Kashmir is Rwanda, Uttar Pradesh is Pakistan, and Gujarat is Italy. It’s a strange new India.
Chief Economic Advisor V Anantha Nageswaran, while presenting the Economic Survey 2023-24 on Monday, displayed a map of India where every state and Union Territory was renamed after another country with a similar population. The map, which was part of his PowerPoint presentation, looked like something straight out of a primary school student’s class project. But let’s not judge a book by its cover.
It’s the content that is puzzling—and really, rather tactless.
The names of Indian states and Union Territories have been erased and replaced with other countries. And now, India’s most populous state, Uttar Pradesh, is Pakistan. If this is an attempt at irony by the creators of this ‘piece of art’, it fails miserably.
But it does bring to mind the 2015 brouhaha over Shah Rukh Khan’s comments that India was becoming intolerant. Yogi Adityanath, who was an MP at the time, said the actor was welcome to go to Pakistan. Fans were not amused. Around the same time, Ashwini Kumar Choubey also declared that Nitish Kumar should go to India’s frenemy state after the outcome of the Bihar Assembly polls. Well, Kumar has had the last laugh. His JD(U) is now part of the coalition government at the Centre.
As for Bihar, it’s now Egypt on this map, and shares borders with Peru, the new Jharkhand. The mind boggles. For some reason, the makers of the map decided to use North Korea as a reference for Chhattisgarh when they could have easily chosen Australia. It’s less offensive. The land of cute koala bears, kangaroos, and Marmite is by far a better option than Kim Jong Un’s playground. When the supreme leader is not cosying up to his new BFF Vladimir Putin, he’s reportedly developing different methods of launching nuclear attacks.
The map makers, who should take lessons from kindergarten toddlers, may have been attempting to be funny when they decided that Gujarat was the new Italy. Social media going bananas over the warm relationship between Narendra Modi and Giorgia Meloni is surreal enough. Is it time to order some pasta carbonara with a side of dhokla?
Cartographic confusion
When the ‘map’ popped up during the presentation, CEA Nageswaran turned his attention toward India’s ‘uniqueness’, saying, “the country internally has many different countries within it.”
Every state has been christened anew, but none is as improbable as Jammu and Kashmir being the new Rwanda. Just last week, its president Paul Kagame outdid himself by winning the elections with more than 99 percent of the votes. Kashmir, too, is gearing up for an assembly election with the Supreme Court’s 30 September deadline just around the corner. But no party will beat Kagame.
The credit ‘India in Pixels’ at the bottom of the slide raises questions on whether this bizarre map was made specifically for the Economic Survey or simply lifted from another platform. Either way, someone from the office of the Chief Economic Advisor to the Government of India should have done a quick fact-check.
Tripura is Puerto Rico, which s not a country. The Caribbean island is officially called the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico, and is the world’s oldest colony. It’s one of the few remnants of America’s ‘colonial empire’ along with Guam, the Northern Mariana Islands, American Samoa, and the US Virgin Islands. America’s territories are a drop in the ocean compared to those of the United Kingdom or Spain at the height of their expansion. But who needs territories when you can conquer the world with Friends.
At least the Bengalis will be celebrating. West Bengal has a population similar to Vietnam’s—at least according to this map. Communist parties struggling to win back electoral relevance in the state will appreciate this. After all, Left party workers took to the streets during the US war in Vietnam, shouting the slogan, “Amar naam, tomar naam, Vietnam, Vietnam (My name, your name, Vietnam, Vietnam)” in support of the Ho Chi Minh-led Communist revolution in the Southeast Asian country.
The map makers did get Karnataka right when they renamed it France. Both the state and the European country have strong views on hijab, ‘outsiders’, and identity politics. Just last week, the Karnataka government approved a Bill that mandated 75 percent reservation in non-management jobs, and 50 percent reservation in management jobs for local candidates in the private sector. The backlash was swift and strong, and the Siddaramaiah-led government withdrew it. Now, everyone is unhappy—the Kannadigas and non-residents alike.
Further south, Kerala is Malaysia. Or is Malaysia Kerala? It’s all so confusing. And as someone pointed out on Reddit, ‘at least it looks the part’. They weren’t referring to the tropical landscape and beaches.
The Southeast Asian country’s longest serving prime minister, Mahathir Mohamad, bears an uncanny resemblance to Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan. An aside: Mahathir’s grandad was a Mallu.
But jokes apart, there has to be a better way to visually represent how India’s population is the sum of many parts of the world. This is not it. For now, let’s plan a trip to Swaziland. It’s the new Goa.
Views are personal.
(Edited by Prashant)