in India has a very irregular distribution. You have areas with hundreds of millions of people, while other ones only reach a few hundreds of thousands. There's also a big difference from state to state. For instance, Uttar Pradesh up north has 200 million people and accounts for over 16% of India's total population, while Maharashtra in the south has 112 million and accounts for 9%. Bihar and West Bengal, also up north, are next with 91 and 72 million, 7.5 and 6% respectively. Then all other states have only 5% or less of the country's population. In fact, there's a total of 16 states, more than half, that represent less than 1% of the national population each. Although we need to keep in mind the base value is very high, India is one of and soon the most populated country in the world. For instance, Uttarakhand has only 0.8% of the national population but still has 10 million people, as big as the whole country of Portugal for instance. The 5 least populated states are Sikkim with 600,000, Dadra and Nagar Haveli, Daman and Diu at 585, Andaman and Nicobar Islands at 380, Ladakh with 274,000 and Lakshadweep with 64,000. Speaking of Sikkim, it would be an interesting case in itself. Sikkim is located between Nepal and Bhutan and it used to be a fully independent country, then being annexed by India in 1975 only. The kingdom of Sikkim had existed since 1642. Although its independence was always kinda partial, it was initially a tributary state of Qing China, then a protectorate of Tibet, then of the British Empire and finally joining India. Sikkim is also one of the smallest states in territory. Although it isn't the smallest, Goa, Delhi, Dadra, Puducherry, Chandigarh and Lakshadweep are even smaller. Puducherry is a strange case. It has four districts that are territorially disconnected. In the case of independence, it's strange that it would continue to exist like this. It's more likely that the districts would be absorbed by the states that they border. Dadra and Nagar Haveli, Daman and Diu are similar. Although they are in the same region, each could be absorbed or perhaps become their own independent city-states. I believe this would be a likely fate for Delhi as well in this scenario. Another small territory are the Andaman and Nicobar Islands. Being away from the Indian subcontinent, independence makes more sense for it, at least in my head, but they would likely struggle a lot from their lack of resources, having to focus on tourism as their main source of income. India is a very large country but it has so many subdivisions that if they became countries, its state wouldn't be that big when compared to other countries worldwide. The largest state is Rajasthan followed by Madhya Pradesh and Maharashtra, each with over 300 million square kilometers. Rajasthan would be bigger than countries like Malaysia or Poland but still behind Germany or Norway for instance. The economies of Indian states are very different in their contributions to the national GDP as well. Of course that in the case of independence, it's likely that all their GDPs would go down a lot, but I think we can assume that states that have the larger GDPs today are generating more money in their regional economies and would therefore have a stronger economy upon independence. As we can see on this map, the states in the darker tones would be the largest economies. The ones up north, especially the northeast, are the smallest, Sikkim, Nagaland, Arunachal Pradesh, Mizoram and the Andaman and Nicobar Islands are the smallest economies. Maharashtra is the biggest economy with a GDP of around 350 billion US dollars, although this data is a little outdated, followed by Tamil Nadu at 230, Uttar Pradesh at 210, and Gujarat and Karnataka at around 200 each. This map from 2019, again outdated, shows us which countries would match each Indian state's economy. I'm not sure how the Indian economy has developed since 2019, but this allows us to understand the really big dimension of Indian states. Some alone match the economies of countries like Denmark, Norway, Portugal, Hungary, or Greece. When it comes to GDP per capita though, this changes. India has a lot of people, like a lot a lot, and so despite having these high levels of regional economies, each region also has millions of people. This causes the GDP per capita to be very low. When we list them by power purchase parity, the highest GDP per capita in India is found in Goa at 19,000 US dollars, followed by Sikkim at 18,000. One of the states with smallest economies ranks so high here because they have a small population. It's odd because the real GDP for these two states, for instance, are just over 5,000 US dollars, but when you convert it to PPP, it grows it to 19 and 18,000. This is because PPP is the rate at which the currency of one country, would have to be converted into that of another country to buy the same amount of goods and services. Essentially, the price of products and services influences the value. The GDP per capita of these states in rupees would convert