9

India
Unity in diversity through an evolving
federalism
George Mathew
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India is not a textbook federal coun­try. In order to appraise or to understand its

par­ticu­lar federal ar­range­ments, one needs to take into account the his­tor­ical and
geopolit­ical con­text in which these ar­range­ments were formulated, for in this
mat­ter “con­text is king”. Evalu­ations of existing federal ar­range­ments in the
light of “ideal” or basic prin­ciples of federal governance may be pos­sible “but
only within a par­ticu­lar coun­try or con­text.”1 And so it is against a con­text of
post-­colonialism, the long fight for Independence, and sub­sequent nation-­
building tasks within a multiethnic and multicultural framework that the Indian
ex­peri­ence with fed­eral­ism can be best understood.

1  The historical context

1.1  British colonial rule

The British came to the Indian subcontinent as early as 1608, estab­lished them-
selves through the British East India Company (“the Company”) in Surat (in
modern-­day Gujarat), and later expanded their pres­ence until, at the onset of the
18th century, the Company became the Raj (or Rule) of the three presidencies:
Bengal, Bombay, and Madras. In 1858, the Company trans­ferred its authority over
its territory to Queen Victoria and India became known as the British Indian
Empire.
At the beginning of the twentieth century, the Empire extended from the North-­
West Frontier Province and undivided Punjab to the tip of the Southern peninsula
– including Cape Comorin (or Kanyakumari) and beyond, to Ceylon (today’s Sri
Lanka). Its ter­rit­ories stretched from northern Baluchistan bordering Afghanistan,
and Sind in the West, through the entire Indo-­Gangetic plains, Bengal and Assam
up to Burma. Its influence extended to the inde­pend­ent regions of Kashmir, Nepal,
Sikkim, Bhutan and Manipur, and hundreds of large and small princely states situ-
ated in different parts of the subcontinent remained as its feudatories.
In order to rule with success over such a vast territory, the British resorted to
the tactic known as “divide and rule”. They gov­erned directly in some areas and
by proxy (through the agency of local leaders) in others. The latter areas were
known as Princely States holding 45 per cent of the territory on the 24 per cent of
 India   209
the popu­la­tion. The incapabil­ity of the British to rule directly over the entire
2

Indian subcontinent may be explained in two ways; first, although the British milit­
ary was techno­lo­gically superior at the time, it faced a rel­at­ive scarcity of milit­ary
resources as it was spread all over the world and, second, in the Native States, the
British met either with organ­ised resistance, or with eagerness on the part of native
royal houses to yield to the British in exchange for protection and maintenance of
some privileges. From a tactical point of view, some parts of India were easier to
conquer by forming alli­ances with the native leaders. Thus the Empire was united
under one crown but its people remained deeply divided with mul­tiple loyalties to
sub-­polities.
Following the Sepoy Mutiny of 1857, an event de­scribed as the first “War of
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Independence” by several Indian his­tor­ians, as ter­rit­ories gov­erned by the East

India Company were taken over by the Crown, the British saw to the reorgan­isa­
tion of the Empire:

New districts and provinces were created. The running of the state was over-
seen by the elite cadres of the Indian Civil Service sup­ported by de­part­ments
of police, forests, irrigation, etc. Much energy (and money) was spent on
building a railway network that criss-­crossed the land. This con­trib­uted
enorm­ously to the unity of British India, as well as to its stability, for now
the rulers could quickly move troops to forestall any repeat of 1857.3

The Empire was then polit­ically united, like it never was before in India’s recent
his­tory. The Sikh Empire (1799–1849) ruled over the his­tor­ical Punjab region; the
Maratha Empire (1674–1818) ruled over one-­third of today’s India; the Mughal
Empire (1526–1857) ruled over most of the subcontinent and parts of today’s
Afghanistan; the Vijayanagara Empire (1336–1646) ruled over South India; the
Kakatiya Dynasty (1083–1323) ruled over parts of today’s Andhra Pradesh; the
Hoysala Empire (1026–1343) ruled over parts of today’s Karnataka, Tamil Nadu
and western Andhra Pradesh; and the Chola Empire (bce 250–1070 ce) ruled over
Tamil Nadu. Never, except perhaps under the Mughal Empire for some time, were
the ter­rit­ories of the co­lo­nial empire ruled as a single stable polity before the
advent of British rule. In a soci­ety divided along mul­tiple axes (religion and lan-
guage, for example), the British managed to rule the Empire through force and
resort to a highly centralised form of government.
Notwithstanding the newly gained polit­ical unity of India, strong religious
and linguistic divisions remained. “Scotland is more like Spain than Bengal is
like the Punjab”, wrote Sir John Strachey4 (Member of the Governor General’s
Council, 1868) expressing the immense diversity of the subject popu­la­tion. This
should not come as surprise, for India is a coun­try out of proportion with any
other. “Formed over many thou­sands of years as a coun­try of im­mig­rants who
brought their own cultures and traditions, India’s diversity is proverbial.”5
Today’s figures, according to the 2001 census show that it covers approximately
3.2 million sq. km., has a popu­la­tion of 1.02 billion inhabitants, and that almost
all religions of the world are present here constituting 80.5 per cent Hindus, 13.4
 210   G. Mathew
per cent Muslims, 2.3 per cent Chris­tians, 1.9 per cent Sikhs, 0.8 per cent Bud-
dhists, 0.4 per cent Jains, and 0.7 per cent others.6 The linguistic diversity is not
least; the Indian popu­la­tion speaks as many as 325 languages or dialects,7
although the Indian Constitution (“the Constitution”) recog­nises only 22 official
languages.8 Hindi is India’s official language and 41.03 per cent of the popu­la­
tion speak this language.9 English is still more commonly used than Hindi as a
means of inter­action between members of different linguistic com­munit­ies.
However in the rest of the states, the regional language of the states concerned
and English are mostly used as official languages. The language groups that have
their own states are those speaking Hindi, Bengali, Telugu, Marathi, Tamil,
Gujarati, Kannada, Malayalam, Oriya, Punjabi, Assamese, Manipuri and Kash-
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miri. Each of the major languages is written in a distinct script unrecog­nis­able to

the reader of another script. Within and beyond the family of these languages are
around 500 or more dialects amidst innumerable variations.
The issue of “national” language was a mat­ter of much debate at the time of
Independence and in the aftermath through the regionalisation of politics.

1.2  The movement towards independence

Dadabhai Naoroji and R.C. Dutt set forth their nationalist/anti-­colonialist claims in
the 1880s. The latter “focused on the distortions to the Indian eco­nomy brought
about by British rule and the impoverishment of the mass popu­la­tion through the
co­lo­nial ‘drain of wealth’ from India to Britain throughout the nine­teenth
century.”10 On this issue, all people within the Empire (except perhaps those who
bene­fited from the co­lo­nial rule) could find a common hobbyhorse. To put it dif-
ferently, against a common enemy, people throughout the Empire could unite
without regard to their par­ticu­lar col­lect­ive identities, but once Independence was
perceived to be within reach, the cause for unity vanished as well as the unity itself
and so it happened that India and Paki­stan parted from each other.
The Indian National Congress11 (or “Congress Party”) wished to unite all
under one flag but it was, in the words of Ramachandra Guha,

not wholly successful, for low castes and espe­cially Muslims were never
completely convinced of the Congress’s claims to be a truly “national”
party. Thus it was that when polit­ical inde­pend­ence finally came in 1947 it
came not to one nation, but two – India and Paki­stan.12

1.3  Partition between India and Pakistan

The All India Muslim League (AIML) founded in Dhaka (today’s capital of
Bangladesh) was suspicious of the Indian National Congress; although the latter
claimed to be secular, a Hindu majority dominated it. Mohammad Ali Jinnah –
previously sup­portive of the Hindu-­Muslim national unity pro­ject – felt in the
1930s that the fate of the Muslim minor­ity would be better apart from India. So
in 1940 at the AIML conference in Lahore, he declared,
 India   211
The Hindus and the Muslims belong to two different religions, philo­sophies,
social customs and liter­at­ure. . . . To yoke together two such nations under a
single state, one as a numerical minor­ity and the other as a majority, must
lead to growing discon­tent and final destruction of any fabric that may be so
built up for the gov­ern­ment of such a state.13

Jinnah was not the first to spell out such a stand pub­licly. In 1937, Veer Savarkar
declared in his pres­id­en­tial address, “India cannot be as­sumed today to be a Uni-
tarian and homo­gen­eous nation, but on the contrary there are two nations in the
main – the Hindus and the Muslims.”14 But Gandhi was opposed to the partition,
as he believed that the opposi­tion between Hinduism and Islam was not so great
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an antagonism as to jus­tify the two-­nation idea.

However, in 1946, during the Muslim’s League Direct Action Day of Au­gust
1946, in Calcutta, the polit­ical debate cul­min­ated on the streets and 5000 people
were killed. The unrest that followed made many wary of a full-­fledged civil
war. A confederation of a Hindu and a Muslim state could, perhaps, have been
crafted, but History has an implacable character and instead it is the second
option, partition of the Empire between inde­pend­ent sover­eign states, that
occurred.
Louis Mountbatten, the last Viceroy of the British Indian Empire, released on
3 June 1947 what is recalled as the Mountbatten Plan. It suggested dividing the
Empire along the line drawn by Sir Cyril Radcliffe, between Hindu majority
areas and Muslim majority areas. This was no easy task, and it was perhaps an
im­pos­sible one, for no district contiguous to the line was homogenous and where
there was a majority, there was also a minor­ity. Hence Independence was fol-
lowed by massive migrations on both sides of the border. Nearly a million
people were mas­sacred or displaced. The extent of the viol­ence was “on the
scale of a war”.15 Let us bear in mind that today 13.4 per cent of the Indian popu­
la­tion are Muslims – there are more Muslims in India than in Paki­stan in abso­
lute numbers. Thus the Empire was split and today’s India came to exist­ence. In
1947 Paki­stan also comprised East Bengal, which later seceded in 1971 as Bang-
ladesh. Kashmir became a bone of con­tention between India and Paki­stan. The
mat­ter was taken to the United Nations in 1948. Three wars were fought between
Paki­stan and India in 1965, 1971 and 1999 on the issue of Kashmir. The major
part of Jammu and Kashmir is under Indian control. Only an area of
78,114 sq. km. is under Paki­stani control. The State enjoys a special place under
Article 370 of the Indian Constitution.16

