FAQ: Why Am I Doing This?

Hello from en route – have left Chicago, am in Newark, next stop: Delhi. I have been meaning to write some kind of summary of what I will be doing in India, particularly for my parents, who are somewhat resistant to the idea that a job could involve absolutely no structured tasks.

In rough order of anticipated use of time: sweating, asking myself questions about what the *%&$! I am doing in India, attempting to trick bureaucrats into doing their jobs, and working on my dissertation.

When I am working on my dissertation, what I will be trying to figure out is “when does the Indian government give the ‘okay’ to the creation of new states?” This is a little piece of a bigger puzzle, which is: “When do governments give into violence?” which is, in turn, a piece of a more important puzzle: “What kind of dissertation would get me a job and allow me to recycle my many existing literature reviews on political violence?”

A useful analogy: perhaps some of you know that in my home state of Michigan the Upper Peninsula of the state periodically threatens to secede from the rest of the state. The roughly 583 people in the Upper Peninsula would then go on to form the 51^st state of the Union, which they would name “Superior.” Similar things happen a lot in India. For example, the city of Mumbai (nee Bombay) is in the state of Maharashtra (don’t worry, there won’t be a quiz) but it was once the capital of a much bigger state. Then the Marathi people got sick of the rest of the people in the state and kicked the other part of the state out. Which, frankly, is what the Upper Peninsula deserves.

To continue the analogy, the Upper Peninsula wants to secede from the rest of Michigan because the people in the Lower Peninsula (the “trolls”) periodically attempt to restrict bear trapping. In much the same way, groups in India tend to want their own states when they feel their unique cultural heritage is under threat from the callous, non-bear trapping majority. Also, if the Upper Peninsula were its own state, the politicians in its capital (which would be Calumet, the city where the baking soda in a red tin with a Native American on the front is made) would get money directly from the federal government instead of having to deal with the odious Lansing middlemen.

Now, I really have no idea what the procedure for splitting Michigan in the US would be, but in India the procedure is that the federal government just has to decide to do it. So, my question is, when do they give in? And, most importantly, when do they give in after a couple of protests and when do they wait until after some mild rioting and when do they wait until after things get blown up and when do things get blown up but the government still never gives in?

I don’t know the answer to this question. What I am going to do to try to figure that out is to talk to a bunch of Indian politicians and newspaper reporters and bureaucrats and other members of the chatting class. My fears are two-fold. First, what if everyone offers answers that are obviously really dumb? Should I just make something up? Second, what if the right answer turns out to be something totally idiosyncratic (like, the Prime Minister’s favorite number is 25, so he decided India really needed another state) or really hard to measure (like, bear trapping is not as important as civil war, and that is why there is a West Virginia but no Superior)? Because, if it can’t be measured then there will be no chance to do statistics or experiments in my dissertation. And that is really bad for going on the job market because if there are no charts and graphs in your work people have to read the prose, and what hiring committee has time for that kind of crap?

Still, I’d like to know what the answer to my question is, so I’m glad I’m going. Ciao!