to 5,000 US dollars directly, but in order to buy what you buy with that amount in India and the US, you would need 19,000. In Delhi, the GDP per capita is also 15,000, these top 3 are still below the world average which is 20,000, smaller than countries like Thailand, China or even Belarus. The smallest are Jharkhand, Uttar Pradesh and Bihar at 3,200, 2,800 and 1,900 US dollars each, equating countries like the Comoros, Guinea-Bissau or Sierra Leone. When it comes to currency, it's interesting to consider whether each of them would get their own currency or if they would keep the national currency despite independence and some type of monetary union like the eurozone in europe i believe that this would be the most likely i don't see 37 new currencies suddenly emerging overnight but money isn't everything when it comes to HDI the Human Development Index which is a composite index that takes into consideration health economy education and income the closer the value is to 1.0 the best in India the national value in 2018 was just over 0.6 but there are some states that perform better. In this map, we can see the territories that do best in green. It's likely that these states have people with a higher quality of life and would therefore maintain it in case of independence. The worst levels of HDI in the country are in these three northern states which are all below the national average of 0.6. The higher level states would match the HDI of countries like Bosnia, Iran or China while the lowest match places like East Timor, Nepal or Namibia. And what about religion? Would that be a big difference between these new independent countries? The answer is not so much. The vast majority of India follows Hinduism as their religion. Population wise this accounts for around 80% of the people and the distribution is countrywide so there are very few states where Hinduism isn't the majority. Muslims represent 14% and are only the majority in the northeast in Jammu and Kashmir as well as Lakshadweep. Perhaps in case of independence, these would be the only two Muslim countries created. If Jammu and Kashmir didn't join Pakistan, since it's a disputed region altogether. According to the 2011 census, almost all other states are of Hindu majority except those that are Christian, I didn't know about this, apparently Mizoram, Arunachal Pradesh, Nagaland and Meghalaya. Oh and of course Punjab which has Sikkim as its main religion. As we can see on this map, there are other local strong presences of religions but not enough to be the majority in certain states. In this scenario most new countries would be Hindu while two new ones would be Muslim, five Christian and we would have the first independent Sikh country in the world. The majority religion is sometimes connected with ethnicity. India is ethnically diverse with more than 2,000 different ethnic groups. There is also significant diversity within regions and almost every state and several districts have their own distinct mixture of ethnicities, traditions, and culture in this map made by DeviantArt user Tomislav Dai, we can see it very well. I believe these ethnic differences are more regional than they are bound to state borders, although sometimes they match, but I believe that in the case of independence, there wouldn't be significant ethnic differences between these countries. After all, there's a reason they are grouped together in India today, but let me know in the comments if I'm wrong about this. Military-wise, I think this would be the biggest challenge for each state's independence. Each country needs a military force and India's military is a national country-wide institution. There's not really an accurate way of checking how strong each state would be. I guess the ones with the most population and a better economy would do best. The only thing we can do is see how northern states have a higher amount of people signing up for the military, but it makes sense since they are in border regions handling the territorial disputes with Pakistan. Essentially, it seems that there's very little chance of this ever happening. As far as I know, there are no separatist movements in India, but following the scenario of each state being independent, we get to learn important statistics about each of them, and especially about how they compare to each other. Learning how they differ in size, population, size of their economy and quality of life of their people, among so many other factors, not to mention the significant religious and cultural differences. What do you think? Would you like to see each Indian state become independent? Do you think there's any chance at all of this happening and what would happen if it did let me know in the comments along with any additional information or corrections you may have remember to participate in the flag design contest if you're interested in winning the prize or just want to participate for fun thanks so much for watching this video subscribe if you want and i will see you next time for more general knowledge