2  The Indian Federation: structure and political culture

2.1  The federal option

Nowhere in the Constitution are the terms “centre” or “central gov­ern­ment” used
(they were used in the 1919 Government of India Act under the British, and have
been replaced by “Union” and “Union Government”), but they remained present
 212   G. Mathew
in the Indian polit­ical culture, as “even after the new Constitution came into
force, the bur­eau­cracy could not discard the co­lo­nial hangover and the use of
these terms con­tinued.”17
Why is the Indian federal structure how it is today? The Partition explains it
to a certain extent. The two pull and push factors at the time of inde­pend­ence
were determinant in the shaping of the Indian federal sys­tem. One, before
Independence, lim­ita­tion of the powers of the Union was agreed by the Con-
gress party reluct­antly, “only to accommodate the Muslim League and keep
India united. Once partition became a reality, there was no need to restrict the
powers of the Union Government.”18 Ashis Banerjee is very clear in this
contention:
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It was on the basis of the Cabinet Mission Plan that the Objectives Resolu-
tion of the Constituent Assembly envisaged a federal sys­tem with strong
states and a weak centre. But with the withdrawal of the Muslim League and
the declaration of Paki­stan’s formation things swung in a totally reverse dir­
ec­tion. It was gen­erally believed that the maintenance of the unity and integ-
rity of what remained as India could pos­sible only under a strong centre.
The federal idea was con­sequently un­der­played.19

On the other hand India, although parted from Paki­stan, was still immensely
diverse and thus there was the need for the founding fathers to opt for a some-
what federal structure of government.
As Rasheeduddin Khan aptly puts it,

A Federal Nation is a mosaic of people in which unified polit­ical identity is

re­con­ciled with socio-­cultural diversities. Its hallmark is unity of polity and
plurality of soci­ety. It is a conglomerate of segments whose diverse identi-
ties based on eth­ni­city, language, religion, region, etc., are never­the­less
united polit­ically into territorial sover­eignty.20

The social diverse identity factor is underlined by Balveer Arora and Nirmal
Mukarji when they say, “pref­er­ence for a federal ordering and articulation of
diversities arises from the need for polit­ical re­cog­ni­tion of territorially-­based
social plur­al­ism.”21
If fed­eral­ism deals with territorial loyalties only – this is a limit inherent to
fed­eral­ism itself – India has gone further. Indeed, as Subhash C. Kashyap notes,
“The Indian Union does not fit into any of the accepted federal models. Our plur­
al­ism is not territory based. Every Indian has mul­tiple identities.”22
The Supreme Court of India in West Bengal v. Union of India (1963) in­ter­
preted the Constitution as “clearly intended to convey the federal nature of the
structure of polity but with a subordinate position to the States and structural-­
functional balance in favour of the supremacy of the Union.”23 After all, the
federal structure of the Constitution was conceived, in the words of B.R. Ambed-
kar, only “for convenience of administration.”24
 India   213
K.C. Wheare de­scribed the Indian Constitution as being “quasi-­federal”,25 and
indeed, when one reads the Constitution, one finds that it is largely favour­able to
the Union or federal level, less so to the States or constituent units. The devolu-
tion of powers as well as specific pro­vi­sions of the Constitution evid­ence this
imbalance between the different levels of government.

2.2  Levels of government and the powers devolved to them by the

Constitution – Union and States
The Constitution contains a list of subject mat­ters upon which the Union and the
States may legislate. There is also a list of concurrent subject mat­ters. It should
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be noted at this point that the sharing is very favour­able to the Union.26
The lists contained in the 7th Schedule of the Constitution define the sharing
of powers between the Union and the States. Articles 245 to 255 of the Constitu-
tion deal with the legis­lat­ive powers of the Union and the States. The fol­low­ing
powers awarded to the Union by those art­icles clearly have a centralising effect:
“residuary powers of legis­la­tion”, “Power of Parliament to legislate with respect
to a mat­ter in the State List in the national inter­est”, and “power of Parliament to
legislate with respect to any mat­ter in the State List if a Proclamation of Emer-
gency is in opera­tion.” The table contained in Appendix 9.1, Schedule 1 illus­
trates the imbalance of powers – both fiscal and legis­lat­ive – in favour of the
Union.
The Union list as amended consists of 96 entries that include mat­ters of
national im­port­ance like foreign affairs, defence, insurance, etc. The state list
consists of 66 items and there are 47 items in the concurrent list. However,
through Constitutional Amendments many changes were introduced re­gard­ing
the items. The concurrent list has not lost any items; it has only gained. Of the
27 amend­ments introduced, 13 were made in the first Prime Minister Jawaharlal
Nehru’s period, 14 during Prime Minister Indira Gandhi’s (1966–1977;
1980–1984) regime and none in the post-­1989 multiparty co­ali­tion gov­ern­ments
phase.27
One of the con­tentious issues relating to the executive power to the Union is
the power to enter into International Treaties (Art. 253).

Rapid globalisation and lib­eralisation have led the Union Government to

sign several inter­na­tional treat­ies with little or no consultation with the
states. Conflicts arise when the inter­ests of the centre differ from those of
the states. Though treaty-­making power lies with the centre, it needs to
consult the states before signing agreements that affect state jurisdiction
under the consti­tu­tion. Moreover, the pro­cess of consultation needs to be
institutionalised in the federal polity.28

Another hotly debated issue has been cases of governors playing a pivotal
role in undermining Indian fed­eral­ism. The main issue in this regard is related to
the appointment of the governor by the centre and his partisan role in the
 214   G. Mathew
formation and dismissal of a state gov­ern­ment at the behest of the centre.
Various Committees and Commissions have examined the controversies about
the governor. The Administrative Reforms Committee (1966–1969) and, the
Report of the Committee (1971) on governors took exception to the polit­ical
appointments of governors and their abuse of power. But few concrete sugges-
tions about their appointment and removal have been made. The Sarkaria Com-
mission on Centre-­State relations (1988) re­com­mended that the Constitution be
formally amended to mandate consultation with the state gov­ern­ments for the
appointment of the governor.
Under Art. 356 of the Constitution, the President of India, if satisfied that a
situ­ation has arisen in which a state cannot be gov­erned in accordance with the
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pro­vi­sions of the Constitution, can impose President’s Rule. By and large this
has remained controversial, as it has been misused several times by polit­ical par­
ties to topple state gov­ern­ments, which failed to promote the inter­ests of ruling
par­ties at the Union. By a landmark judicial verdict in this con­text, pop­ularly
known as the S.R. Bommai case (1994)29 in which the Supreme Court departed
from the past practice of re­ti­cence to judicially review Pres­id­en­tial Proclama-
tions and declared the actions of the centre under Art. 356 subject to judicial
review.30

Rural and urban local governments

The local gov­ern­ments (LGs) in India are the panchayats (village councils for
the rural areas where 70 per cent of the popu­la­tion live) and the muni­cipal­ities
for the urban areas. They existed de facto before and during the British period.
After Independence they were mentioned in the Directive prin­ciples of the Con-
stitution which was not justiciable and therefore all over India there was a
demand to include them in the main text of the Constitution. On 23 Decem­ber
1992 the Parliament amended the Constitution by 73rd and 74th Amendments
and today they are in Parts IX and IXA of the Constitution of India. Following
these amend­ments, there are two additional lists of subject mat­ters devolved to
local gov­ern­ments (LGs), in Schedules 11th and 12th of the Constitution, respec-
tively to LGs in the rural and urban areas respectively.
The subject mat­ters mentioned in the 11th and 12th Schedules, unlike the 7th
Schedule, are not mandatory; they are only suggested lists.31 The devolution of
powers to the LGs’ jurisdiction is left entirely to the States and almost all the
states in the coun­try, excepting only a very few, are unwilling to devolve power
to the panchayats and the muni­cipal­ities. Therefore the LGs are limited in many
ways from achieving their full demo­cratic potential and consti­tu­tional rights.
The lack of an exclusive jurisdiction on defined subject mat­ters is a mat­ter of
ser­ious concern.
From that per­spect­ive only, though, we must note that the lack of an exclu-
sive jurisdiction is charac­ter­istic of the Union-­States power sharing anyway. If
India is quasi-­federal only at the Union and State level, it cannot be said that is
less federal at the level of the LGs for that reason.
 India   215
The 73rd and 74th Amendments, as the States currently enforce them through
their conformity acts, more or less border only to “administrative fed­eral­ism”,
for panchayats and muni­cipal­ities are far from “institutions of local self-­
governments” as envisaged in Art. 243G of the Constitution. This view finds
echo in the words of K.C. Sivaramakrishnan: “they [LGs] have been endowed
with the respons­ib­ility to look after the rooftop of the school”.32
In the federal structure of India, there is no room for the Union gov­ern­ment to
deal directly with the LGs. It therefore needs to work its way through the States,
and provide them with the incentives required for them to trans­fer powers down
below.
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State Autonomous Councils

The 7th Schedule broadly divides and distributes competences between the
Union and States. However, Art. 370, 371 and 371A-I modify this gen­erality in
order to provide for special ar­range­ments of power distribution between the
federal gov­ern­ment and a par­ticu­lar class of States (Jammu and Kashmir, north-­
eastern States, etc.) This is in order to accommodate features of regional and
ethnic governance.33
Furthermore, the Constitution makes special pro­vi­sions for the administration
of certain areas called “Scheduled Areas”: the 5th Schedule operates in nine
states that have signi­fic­ant tribal (Adivasi or abori­ginal) popu­la­tions; the 6th
Schedule of the Constitution provides for auto­nom­ous districts or regions for the
tribal areas in the states of Assam, Meghalaya, Tripura and Mizoram.
At another level, Darjeeling Gorkha Hill Council (1988), Bodoland Autono-
mous Council (1993) now given the status of Bodoland Territorial Council
(2003), Jharkhand Area Autonomous Council (1994 until 2000 when Jharkhand
won statehood), and Autonomous Hill District Council for Ladakh (1995) were
created, comprising single- or multi-­district decentralised units.
These special ar­range­ments were enacted after prolonged agitation by par­
ticu­lar ethnic groups residing in those areas. They represent one of the new
types of decentralised units that have emerged as a response to pop­ular demands
for self-­government at sub-­state level and they impart greater diversity to the
institutional ar­range­ments of a federal sys­tem that is evolving in a multiethnic,
multicultural envir­on­ment. However, limited powers, in­ad­equate finance, insuf-
ficient auto­nomy and State gov­ern­ment inter­ven­tions have rendered the State
Autonomous Councils inefficient in performing their functions of de­velopment.
According to B.K. Roy Burman, this institution “represents more of a polit­ical
rhet­oric than sys­temic devolution of power and functions.”34 They were in
selected areas, select­ively applied and at varying stages of “auto­nom­ous”
functioning.
To sum up, we thus have a three-­tier federal sys­tem in India today; with the
Union at the top, the States at the middle level and at the district and below Pan-
chayati Raj Institutions (PRIs) in villages, muni­cipal­ities in urban areas and
auto­nom­ous councils in other specific areas.35
 216   G. Mathew
2.3  Decentralisation of powers and deepening of democracy: the
hopes induced by Panchayati Raj
Why is decentralisation to the Panchayati Raj Institutions in rural areas so
im­port­ant? Lack of infrastructure, decreasing agricultural output and distress
migration for casual employment still characterise rural India despite 60 years of
“planned” de­velopment. Therefore it is vital for India to de­velop its villages
involving rural people in both pol­icymaking and the implementation of
de­velopment schemes. Panchayats are the best instrumentality for it and it was
Mahatma Gandhi’s dream to de­velop every village as a little repub­lic, “inde­
pend­ent of its neigh­bours for its own vital wants and yet interde­pend­ent for
many others in which dependence is a necessity.”36 The common place of pol­
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itics (the res pub­lica) should have been the village in Gandhi’s opinion, not the
Union, as appears from the minor mention he made of the latter. He envisaged
something close to a confederation of villages. These were supposed to have all
the powers vested in the full-­fledged gov­ern­ment of a sover­eign state,

