New Delhi, April 20 -- The government's move to link the Nari Shakti Vandan Adhiniyam (Women's Reservation Act of 2023) with nationwide delimitation, or redrawing electoral constituency boundaries based on population, has stoked the latent but ever-growing sense of injustice that India's southern states have long been smarting under.

Remember, it was not so long ago that Chandrababu Naidu, chief minister of Andhra Pradesh and a member of India's ruling National Democratic Alliance (NDA), urged Andhra people to have more children. And Tamil Nadu chief minister M.K. Stalin suggested that rather than the 16 forms of wealth traditionally invoked while blessing newly-weds, a new invocation should be for 16 children instead.

Both were wary of...