Relationship between the Centre and the states

Relationship between the Centre and the states

The term “federal” does not appear in the Constitution of India (pdf here) to define the

relationship between the Centre and the states: Section 1(1) states that “India, that is Bharat,

shall be a Union of States.” In its seven-volume report in March 2010, the Justice Madan

Mohan Punchhi Commission on Centre-State relations made an important observation:

“While defining and modelling the Indian federalism, the important and commonly accepted

historical fact had been that the Indian federation was not the result of a contract between

two or more pre-existing sovereign entities but, rather, an evolution of the sovereign will of

the people to live together as one organic political Union.” (Vol. 1, page 49).

India, unlike the European Union, is hence, not a set of independent states coming together

to form a union: As Dr BR Ambedkar said, “Though the country and the people may be

divided into different states for convenience of administration, the country is one integral

whole, its people a single people living under a single imperium derived from a single

source.” This is an important point to note as India has seen multiple re-organizations of its

state boundaries over the past 65 years: The state boundaries are not permanent.

The Constitution goes on to define the legislative powers of the Union and states and

distributes them into three parts:

` the Union list – which defines issues on which the Centre has the legislative authority;

` the State List – which defines issues on which individual states can make laws; and

` the Concurrent list – issues on which both the Centre and states can make laws and the

Central law will  prevail if a State law is contradictory.  

Re-interpreting federalism

The Punchhi Commission noted: “There was complete unanimity among the founding

fathers that a strong federal government cannot assume an authoritarian outlook and the

position and status of the States had to be suitably protected…The Constitution, for this

purpose, made provisions for ‘consultation,’ which would act as a check to the arbitrary use

of certain exclusive powers of the Union. These were in three forms: (i) consultation with the

state, a pre-requisite (Article 3); (ii) indirect or designated consent of the Upper House of

Parliament (the Council of States, known as the Rajya Sabha) (Article 249); and (iii) majority

consent, appertaining to Constitutional provisions, the amendment of which cannot be

effected unless approved by not less than one-half the total number of states of India

(Article 368).”

Of late, however, federalism has been interpreted not as a check on the power of the

Centre but as a source of power to states. Individual states are held up as role models for

development of specific factors (good investment climate or high economic growth or

making the PDS work): It has become fashionable to look at one-state examples and to

wistfully project that if only other states can do what a particular State has implemented, its

implication on India’s economic growth can be phenomenal. To this end, many believe that

if states are given more powers – unfettered by the Centre’s “policy paralysis” – India’s

economic growth story should receive a leg-up: these role-model states are typically defined

by the “visionary leadership” of the chief ministers, rather than institution-building, which

would last longer than a Government.