The Government of the village will be conducted by the Panchayat of five

persons, annually elected by the adult villagers, male and female, possessing
min­imum pre­scribed qualifications. These will have all the authority and
jurisdiction required. Since there will be no sys­tem of pun­ishments in the
accepted sense, this Panchayat will be the legislature, judiciary and execu-
tive combined to operate for its year of office37

Gandhian ideals met with resistance because according to the elitist views the
rural Indian popu­la­tion was in­cap­able of governing itself.
On the other hand, B.R. Ambedkar, the architect of Indian Constitution and a
Scheduled Caste by birth, had seen how Panchayats were the epitome of injus-
tice and inhuman centres for the poor and low caste people. He was a critic of
the selfish level at which these “little repub­lics” had survived throughout Indian
his­tory. In the Constituent Assembly debate he said,

The love of the intellectual Indians for the village com­mun­ity is of course
infinite if not pathetic (laughter). It is largely due to the fulsome praise
bestowed upon it by Metcalfe who de­scribed them as little repub­lics having
nearly every­thing that they want within themselves, and almost inde­pend­ent
of any foreign relations. [. . .] I hold that these village repub­lics have been
the ruina­tion of India. I am therefore surprised that those who condemn Pro-
vincialism and com­munalism should come forward as champions of the
village. What is the village but a sink of localism, a den of ignorance,
narrow-­mindedness and com­munalism? I am glad that the Draft Constitu-
tion has discarded the village and adopted the indi­vidual as its unit.38

Thus, when the Indian Constitution was finalised, the only ref­er­ence to the Pan-
chayati Raj was in Art. 40, which read “The State shall take steps to or­gan­ize
 India   217
village panchayats and endow them with such powers and authority as may be
neces­sary to enable them to function as units of self-­government.”
Since 1949, when the Constitution came into force, until 1989 when the then
Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi introduced the 64th Constitution Amendment bill
to include panchayats in the Constitution, there was nationwide debate about the
crit­ical role of panchayats in the good governance and de­velopment of the coun­
try. The idea that came centre stage was that the people, contrary to elitist views,
were well capable of self-­government. As the Sarkaria Commission report men-
tioned much later, most people are most concerned with the issues they face
imme­diately in the here and now. Hence, when it comes to water, food, shelter,
power and infrastructure, villagers are able to set pri­or­ities and parti­cip­ate in the
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policymaking.
The 64th Constitution Amendment Bill faced two basic objections because of
its polit­ical overtones: (a) the Bill overlooked the States and was seen as an
instrument of the centre to deal directly with Panchayati Raj institutions; and (b)
it imposed a uniform pattern throughout the coun­try instead of permitting indi­
vidual States to legislate the details.
The mo­tiva­tion to extend repres­enta­tion through the panchayats was also to
maintain social order and elim­in­ate the causes of social unrest.39 According to
the Minister of Panchayati Raj, Shri Mani Shakar Aiyar, India could afford no
longer to have the prob­lems faced by its many hundreds of millions of poor
remain unsolved, like time bombs waiting to ex­plode; it was pre­fer­able to give
them repres­enta­tion and parti­cipa­tion in the pol­icymaking that concerned them
imme­diately, thus “replacing a bullet with a ballot.”40
This was more­over a very sens­ible change because to involve villagers in,
and to get their parti­cipa­tion in, the de­velopment agenda and implementation
pro­cess made a shift from the traditional top-­down to a bottom-­up pol­icy
making, thus empowering the people.
When India became inde­pend­ent a power­ful idea, inspired by Gandhi, was
that panchayats should be “non-­political”, meaning that polit­ical par­ties should
be kept out of LG elections and functions. Consensus was con­sidered the best
way of arriving at de­cisions. But the report of the Committee on Panchayati Raj
Institutions (1978) under the chairmanship of Asoka Mehta suggested meas­ures
to strengthen the panchayats through the parti­cipa­tion of the polit­ical par­ties.41
The parti­cipa­tion of the polit­ical par­ties is now viewed pos­it­ively, for on the one
hand it brings down the broader agenda to the local level through the polit­ical
par­ties and on the other it tends to professionalise the work of elected representa-
tives at the local level. Thus the polit­ical party parti­cipa­tion has helped to inte-
grate the LGs into the existing polit­ical structure as a cred­ible institution. In this
pro­cess, Mahatma Gandhi’s ideal is also achieved by revitalising and strengthen-
ing the village panchayat system.
Under the Constitution of India State gov­ern­ments are required to endow the
PRIs and muni­cipal­ities with fin­an­cial powers and functional respons­ibil­ities (Art.
243H and Art. 243X). It is the State gov­ern­ments that decide the fiscal options of
rural as well as urban LGs about levying and assigning taxes, duties, tolls and
 218   G. Mathew
fees, providing grants-­in-aid to them. It is mandatory for the State gov­ern­ments to
constitute State Finance Commissions (SFCs) under Arts 243I and 243Y. The
SFCs determine the prin­ciples on the basis of which fin­an­cial alloca­tions can be
made by the States for PRIs and muni­cipal­ities. By and large, LGs are still at the
mercy of the States. However the Union gov­ern­ment through the State gov­ern­
ment provides a majority of panchayat finances in most States. These grant-­based
trans­fers from the Planning Commission or the Union ministries are made in the
form of Centrally Sponsored Schemes (CSSs). Many of these schemes pertain to
the 29 subjects of the 11th Schedule but are being implemented by different min-
istries and de­part­ments of the Union Governments.42
The Union Finance Commission (UFC) suggests meas­ures needed to augment
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the consolidated fund of a State to supplement the resources of the local gov­ern­
ments on the basis of the re­com­mendations made by the SFC (Arts 280(3bb) and
(3c)). It may be noted that the 13th UFC devoted much attention to strengthen-
ing the fiscal domain of LGs.43

2.4  Intergovernmental relations

In an “ideal” federal sys­tem, the need for intergovernmental relations (IGRs)
may be close to none. But it is theor­et­ically improbable that exclusive jurisdic-
tions over par­ticu­lar subject mat­ters can be attributed her­metically to different
levels of gov­ern­ment, and that such a polity would be at all manageable in the
long run. IGRs are therefore inev­it­able. We may distinguish between two types
of IGR: formal institutional and informal polit­ical ar­range­ments or “executive
fed­eral­ism”. It is argued that “legis­lat­ive fed­eral­ism” is typ­ic­ally weak as an
instrument for settlement of intergov­ern­mental disputes, for the simple reason
that its pop­ular legitimacy is eclipsed by the directly elected parlia­ment­ary
chamber. The Rajya Sabha in this regard was expected to represent States.
However, its federal character is diluted by the absence of the prin­ciple of equal
repres­enta­tion for each federating unit.44 Most of the IGRs, during the first 40
years of Independence, repres­ented executive fed­eral­ism. Part of the reason lay
in the fact that litigation leads to adjudication. Therefore, if there is a conflict
between two levels of gov­ern­ment, they may not be keen to settle the mat­ter
before the Court and will instead negotiate.
Federalisation in India has been sidestepped by the question of unity and
integrity of India over a number of years. This was also the main concern of
many commissions (for example the JVP Committee, the Dar Commission, the
States Reorgan­isa­tion Commission, the Rajamannar Committee, the Sarkaria
Commission, etc)45 set up to examine the functioning of the federal system.
The Sarkaria Commission’s Report, submitted in 1988, was the more elabo-
rate and its re­com­mendations were innov­at­ive. It re­com­mended among other
things that an Inter-­Governmental Council be set up with adequate authority and
infrastructure, to inquire, investigate and re­com­mend on mat­ters of inter-­state
relations, on a continuing basis. It re­com­mended that it meet four times a year
and, most im­port­antly, that it evolves around national consensus. More recently,
 India   219
the Constitution Commission blamed the malfunctioning of IGRs on the polit­ical
culture: “It is felt, the report reads, that the real source of many prob­lems is the
tend­ency of centralisation of powers and misuse of authority.”46

Informal Political Arrangements

The National Development Council (NDC), as an example of executive fed­eral­
ism, was first set up in 1952. The discussions at the NDC meetings were only a
front since all the preparatory work was done behind the curtain prior to the
meeting. The NDC was estab­lished by an “administrative de­cision to make it
more amen­able for the centre to manage its own affairs”. Other executive fed­
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eral­ism ar­range­ments are meetings of officials of the State gov­ern­ments, of

levels varying according to the im­port­ance of the con­tentious mat­ter or affair to
negotiate, with their counterparts of other States or Union gov­ern­ments. Their
im­port­ance is not to be underestim­ated, for they make the sys­tem work on a day-­
to-day basis after all. But it is from the formal institutional IGR that more is to
be expected in terms of power sharing between the Union and the States.

