India, March 22 -- I guess it was to be expected. The closer we came to conducting a census, the spectre of delimitation was bound to start haunting us. And though the Centre is dismissive of the concerns it raises, they're not easy to disregard. Nor should they be.

The reason is simple. Delimitation is the re-drawing of constituencies to reflect changes in the population so that, nationwide, they can be, approximately, of the same size. This means that in states where the population has grown faster than in others, the number of constituencies will increase. And if the total is to be kept at 543, the number of constituencies will, ipso facto, decrease in states where population stabilisation has been more effective. In other words, some...