Formal Institutional Intergovernmental relations

Art. 263 of the Constitution allows the President of India to set up a Council –
the Inter State Council (ISC) – to: (a) inquire and advise upon disputes, which
may have arisen between States; (b) investigate and discuss subjects in which
some or all of the States, or the Union and one or more of the States, have a
common inter­est; or (c) make re­com­mendations upon any such subject and, in
par­ticu­lar, re­com­mendations for the better co-­ordination of pol­icy and action
with respect to that subject.
The ISC was set up for the first time in 1990, after the Congress Party lost
power in the Union gov­ern­ment. This first ISC was set up largely upon the
re­com­mendations of the Sarkaria Commission’s Report. Most of the issues dis-
cussed by ISC were re­com­mendations of the Sarkaria Commission, such as the
Commission’s re­com­mendations on onter-­state river water disputes, Centrally
Sponsored Schemes, devolution of fin­an­cial power, President’s Rule, role of
governor, good governance, etc. While the NDC had 52 meetings up until
Decem­ber 2006 the ISC had only ten meetings as at that date. This shows that,
compared to the ISC, the NDC meets more regu­larly and is a more im­port­ant
forum in the area of fiscal federalism.
It is im­port­ant to note that the factors that influence the working of inter-­
governmental relations are the party sys­tem, inter­est groups and media, geo­
graphy and diplo­macy, demography, in­ternal bound­ar­ies, wealth of states and
varying cap­abil­it­ies, and changing contexts.
To sum up,

the NDC and the ISC have emerged as two apex intergov­ern­mental mech­an­
isms of great im­port­ance, but they have hardly realised their full potential.
 220   G. Mathew
To this end, they need to be consti­tu­tionally entrenched and functionally
streamlined, espe­cially in a climate when the Indian polit­ical sys­tem is
charted on a course of growing federalisation that is still working the pro­
cess out to its denouement. It has been suggested here that these two mech­
an­isms should be merged into one key apex forum.47

3  India: the unexplained success story

How did India manage to make it this far intact? With such cultural diversity
(religious, linguistic, ethnic, etc.), a continuing legacy of com­munal conflict and
rising militancy among disaffected groups, the question is often asked: how is it
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that India has survived as a state in con­ditions of pov­erty, illit­er­acy and extreme
regional disparities? As Ramachandra Guha reminds us, despite all odds, India
made it to today without losing land and while remaining a demo­cratic polity.48
Part of the answer certainly lies in the adaptabil­ity and flex­ib­il­ity of Indian pol­
itics, but mostly the answer lies in its pol­icy of demo­cratic and multicultural fed­
eral­ism. One position about multiculturalism theory holds that it is antagonistic to
“nation-­building” pro­jects. Chandhoke believes that “the rise of the multicultural-
ism has meant the end of the ‘grand vision’ of the culturally homo­gen­eous nation-
­state, of national integration.”49 Harihar Bhattacharyya notes, “the so-­called
‘nation-­state’ in India is [. . .] vastly different from those in the West.”50 The solu-
tion to this very aca­demic debate is perhaps that the idea of “nation-­state” itself
needs to be looked at directly: it derives from the Jacobin late-­eighteenth century
ideal. Placed against that ideal – which is an “ism” and nothing more – India
should perhaps be seen as multi­national, not as a nation-­state; only then can the
ongoing discussion about “nation-­building” find some relevance.
India’s first prime min­is­ter, Jawaharlal Nehru, had clear ideas about “nation-­
building”. He was opposed to forced assimilation: “such an assimilation pro­cess
would de­velop of its own accord through education and contacts, without any
special effort”.51 His championing of the cultural diversity of India’s remote,
mountain and tribal com­munit­ies best dem­on­strate his sym­pathy towards the
smallest groups that feared assimilation and loss of identity to the dominant
mainstream cultures of India. Tutored by Verrier Elwin, Nehru proposed five
funda­mental prin­ciples to “national” integration for the warlike North Eastern
tribes:

1. People should de­velop along the lines of their own genius and we should
avoid imposing anything on them. We should try to encourage in every way
their traditional arts and culture. 2. Tribal rights in land and forests should
be respected. 3. We should try to train and build a team of their own people
to do the work of administration and de­velopment. 4. We should not over-­
administer these areas or overwhelm them with a multiplicity of schemes.
We should rather work through and not in rivalry to their social and cultural
institutions. 5. We should judge results, not by stat­ist­ics or the amount of
money spent, but by the quality of human character that is evolved.52
 India   221
Nehru faced mul­tiple obs­tacles in carrying on his soft assimilation – the ongoing
pro­cess he envisaged is far from complete – after Independence. These obs­tacles
may all be related to what John Rex and Gurharpal Singh explain as the pro­cess
of change in post-­colonial societies:

In formerly plural soci­eties, on the withdrawal of the metropolitan ruler,

power often passed to one of the ethnic segments who now controlled the
state. [. . .] Whoever inherits power in the newly inde­pend­ent formerly co­lo­
nial ter­rit­ories will usually do so under the guise of nationalism.53

“What is beyond dispute,” writes Bhattacharyya, “is that India has been rel­at­
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ively successful in resisting dis­integ­ration.”54

3.1  State reorganisation

The Indian way to cope with its diversity was initially to reorgan­ise States on an
ethnic and linguistic basis. Hence, “most of the states have some dominant
ethno-­linguistic and ethno-­religious groups (Punjab, Jammu and Kashmir, North-
­East)” but this is still imperfect since religious and linguistic minor­it­ies remain
within those States.55 Major reorgan­isa­tions have been achieved in the 1950s and
1960s.
This model of State reorgan­isa­tion dates backs to the 1900–1920 era, when
the Indian National Congress reorgan­ised itself on the basis of “linguistic
regional bound­ar­ies” in order to satisfy the needs of ethnic groups.56 And so in
the Constitution, Arts 2–4 were included in order to allow further reorgan­isa­tion
at the behest of the Union. They allowed “Admission or estab­lishment of new
States” and “Formation of new States and alteration of areas, bound­ar­ies or
names of existing States.”
The first step taken after Independence was to reduce the number of States
from 27 – belonging to different cat­egor­ies and holding different powers as a
trace of the privileges conferred to the Princely States under the British – to 14,
with ident­ical status. Andhra Pradesh (1953) was the first State to be created
after Independence in re­cog­ni­tion of the Telegu language. The States Reorgan­
isa­tion Act (1956) was adopted in the continuum of the States Reorgan­isa­tion
Commission (1953) that re­com­mended carrying on with States reorgan­isa­tion
largely on a linguistic basis. The sole exception to this prin­ciple in the fol­low­ing
years was the Punjab (1966), which was done on a religious basis. Therefore it
was true at the time that “The essence of the statehood demand has always been
the congruence between federal polit­ical bound­ar­ies and the ethno-­linguistic
bound­ar­ies of the people.”57
The cre­ation of the State of Tamil Nadu was a success in accommodating
Tamil nationalism in the early stages of State reorgan­isa­tion – through linguistic
re­cog­ni­tion. But the recent State reorgan­isa­tions have moved towards some other
rationale than ethno-­linguistic. Thus in the new states of Chhattisgarh (carved
out of Madhya Pradesh), Jharkhand (out of Bihar) and Uttaranchal (out of Uttar
 222   G. Mathew
Pradesh) language was not the identity-­definer which played the major role. In
the State of Uttaranchal, prob­lems related to the ecology of the region, situated
as it is between the plains and the high Himalayas, became the dominant motive
behind the statehood demand. The cre­ation of the new State allowed a minor­ity
– the hill people – to become a polit­ical majority in their own land and enabled
them to assert their inter­ests in eco­nomic de­velopment.58 Marginalisation of
certain regions within states provoke demand for new states. The demand for a
new state Telangana59 – within the state of Andhra Pradesh and a separate state
of Gorkhaland60 in West Bengal are burning issues today.
Federalism is concerned, according to classical theory, with geographically
based jurisdiction only for power sharing. One area that failed to gain linguistic-­
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based reorgan­isa­tion for a long time is the North-­East of India, and this failure
could be explained by the lack of strength in the formu­la­tion of the demands.61
Thus it appears that (on top of the “good administration” goal of the Union through
the first phase of states reorgan­isa­tion), the redefinition of States’ borders was
always ultimately limited to a geographical pro­cess of sharing polit­ical power.
No mat­ter how successful the polity is in reorgan­ising states on an ethno-­
linguistic basis, the fact remains that what is mainly achieved by such reorgan­
isa­tion is merely a sim­pli­fica­tion of the multicultural reality. Thus, the majority
of yes­ter­day often becomes the minor­ity of tomorrow. This is true of religion,
and of other foci of identity as well. India’s accommodation of religious diver-
sity, in that regard, thus falls out of the ambit of traditional federalism.

3.2  Secularism
As we mentioned earl­ier, India has gone further in accommodating cultural diversi-
ties than simply drawing State bound­ar­ies along ethno-­linguistic lines. The religious
diversity of India remained very im­port­ant notwithstanding Partition. Therefore, as
“religion may also unite indi­viduals whom these other structures would divide”,
India had to do something to accommodate communitarian forces and contain com­
munalist forces. For while religion is an im­port­ant source of common identity, com-
munitarian forces are at neces­sar­ily at work in India. Communalist forces though
have brought religious com­munit­ies under the very dark spotlight of the media as
they led to viol­ence in past years. According to Bhambhri, com­petit­ive com­
munalisms based on al­tern­ative concepts of Indian nationalism pose a ser­ious chal-
lenge to the practice of secularism by the Indian state. A funda­mental challenge to
the secular state has come from the be­lievers of religion-­based pol­itics in India and
the Indian state has shown ser­ious weakness in meeting the challenge.62
Although the Indian National Congress claimed to be secular, the mention of
secularism was not contained in the Constitution at the time of Independence.
Multiple views on what is secularism prevailed in the Constituent Assembly
debates: “No-­concern theory of secularism, which separated religion and the
state. No-­links theory between state and religion, to prevent the demeaning of
religion. The equal-­respect theory of ‘secularism’, which respected all religions
alike and granted religious lib­erty to all.”63 “In spirit,” writes Sanghamitra
 India   223
Padhy, “the Constitution did seek to promote a secular and plural soci­ety based
on neutrality towards all religions. State inter­ven­tion in religious affairs was
allowed to bring in social reform while guaranteeing religious freedom to all.”64
“Secularism” was inserted in the pre­amble to the Constitution in 1976 by way of
Constitutional Amendment.
In his inaugural seat the national symposium on “India’s Struggle Against
Communalism” in 1986, Rajiv Gandhi said,

Secularism cannot be indif­fer­ence to religion, like I said, it must be a

pos­it­ive dir­ec­tion as Gandhiji and Panditji had shown us. We must get back
to rede­veloping that dir­ec­tion in today’s situ­ation, in today’s reality and then
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take it to every corner of our coun­try.65

He thus implicitly recog­nised that the India had failed in that regard in order to
explain the bandwagon com­munalism was riding on then.
Without theorising here whether India’s secularism is of the first, second, or
third type, we may note that India has recog­nised a cat­egory of col­lect­ive rights
– by opposi­tion to indi­vidual rights – to religious com­mun­ity members; they can
avail themselves of their own personal laws, in the area of marriage for example.

4  Future perspectives of the plurinational federation

4.1  The evolving nature of Indian federalism

Indian fed­eral­ism is not static. It is evolving and dynamic. As India is crossing
the sixth decade of Independence, it has de facto entered the multilevel federal
era, a rad­ical change from being just a Union of States. Moreover, the polit­ical
culture has shown some changes in recent years, proving the consti­tu­tional
framework flex­ible in its applica­tion by the various levels of government.
The influence of pol­itics on the functioning of fed­eral­ism is high; it can actu­ally
alter negat­ively the effects the texts of laws were meant to have by their authors.
Thus, the Sarkaria Commission report – suggesting a shift from hierarchical to
consensual Union-­States relations – as implemented by the ISC provides hope that
change can happen. That the consti­tu­tional framework itself mat­ters less than the
polit­ical culture is a rather dodgy affirmation. The contrary seems true in the light
of the ISC’s conclusions, which proposed a number of consti­tu­tional amend­ments
to safeguard the federal structure. The Congress Party played a major role in defin-
ing the Indian polit­ical culture over a period of nearly 40 years.
The first time the Congress Party saw its majority decline in the Parliament
was in 1967. Tensions arose in Union-­States relations imme­diately. For any
response to a crisis, Indira Gandhi was author­it­arian. She

used a variety of methods to defeat her op­pon­ents. She made the Congress a
centralised and regimented party. Both the culture and institutions of informal
federation that had existed within the Congress espe­cially before the 1967
 224   G. Mathew
elections virtually collapsed. The state units became increasingly weak and
de­pend­ent upon the party’s polit­ical centre under the leadership of Indira
Gandhi.66

The climate through which India was going at the time was one of intense
polit­ical ten­sion. There were movements pulling in every dir­ec­tion, with the
poor demanding change and de­velopment, neigh­bours threatening India’s sover­
eignty, secessionists from within, etc. Thus the Union gov­ern­ment sidestepped
the federal question successfully, for the electorate was preoccupied by other
“imperious questions”. She opposed the communists in Kerala in a profoundly
non-­federal manner, she removed governors and chief min­is­ters of States like a
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gen­eral plays with lead soldiers, India was put under Emergency Rule, etc.67

The concentration of powers into the hands of the Prime Minster reflected
the author­it­arian trends of leadership. The Congress sys­tem became more
and more de­pend­ent on the Prime Minister and any attack on the Prime
Minister was seen as a blow to the sys­tem.68

By the mid-­1980s the edifice of the Indian polity began to show signs of cracks
and in­stability due to the concentration of powers. The Anandpur Sahib Resolu-
tion (1973), assas­sina­tion of Prime Minister Indira Gandhi (1984), intensification
of the Punjab agitation, Jammu and Kashmir slipping to ungovernable con­ditions,
rise of milit­ant regional as­pira­tions, all were symptoms of this cracking up.
The Congress Party undoubtedly centralised Indian fed­eral­ism from Inde-
pendence to 1989. Hence the trans­ition from Congress Party-­dominated pol­itics
to co­ali­tion pol­itics in 1990 marked a new era in the de­velopment of fed­eral­ism.
Although India has had some ex­peri­ence of multiparty rule in 1967 and 1977, it
is in the 1989 election that India really entered a new polit­ical era:

[The] irre­vers­ible phase of federalization may be said to have really started

only with the 1989 Lok Sabha elections. This was the turning point in a
party sys­tem configuration when India made a definite trans­ition from one-­
party dominance to a multi-­party sys­tem [. . .] since 1989, India has wit-
nessed a strong spell of federal governance that seems likely to con­tinue in
the fore­see­able future.69

And today, the United Front gov­ern­ment’s al­tern­ative model of governance is

improving signi­fic­antly fed­eral­ism through “devolution of greater eco­nomic and
administrative auto­nomy to states”70.

4.2  Indian Federalism in the era of liberalisation and globalisation:

Since eco­nomic reforms in 1991, another de­velopment that has been observed is
the multiplication of auto­nom­ous and semi-­judicial regu­latory agencies set up
under Parliamentary Acts, for example the Security and Exchange Board of
 India   225
India (SEBI), Central Telecom Regulatory Authority, Central Insurance Regula-
tory Authority, etc. This phenomenon is termed as “sectoral fed­eral­ism”.71
On the de­velopment of the 1990s, Rudolph and Rudolph have maintained that
“India has moved from a command eco­nomy to a federal market eco­nomy”72
This is based on the idea of shared sover­eignty and the capabil­ity of the state
gov­ern­ments to penetrate the society.

Role of States in foreign and economic policy

It is common for Indian news­papers and maga­zines to report on the regionalisation
of pol­itics and the growing clout of State-­level leaders on the inter­na­tional stage.
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Visits by Indian chief min­is­ters to places like the World Economic Forum in
Davos, Switzerland, are much commented upon. Where they have hosted global
business and polit­ical figures like Bill Clinton and Bill Gates, chief min­is­ters have
attracted headlines beyond India, and have sought to pro­ject themselves as vision-
ary leaders, com­par­able in stature to other heads of state, including India’s.
On the one hand, the “basic argument” is that “the formal pro­vi­sions of a
coun­try’s consti­tu­tion” may give its central gov­ern­ment “sole authority to
manage the foreign relations of a coun­try, of late, the exclusive grip of the centre
has in this area [been] slowly . . . loosened by the ac­tiv­ities of the units/members
of a federal union.”73 But some analysts feel that this is an exaggeration.
An assessment of any case requires attention to both sides of the auto­nomy
balance sheet. Whatever new roles states may be assuming, these do not neces­
sar­ily represent a net gain in auto­nomy from the centre. Gains in one area are
offset by losses in others. For example, while states have obtained increased de
facto lat­it­ude in negotiating with foreign investors, in some cases their abil­ity to
regulate (or deregulate) the ac­tiv­ities of firms within their jurisdictions has been
usurped by central agencies. Environmental activist Vandana Shiva has argued
that in 1998 State gov­ern­ments were illegally bypassed when the central gov­ern­
ment’s Review Committee on Genetic Manipulation approved genetic field trials
in Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh.
The Rudolphs emphasise the shifting pattern of central restraint, not its out-
right reduction. They argue that fiscal contraction at the centre has “forced the
states to become more self-­reliant” – meaning, in practice, that they turn to
private capital and inter­na­tional de­velopment assistance. The role of the State as
regu­lator has shown a tend­ency to impede the auto­nomy of the State. For
example, the Electricity Act 2000, a centre-­initiated piece of legis­la­tion, places
the central electricity authority and newly estab­lished central and state electricity
regu­latory authorities in the dominant position with respect to state electricity
planning and management.

India’s States and the World Bank

During the 1990s (and into the new millennium) several of India’s State gov­ern­
ments have conducted nego­ti­ations and concluded agreements with inter­na­tional
 226   G. Mathew
eco­nomic institutions such as the Asian Development Bank and the International
Labor Organization. Some bi­lat­eral aid agencies, like the UK’s Department for
International Development, have begun to focus much of their efforts directly on
State gov­ern­ments as well.
The funds raised through these sources provide oppor­tun­ities for state gov­
ern­ments to pursue a wide range of ac­tiv­ities – restructuring their electricity
regu­latory sys­tems, building community-­based organ­isa­tions, improving health
ser­vices and so forth.
There are several reasons to con­sider the “external ac­tiv­ities” of India’s states
as lacking real auto­nomy. The first is the legal nature of the agreements with
inter­na­tional fin­an­cial institutions. The World Bank has become the most im­port­
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ant source of external debt financing for India’s States. However, World Bank
lending instruments specify the Government of India as the official borrower –
not just the guarantor for the loan. This places the central gov­ern­ment in a posi-
tion of great leverage. This is not just a legal fig leaf. The Government of India
retains great dis­cre­tion in deciding what pro­vi­sions will be allowable. It has
exercised this dis­cre­tion on a number of occasions.
The evolving relationship between state gov­ern­ments and the World Bank,
though certainly an im­port­ant de­velopment, may be more de­pend­ent on the
centre than is sometimes thought.

India’s States and the World Trade Organization (WTO)

If we examine the auto­nomy, it is seen along two dimensions: (1) the range of
pol­icy options avail­able; and (2) States’ abil­ity to fulfil their pol­icy ob­ject­ives
amidst the volatility created by increased exposure to trade. We can see the
ways in which the WTO as an external actor reduces, rather than expands, the
auto­nomy of India’s State gov­ern­ments – in the pro­cess casting further doubt
on the notion that States con­tinue to expand their role in eco­nomic
diplomacy.
The WTO provides no formal mech­an­isms for sub-­national units to influ-
ence its deliberations. And yet there are ways in which States might be
expected to influence issues over which WTO agreements have jurisdiction.
The first would be for States to collaborate in determining India’s actions
within the WTO. The second would be, during the implementation pro­cess,
for State gov­ern­ments to trigger the use of safeguard pro­vi­sions the Govern-
ment of India bargained to have included in the WTO agreements. On both
counts, States have fared poorly. Moreover, to play a co-­equal role in deter-
mining India’s actions within the WTO, States would have to dem­on­strate
influence not only over official Indian negotiating positions, but also the
decision-­making behind India’s pro­ced­ural moves within other WTO func-
tions, par­ticu­larly those relating to com­pliance and dispute-­settlement. Taking
account of these additional ac­tiv­ities further complicates the pro­cess of deter-
mining the net impact of India’s inter­na­tional eco­nomic engagement on State-­
level autonomy.
 India   227
4.3  Regionalisation
The federalisation of India is an ongoing pro­cess. As Carl Friedrich has
explained, “federal diversity” expands with time because “in the course of demo­
cratizing of a soci­ety, regional and linguistic-­cultural com­munit­ies become more
articulate and demand re­cog­ni­tion in the form of a set of polit­ical institutions,
including safeguards for the identity of the par­ticu­lar com­mun­ity.”74
The departure from the Congress Party dominance of the Union gov­ern­ment
has had major con­sequences in the regionalisation of Indian fed­eral­ism. Coali-
tion gov­ern­ments became the order of the day and it had far-­reaching pos­it­ive
im­plica­tions for Indian fed­eral­ism. In the past
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the Union Government had often been accused of ignoring the as­pira­tions of
different states and region. Centre-­state eco­nomic relations were often under
a lot of strain with regional leaders blaming New Delhi for being parsimoni-
ous in allocating and releasing funds to states.75

From the recent polit­ical discourse in India it is evid­ent that the coun­try is
moving towards a greater degree of fed­eral­ism because the co­ali­tion gov­ern­
ments accommodate diverse identities and inter­ests and the trend is towards
more decentralisation of power accommodating the diversity of the coun­try.76
The shift to co­ali­tion pol­itics encouraged the regionalization pro­cess, for it
allowed the rise of new polit­ical par­ties. Subhash C. Kashyap ac­know­ledges
major changes:

widespread craving for a more federal structure implying need for greater
sharing of power and patronage; rise of a larger and more power­ful middle
class with polit­ical ambitions and conflicts of employment oppor­tun­ities;
craving for regional or sub-­national identities as the means to polit­ical
power; and a rise of a rich farmer class with trading inter­est conflicts with
the other states, lobbying for pricing pol­icies for farm products, royalties for
nat­ural resources and so on.77

Rekha Saxena, drawing on the Canadian polit­ical ex­peri­ence, concludes that

the com­peti­tion between regional par­ties has proved to be a signi­fic­ant con­tri­bu­
tion to the federalisation pro­cess. Undoubtedly, regionalisation can have the
same effect in India. The ISC met for the first time in the post-­1990 era and it
had a profound impact on the federal structures themselves.

4.4  Federal coalitions

As the Indian polity became more federalised, the party sys­tem became a multi-
party sys­tem in an effect­ive sense. Against the background of immense social
diversity, co­ali­tion is inev­it­able and the Congress was also co­ali­tional in nature in
its heydays of dominance. From the 1990s onwards, the pres­ence of few national
par­ties and several regional and State-­based par­ties led to the rise of federal
 228   G. Mathew
co­ali­tions. Federal co­ali­tions seek to re­con­cile territorially based identities within a
cohesive frame even in the absence of shared ideo­lo­gies. It is easier to achieve sta-
bility within this type of co­ali­tion than the ideo­logical and programmatic co­ali­tions
as the latter ones cannot root out the regional as­pira­tions and territorial ambitions
of the constituents. For polit­ical par­ties, caste-­based and class-­based com­peti­tions
remain signi­fic­ant at state and panchayat level, but regional as­pira­tions gain
im­port­ance as pol­itics moves beyond the State boundaries.
Mostly, the ana­lyses of the Indian federation’s journey from “quasi-­
federalism” (Wheare) to “quasi-­confederacy” (Verney) seem to point towards
the rising influence of regional par­ties. One of the reasons was the reaction to
Mrs Gandhi’s centralising tend­ency and assertion of state autonomy.
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In the 1989 General Elections the number of seats secured by regional par­ties
was only 45. In the elev­enth Lok Sabha elections the scen­ario had changed dra-
matically. The triumph of the regional par­ties reached its height. The mandate
appeared to be for regional par­ties and they bagged a total of 137 Lok Sabha
seats. In the twelfth Lok Sabha elections the triumph of regional par­ties con­
tinued and they secured a total of 161 seats.
In terms of seat sharing, regional par­ties dominate nine states since half of the
MPs from these states belong to regional par­ties. These include the smaller states
of Manipur, Meghalaya and Sikkim. Besides these, this cat­egory includes
Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, Orissa, Maharashtra, Harayana, and Jammu and
Kashmir. State-­based par­ties dominate Eastern, North-­Eastern and Southern
States. In the twelfth Lok Sabha, 220 seats out of the total 543 seats were com-
manded by single-­State and multi-­State parties.
It has also been pointed out that the current trend of greater federalisation of
the polit­ical sys­tem is likely to con­tinue, since the NDA gov­ern­ment could com-
plete its full mandate, and the UPA gov­ern­ment is likely to do the same.78

4.5  Role of governor

There has been a demand from some quarters for the aboli­tion of the office of gov-
ernor, but the founding fathers had decided to con­tinue with this co­lo­nial office in
this form prim­arily to preserve national unity and integrity. Nehru opined in the
Constituent Assembly that nominated governors would keep the centre in touch

Table 9.1  Lok Sabha elections: votes polled by percentage

Parties 1980 1984 1989 1991 1996 1998 1999 2004 2009

National 85 80 79 77 69 68 67 63 64
State parties1 15 20 21 23 31 32 33 37 36

Source: Statistical Report on General Elections (1980–2009), Volume I, National and State Abstracts
& Detailed Results, Election Commission of India, New Delhi.
Note
1  State parties also includes other groups.
 India   229
with the units. It may be one of the reasons that various commissions did not
re­com­mend its aboli­tion and suggested only some improvements. Even the non-­
Congress par­ties, which had been at the receiving end of gubernatorial acts of
omission and commission, have only a reformist approach to the issue. Thus the
role’s relev­ance and significance as the centre’s link person in the con­text of
national unity has acquired currency across the divergent polit­ical spectrum.
Second, the founding fathers would not have entrusted wider consti­tu­tional dis­cre­
tionary power in the mat­ters of reserv­ing bills passed by the state legislature for
Pres­id­en­tial assent, consulting the President before pro­mul­gat­ing ordinances on
certain mat­ters, re­com­mending the President’s Rule in a State, and special admin-
istrative respons­ib­ility in 5th and 6th Schedule Area States, if they wished to make
the governor merely a consti­tu­tional head on the lines of the President. Even when
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they were contemplating the idea of a loose federation, they were planning to vest
the governor with more dis­cre­tionary powers. So, the governor seemed to be
accepted as an im­port­ant device in their scheme of national solid­arity – which was
con­sidered as equally im­port­ant as the pro­jects of social justice and democracy.
India needs to devise ways to make governors more account­able. Introducing
the elements of parlia­ment­ary control in the mat­ter of their appointment and
removal may infuse greater auto­nomy in their working.

4.6  Decentralisation of powers

Several studies on the working of the PRIs came to the conclusion that the PRIs
created a new awakening in the villages. They showed that a younger and better
leadership was emerging through the PRIs; that these local bodies were creating
new seats of power to be filled by the com­petit­ive mech­an­ism of demo­cratic
elections; that they were en­ab­ling a large number of people to acquire leadership
skills at the local level; and that they were conferring power on people’s repre-
sentatives. The elected panchayat representatives’ supervision improved the
attendance of teachers in pri­mary schools; made the block administration more
responsive and helped to check petty corruption both of the subordinate staff as
well as of the newly elected leaders.79 Therefore there is a great bene­fit to be
expected from further decentralisation.
For the panchayats and muni­cipal­ities in order to enjoy greater power, both
the Union and the States need to lose some weight to their profit, not only to
share overlapping jurisdictions, but “to shed mono­poly of power in all areas and
concentrate on essentials fol­low­ing a subsidiarity prin­ciple.”80
Nirmal Mukarji and Balveer Arora make a plea in favour of an evolution of the
PRIs from a development-­linked administrative institution to real self-­government:
“India would then have cascading fed­eral­ism; a federation of federations. [. . .]
Multi-­level fed­eral­ism needs to be seen as the structural means through which self-­
governments can go all the way down to village panchayati rajs.”81
Anwar Shah presents a new vision of LGs that is termed as citizen-­centred
governance and argues for a leadership role by LGs in a multicentred, multiorder
or multilevel sys­tem in which cit­izens are ultimate sover­eigns and various orders
of gov­ern­ment serve as agents in the supply of pub­lic governance.82
 230   G. Mathew
One further evolution expected from Indian fed­eral­ism is the “inter-­scheduling
of subjects between 7th, 11th and 12th schedules of the Constitution”. Also, as
noted before, the parallelism of functions between the different levels of gov­ern­
ment is a deterrent to auto­nomy of the decentralised levels; this must change for
further federalisation to happen. Practitioners put a lot of hope in the ISC, for this is
a very use­ful institution in reforming the federal structure of the polity.
We now witness the LGs struggling to find a proper share (or balance) of
power with the States. The advances made in the IGRs at the Union-­States level
since 1990 are prophecies of a bright future for the LGs’ auto­nomy and the
expansion of their role in the governance of India.
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5  Conclusion
The switch from the British co­lo­nial legacy to national integration after Inde-
pendence was the big challenge India faced in the first decades after it became a
repub­lic. Through the path of fed­eral­ism and demo­cracy India met these chal-
lenges. The Congress Party, the leading organ­isa­tion of the inde­pend­ence move-
ment, which rode on the euphoria of inde­pend­ence for a long time and stayed
dominant for decades, had a highly negat­ive impact on the polit­ical culture of
the new demo­cracy and on the evolution of India’s federal sys­tem. But in the
later years we have witnessed Indian fed­eral­ism rapidly evolving through co­ali­
tion pol­itics. The basis for statehood re­cog­ni­tion changed also over time. Thus
enduring changes to the polit­ical culture are to be expected since politicians and
polit­ical par­ties will have to fit the mould of federalism.
India has accommodated its legion diversities thus far through acknowledg-
ment of statehood demands. Statehood is lauded as “an institutional framework
of auto­nomy and decentralisation which may respond better to the need for
de­velopment and identity.”83 But the carving-­out pro­cess of statehood re­cog­ni­
tion is implicitly limited. Where should this pull-­down movement for more polit­
ical power, for a res pub­lica closer to the com­munit­ies, end?
The hunger for power that drives the “pull-­down” statehood demands cannot
theor­et­ically go further than complete decentralisation to the LGs. India seems to
be tilting towards the Gandhian ideal of the “Little Repub­lic” today. If further
change is required on the polit­ical/institutional level to achieve ideally decentral-
ised self-­government from the grassroots, much change is also required on the
social level, for a “Panchayat is a microcosm of the soci­ety of which the village
forms a part. The noble ideals of ‘institutions of self-­gov­ern­ment’ as expounded
by the 73rd Constitution Amendment, cannot be translated into reality in the
present inequit­able soci­ety.”84
By working through the LGs (instead of hier­archic­ally above them), the
Union and the States may witness a growth in “the quality of the human charac-
ter”, to quote Nehru’s funda­mental prin­ciples, and render B.R. Ambedkar’s
ex­peri­ence of the village a thing of the past. To foster the de­velopment of human
qual­it­ies is ultimately what gov­ern­ment is about.
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Appendix 1
Schedule 1 – Union List and Concurrent List (Jurisdiction)

Union Concurrent

[. . .] [. . .]
52. Industries, the control of which by the Union is declared by Parliament by law to be expedient in 5. Marriage and divorce; infants and minors; adoption; wills,
the public interest. intestacy and succession; joint family and partition; all
[. . .] matters in respect of which parties in judicial proceedings
54. Regulation of mines and mineral development to the extent to which such regulation and were immediately before the commencement of this
development under the control of the Union is declared by Parliament by law to be expedient in Constitution subject to their personal law.
the public interest. 6. Transfer of property other than agricultural land;
[. . .] registration of deeds and documents.
61. Industrial disputes concerning Union employees. 7. Contracts, including partnership, agency, contracts of
[. . .] carriage and other special forms of contracts, but not
70. Union Public Service; All-India Services; Union Public Service Commission. including contracts relating to agricultural land.
[. . .] 8. Actionable wrongs.
72. Elections to Parliament, to the Legislatures of States and to the offices of President and Vice- [. . .]
President; the Election Commission. 20. Economic and social planning.
[. . .] [. . .]
75. Emoluments, allowances, privileges, and rights in respect of leave of absence, of the President 25. Education, including technical education, medical
and Governors; salaries and allowances of the Ministers for the Union; the salaries, allowances, education and universities, subject to the provisions of
and rights in respect of leave of absence and other conditions of service of the Comptroller and entries 63, 64, 65 and 66 of List I; vocational and
Auditor-General. technical training of labour.
76. Audit of the accounts of the Union and of the States. [. . .]
[. . .] 34. Price control.
78. Constitution and organisation (including vacations) of the High Courts except provisions as to 35. Mechanically propelled vehicles including the principles
officers and servants of High Courts; persons entitled to practise before the High Courts. on which taxes on such vehicles are to be levied.
[. . .] 36. Factories
80. Extension of the powers and jurisdiction of members of a police force belonging to any State to 37. Boilers.
any area outside that State, but not so as to enable the police of one State to exercise powers and 38. Electricity.
jurisdiction in any area outside that State without the consent of the Government of the State in 39. Newspapers, books and printing presses.
which such area is situated; extension of the powers and jurisdiction of members of a police force [. . .]
belonging to any State to railway areas outside that State.

continued
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Schedule 1 – cont.

Union Concurrent

[. . .]
82. Taxes on income other than agricultural income. 41. Custody, management and disposal of property (including
83. Duties of customs including export duties. agricultural land) declared by law to be evacuee property.
84. Duties of excise on tobacco and other goods manufactured or produced in India except— 42. Acquisition and requisitioning of property.
(a) alcoholic liquors for human consumption; [. . .]
(b) opium, Indian hemp and other narcotic drugs and narcotics,
but including medicinal and toilet preparations containing alcohol or any substance included
in sub-paragraph (b) of this entry.
85. Corporation tax.
86. Taxes on the capital value of the assets, exclusive of agricultural land, of individuals and
companies; taxes on the capital of companies.
87. Estate duty in respect of property other than agricultural land.
88. Duties in respect of succession to property other than agricultural land.
89. Terminal taxes on goods or passengers, carried by railway, sea or air; taxes on railway fares and
freights.
90. Taxes other than stamp duties on transactions in stock exchanges and futures markets.
91. Rates of stamp duty in respect of bills of exchange, cheques, promissory notes, bills of lading,
letters of credit, policies of insurance, transfer of shares, debentures, proxies and receipts.
92. Taxes on the sale or purchase of newspapers and on advertisements published therein.
92A. Taxes on the sale or purchase of goods other than newspapers, where such sale or purchase
takes place in the course of inter-State trade or commerce.
92B. Taxes on the consignments of goods (whether the consignment is to the person making it or to
any other person), where such consignment takes place in the course of inter-State trade or
commerce.
[. . .]
97. Any other matter not enumerated in List II or List III including any tax not mentioned in either of
those Lists.

Source: 7th Schedule of the Constitution.

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Schedule 2: Rural and urban LGs (jurisdiction)

Rural Urban

  1. Agriculture, including agricultural extension.   1. Urban planning including town planning.

  2. Land improvement, implementation of land reforms, land consolidation   2. Regulation of land-use and construction of buildings.
and soil conservation.   3. Planning for economic and social development.
  3. Minor irrigation, water management and watershed development.   4. Roads and bridges.
  4. Animal husbandry, dairying and poultry.   5. Water supply for domestic, industrial and commercial purposes.
  5. Fisheries.   6. Public health, sanitation conservancy and solid waste
  6. Social forestry and farm forestry. management.
  7. Minor forest produce.   7. Fire services.
  8. Small scale industries, including food-processing industries.   8. Urban forestry, protection of the environment and promotion of
  9. Khadi, village and cottage industries. ecological aspects.
10. Rural housing.   9. Safeguarding the interests of weaker sections of society,
11. Drinking water. including the handicapped and mentally retarded.
12. Fuel and fodder. 10. Slum improvement and upgradation.
13. Roads, culverts, bridges, ferries, waterways and other means of 11. Urban poverty alleviation.
communication. 12. Provision of urban amenities and facilities such as parks,
14. Rural electrification, including distribution of electricity. gardens, playgrounds.
15. Non-conventional energy sources. 13. Promotion of cultural, educational and aesthetic aspects.
16. Poverty alleviation programme. 14. Burials and burial grounds; cremations, cremation grounds and
17. Education, including primary and secondary schools. electric crematoriums.
18. Technical training and vocational education. 15. Cattle pounds; prevention of cruelty to animals.
19. Adult and non-formal education. 16. Vital statistics including registration of births and deaths.
20. Libraries. 17. Public amenities including street lighting, parking lots, bus stops
21. Cultural activities. and public conveniences.
22. Markets and fairs. 18. Regulation of slaughterhouses and tanneries.

continued
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Schedule 2: cont.
Rural Urban

23. Health and sanitation, including hospitals, primary health centres and
dispensaries.
24. Family welfare.
25. Women and child development.
26. Social welfare, including welfare of the handicapped and mentally
retarded.
27. Welfare of the weaker sections, and in particular, of the Scheduled Castes
and the Scheduled Tribes.
28. Public distribution system.
29. Maintenance of community assets.
Source: 11th and 12th Schedules of the Constitution.
 Schedule 3: Three tier system under Indian federalism

UNION OF INDIA
(First Stratum)
Two Houses of Parliament:
Lok Sabha EM1 – 543 and Rajya Sabha EM – 250
TOTAL EM – 793
STATES AND UNION TERRITORIES
(Second Stratum)
28 States and 7 Union Territories2
TOTAL EM – 4508

District and Below (Third Stratum)

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PANCHAYATS: 239,544 MUNICIPALITIES

EM – 2,828,779
WM – 1,038,989 Urban Local Bodies at all levels:
WP – 79,378 3551
SC/ST – 853,931 EM – 68,554

District Panchayats: 537 City Corporations: 112

EM – 15,694 WP – 34
WM – 5779
WP – 198

Intermediate Panchayats: 6094 Town Municipalities: 1430

EM – 156,609 WP – 476
WM – 58,094
WP – 1970

Nagar Panchayats: 2009

Village Panchayats: 232,913
WP – 670
EM – 2,656,476
WM – 975,116
WP – 77,210

VILLAGE ASSEMBLIES WARDS COMMITTEES

AUTONOMOUS COUNCILS FOR TRIBAL AND SPECIAL AREAS3

Notes
1 EM = Elected Members; WM = Women Members; WP = Women Presidents; SC/ST = Scheduled
Caste and Scheduled Tribe Members.
2  Out of seven Union Territories, only two have Assemblies.
3 Autonomous Councils are created in West Bengal, Jammu and Kashmir, and Assam for adminis-
tration and development of tribal areas with special features; but they also have statutory local
governments.
 236   G. Mathew
Appendix 2: States and Union territories in India
States
  1. Andhra Pradesh (1953, 1956, 1959)
  2. Assam (1951, 1962, 1971)
  3. Bihar (1950, 1956, 1968, 2000)
  4. Gujrat (1960)
  5. Kerala (1956)
  6. Madhya Pradesh (1950, 1956, 2000)
  7. Tamil Nadu (1950, 1953, 1959)
  8. Maharashtra (1950, 1960)
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  9. Karnataka (1950, 1956, 1968)

10. Orissa (1950, 1960)
11. Punjab (1950, 1956, 1960, 1966)
12. Rajasthan (1950, 1956, 1959)
13. Uttar Pradesh (1950, 1968, 1979, 2000)
14. West Bengal (1950, 1954, 1956)
15. Jammu and Kashmir (1950)
16. Nagaland (1962)
17. Haryana (1966, 1979)
18. Himachal Pradesh (1966)
19. Manipur (1971)
20. Tripura (1950)
21. Meghalaya (1971)
22. Sikkim (1975)
23. Mizoram(1971)
24. Arunachal Pradesh (1971)
25. Goa (1987)
26. Uttaranchal (2000)
27. Jharkhand (2000)
28. Chhattisgarh (2000)

Union territories
1. Delhi (1950, 1956)
2. Andaman and Nicobar (1950, 1956)
3. Lakshadweep (1956)
4. Dadra and Nagar Haveli (1961)
5. Daman and Diu (1987)
6. Pondicherry (1962)
7. Chandigarh(1966)

Source: Rajeev Dhavan, 2004, ‘Indian Federalism and Its Discon­tents: A

Review’, paper presented at the India Roundtable on Legislative and Executive
Governance in Federal Countries as part of the Global Dialogue Programme of
the Forum of Federations, Ottawa in New Delhi, 5 June.
 India   237
Note: The years denote the dates of cre­ation of the units and changes in bound­
ar­ies or status. The bound­ar­ies of various states have been con­tinu­ally altered.
Some union ter­rit­ories (e.g. Goa) have become full-­fledged states.

Notes
  1 George Anderson, 2007, “ ‘Real’ Federalism: a sys­tem that adapts to coun­tries’
needs”, Federations, 6(1), Febru­ary/March, online, avail­able at: www.forumfed.org/
libdocs/Federations/V6N1-president-­p2.htm.
  2 When India became inde­pend­ent, 2004, 563 princely states joined the Indian Union.
Y. Vaikuntham (ed.), 2004, People’s Movements in the Princely States, Manohar,
Delhi, p. 13.
  3 Ramachandra Guha, 2007, India After Gandhi: The History of the World’s Largest
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Democracy, Pan Macmillan, London, p. xii.

  4 Sir John Strachey, cited in Guha, India After Gandhi, p. xiii.
  5 Harihar Bhattacharyya, 2003, “Multiculturalism in Contemporary India”, Interna­
tional Journal on Multicultural Studies, 5(2): 152.
  6 Census of India: The First Report on Religions Data, Registrar General and Census
Commissioner, New Delhi, 2004.
  7 The 1991 census listed 18 official (“scheduled”) languages and 96 non-­scheduled
ones. Kumar Suresh Singh, 2002, “Introduction”, People of India, Volume I, Oxford
University Press, Oxford, revised edition.
  8 The 22 languages are listed in the 8th Schedule of the Indian Constitution. They are:
Assamese, Bengali, Bodo, Dogri, Gujarati, Hindi, Kannada, Kashmiri, Konkani,
Maithili, Malayalam, Manipuri, Marathi, Nepali, Oriya, Punjabi, Sanskrit, Santhali,
Sindhi, Tamil, Telugu and Urdu.
  9 Census of India 2001, online, avail­able at: www.censusindia.gov.in.
10 Om Prakash, “The Transformation from a Pre-­Colonial to a Colonial Order: The Case
of India”, online, avail­able at: www.lse.ac.uk/eco­nomicHistory/Research/ GEHN/
GEHNPDF/conf2_Oprakash.pdf.
11 The polit­ical formation created in 1885 by A.O. Hume, Dadabhai Naoroji and Sir
Dinshaw Edulji Wacha was the first national polit­ical party, namely the Indian
National Congress. Later, under the leadership of Mahatma Gandhi and Jawaharlal
Nehru, the movement for the inde­pend­ence of India reached its peak under the banner
of the Indian National Congress in the 1940s and India achieved inde­pend­ence from
British rule in 1947.
12 Guha, India After Gandhi, p. xiv.
13 Part of Muhammad Ali Jinnah’s speech at the All India Muslim League’s annual con-
ference during 22–24 March 1940 held at Minto Park, Lahore leading to the his­tor­ical
Lahore Declaration. Online, avail­able at: www.storyofpakistan.com.
14 Ibid.
15 G. Pandey, Remembering Partition, Cam­bridge University Press, New Delhi, 2002,
pp. 35f.
16 See Balraj Puri, Jammu and Kashmir, Triumph and Tragedy of Indian Federalisation,
Sterling Publishers, New Delhi, 1981.
17 Subhash C. Kashyap, 2003, “Union-­States Relations in India”, Indian Journal of
Federal Studies, 4(1): 29.
18 Ibid., pp. 29–30.
19 Ashis Banerjee, “Federalism and Nationalism: An Attempt at Historical Interpreta-
tion”, in Nirmal Mukarji and Balveer Arora (eds), Federalism in India: Origins and
Development, Vikas Publishing House Pvt. Ltd, New Delhi, 1992, p. 52.
20 Rasheeduddin Khan, 1992, Federal India: A Design for Change, Vikas Publishing
House Pvt. Ltd., New Delhi, pp. 29f.
 238   G. Mathew
21 Nirmal Mukarji and Balveer Arora, 1992, “Introduction: The Basic Issues”, in Nirmal
Mukarji and Balveer Arora (eds), Federalism in India: Origins and Development,
Vikas Publishing House Pvt. Ltd, New Delhi, p. 2.
22 Kashyap, “Union-­States Relations in India”, p. 35.
23 West Bengal v. Union of India, (AIR 1963 SC 1241), p. 30.
24 Kashyap, “Union-­States Relations in India”, p. 34.
25 K.C. Wheare, Federal Government, Oxford University Press, London, 1971, pp.  77
and 177. See also Kashyap, “Union-­States Relations in India”, pp. 32–33, who shares
Wheare’s opinion.
26 See Appendix 9.1, Schedule 1: Union List and Concurrent List (Jurisdiction) for a list
of selected subject mat­ters devolved to the Union, in the Union List and the Concur-
rent List.
27 M.P Singh, 2004, “Federal Division of Responsibilities in India”, Indian Journal of
Federal Studies, 1: 109–111.
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28 Rekha Saxena, 2007, “Treaty Making Powers: A Case for ‘Federalisation’ and ‘Par-
liamentarisation’ ”, Economic and Political Weekly, 6 Janu­ary, pp. 24–28.
29 S.R. Bommai vs Union of India and others, All India Reporter, Supreme Court
Section, 1994.
30 Rekha Saxena, 2006, Situating Federalism in India: Mechanisms of Intergov­ern­
mental relations in Canada and India, Monohar Publishers & Distributors, New
Delhi, p. 125.
31 See Appendix 9.1, Schedule 2: Rural and Urban LGs (Jurisdiction) for a list of the
subject mat­ters devolved to the LGs.
32 K.C. Sivaramakrishnan, 2007, lecture delivered at the Institute of Social Sciences on
7 December.
33 George Mathew, 2006, “Repub­lic of India”, in Distribution of Powers and Responsi­
bilities in Federal Countries, Akhtar Majeed, Ronald L. Watts and Donald M. Brown
(eds), McGill-­Queen’s University Press, London, p. 161.
34 B.K. Roy Burman, 1993, “Federalism in Perspective: Problems and Prospects for
North-­East India”, Mainstream, 7 Au­gust, p. 9.
35 See Appendix 9.1, Schedule 3: Three tier sys­tem under Indian fed­eral­ism for an illus-
tration of the three tier Indian federalism.
36 Mahatma Gandhi, 1942 “On Panchayati Raj”, Harijan, 26 July, p. 238.
37 Ibid.
38 Constituent Assembly Debates, 4 Novem­ber 1948, Book 2, Volume VII, Lok Sabha
Secretariat, New Delhi, p. 39.
39 Minister of Panchayati Raj Shri Mani Shankar Aiyar, 2008, speech delivered on the
occasion of the launch of the “India-­Brazil-South-­Africa Local Governance Forum”,
17 Janu­ary, New Delhi.
40 Ibid.
41 Report of the Committee on Panchayati Raj Institutions, 1978, Department of Rural,
Development, Government of India, New Delhi.
42 V.N. Alok, 2006, “Local Government organ­isa­tion and finance: Rural India”, in
Anwar Shah (ed.), Local Governance in Developing Countries, Washington, DC:
World Bank, p. 224.
43 Report of the Thirteenth Finance Commission 2010–2015 (2009), Volumes I and II,
Ministry of Finance, Government of India.
44 Rekha Saxena, 2007, “The Rajya Sabha:A federal second or secondary chamber?”
Indian Journal of Federal Studies, 15: 75–83.
45 Kashyap, “Union-­States Relations in India”, p. 31.
46 Ibid., p. 32.
47 Saxena, Situating Federalism, p. 307. Also see Lawerence Saez, 2002, Federalism
without a Centre, Sage, New Delhi, Ch. 4.
48 Guha, India after Gandhi, p. xvi.
 India   239
49 Chandhoke, N., 1999, “The logic of re­cog­ni­tion?”, Seminar (India), 484: 35–39, cited
in Bhattacharyya, “Multiculturalism in Contemporary India”, p. 155.
50 Bhattacharyya, “Multiculturalism in Contemporary India”, p. 162.
51 Ibid., p. 156.
52 Jawaharlal Nehru in his Foreword to Verrier Elwin’s A Philosophy for NEFA
(1957/1959), cited in Bhattacharyya, “Multiculturalism in Contemporary India”,
p. 157.
53 John Rex and Gurharpal Singh, 2003, “Pluralism and Multiculturalism in Colonial
and Post-­Colonial Society: Thematic Introduction”, International Journal on Multi­
cultural Societies, 5(2): 111.
54 Ibid., p. 155.
55 Bhattacharyya, “Multiculturalism in Contemporary India”, p. 152.
56 Ibid., p. 159.
57 Ibid., p. 160.
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58 Ibid., p. 161.
59 Report of Committee for Consultations on the Situation in Andhra Pradesh (2010),
Ministry of Home Affairs, Government of India.
60 The Hindu, 14 Febru­ary 2011.
61 Mitra, S.K. and Lewis, A.R. (eds), 1998, Sub-­national Movements in South Asia. Seg-
ments cited in Bhattacharyya, “Multiculturalism in Contemporary India”, p. 153.
62 C.P. Bhambhri, 1997, The Indian State: Fifty Years, Shipra Publications, New Delhi,
p.  267. Also see Rajeev Bhargava, “The Secular Imperative”, in M.P. Singh and
Rekha Saxena (eds), Political Science Annual 1997, Deep and Deep, New Delhi.
63 Shefali Jha, 2002, “Secularism in the Constituent Assembly Debates, 1946–1950”,
Economic and Political Weekly, 27 July, cited in Sanghamitra Padhy, “Secularism
and Justice: A review of Indian Supreme Court Judgements”, Economic and Political
Weekly, 20 Novem­ber 2004, p. 5027.
64 Padhy, “Secularism and Justice”, p. 5027.
65 “Uphold secular values”, 1986, inaugural speech at the national symposium on India’s
Struggle Against Communalism, New Delhi, 8 Octo­ber, online, avail­able at: www.
aicc.org.in/new/rajiv-­speech-details.php?id=3.
66 S.K. Jain, 1994, Party Politics and Centre-­State Relations in India, Abhinav Publica-
tions, New Delhi, p. 78.
67 Ibid., pp. 67–93, for a more detailed account of these events. Also see Rajni Kothari,
Politics in India, Orient Longman, New Delhi,1970; Peter Ronald de Souza, Contem­
porary India-­transitions, Sage Publications, New Delhi, 2002, Ch. 10; M.P. Singh
and Rekha Saxena, India at the Polls: Parliamentary Elections in the Federal Phase,
Orient Longman, New Delhi, 2003.
68 James Manore, 1979, “Where Congress Survived Five States in India’s General Elec-
tion of 1977”, Aisan Survey, Vol. 18, 8 Au­gust, pp.  758–803, noted in Jain, Party
Politics and Centre-­State Relations in India, p. 84.
69 Rekha Saxena, 2003, “Recent Trends in Parliamentary Federal System: India and
Canada”, Indian Journal of Federal Studies, 4(1): 76.
70 Ash Narain Roy, “Cajoling and compromise drive India’s multi-­party sys­tem: Indian
fed­eral­ism bristles with paradoxes”, online, avail­able at: www.forumfed.org/en/prod-
ucts/maga­zine/vol7_num1/india_cajoling.php.
71 M.P. Singh and B.D. Dua (eds), 2003, Indian Federalism in the New Millennium,
Monohor, New Delhi, pp. 379–435.
72 Lloyd Rudolph and Susanne Rudolph, 2001, “Iconisation of Chandrababu: Sharing
Sovereignty in India’s Federal Market Economy”, Economic and Political Weekly,
5–11 May, 36(18): 1541–1552.
73 See Rob Jenkins, 2003, “How Federalism Influences India’s Domestic Politics of
WTO Engagement (and is Itself Affected in the Process)”, Asian Survey, 43(4):
598–621.
 240   G. Mathew
74 Friedrich, C. 1968, Trends of Federalism in Theory and Practice, Pall Mall Press,
London, pp.  135–136, cited in Bhattacharyya, “Multiculturalism in Contemporary
India”, p. 152.
75 Paranjoy, Guha Thakurta, and Raghuraman, Shankar, 2004, A Time of Coalitions –
Divided We Stand, Sage Publications, New Delhi, p. 344.
76 Ibid., pp. 336–348.
77 Kashyap, “Union-­States Relations in India”, pp. 35–36.
78 M.P. Singh and Rekha Saxena, 2008, Indian Politics: Contemporary Issues and Con­
cerns, Prentice Hall of India, New Delhi, pp. 156–159.
79 See, for instance, L.P. Shukla, 1964, A History of Village Panchayats in India, Insti-
tute of Economic Research, Dharwar; R.V. Jathar, 1964, Evolution of Panchayati Raj
in India, Institute of Economic Research, Dharwar; Association of Voluntary Agen-
cies for Rural Development, 1962, Report of a Study Team on Panchayati Raj in
Rajasthan, AVARD, New Delhi; B. Baheshwari, 1963, Studies in Panchayati Raj,
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Metropolitan Book Co., New Delhi.

80 C. Kashyap, “Union-­States Relations in India”, p, 39.
81 Mukarji and Arora, Federalism in India., p. 270.
82 Anwar Shah with Sana Shah, “The new vision of Local Governance and the evolving
roles of Local Governments” in Shah, Local Governance in Developing Countries,
pp. 41–42.
83 Bhattacharyya, “Multiculturalism in Contemporary India”, p. 162.
84 George Mathew, 1997, “Federalism, Local Government, and Economic Policy”, The
India Handbook: Prospects into the 21st Century, Chicago, IL: Fitzroy Dearborn Pub-
lishers, p. 110.

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Governmental documents
Report of the Committee on Panchayati Raj Institutions, 1978, Department of Rural
Development, Government of India, New Delhi.
Report of Committee for Consultations on the Situation in Andhra Pradesh (2010), Min-
istry of Home Affairs, Government of India.
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Judgments
S.R. Bommai v. Union of India, 1994, 2 SCR 644: AIR 1994 SC 1918: (1994)3 SCC1.
(Date of Judgement: 11 March 1994.)
State of West Bengal v. Union of India, 1963, AIR 1241, 1964 SCR (1) 371. (Date of
Judgement: 21 Decem­ber 1962.)
SCR=Supreme Court Reports; AIR=All India Reporter; SC=Supreme Court of India;
SCC=Supreme Court Cases.