Everybody loves federalism, and a game is afoot

It’s not quite a buzzword yet, but the flavour of the times, politically speaking, is ‘federalism’. From Tamil Nadu to Punjab, Maharashtra to Bengal, and places in-between, political leaders regularly remind the central government that the Constitution envisages a collaborative arrangement between the Union and the states. The states are not subordinate to the Centre. They have a right to be heard on many issues, and on some issues, they have the right to decide things themselves.

There’s only one problem with that -- the Centre doesn’t seem to believe it. In fact, it’s doubtful that it ever did. Beginning right after the Constitution was adopted, there was a steady assertion of the Centre’s role in more and more spheres, notwithstanding the separate jurisdictions assigned to it and the states. Nehru was happy to imagine India, and didn’t really think the states needed to do much besides aligning with his imagination.

Perhaps it helped that most states then were also run by the Congress party, and disagreements over Centre-state relations were dealt with in-house. Between his various projects, Nehru didn’t forget the need to build democratic institutions too. But by the time his daughter took over the reins, the lines between the government and the party were blurring, and only became more so the longer she stayed in power. Eventually, and inevitably, it became “Indira is India”.

Her assassination was followed by a sympathy wave that produced a massive majority for the party at the Centre, further consolidating power away from the states. It was only in Narasimha Rao’s government, during a time when the party’s power diffused away from its first family, that the structure of government got a relook, in the form of the 73rd and 74th Amendments. But these dealt with the state-local government relationship, rather than the Centre-state one. In any event, the reforms proposed in them haven’t been implemented fully, even 30 years later.

In two terms, the UPA remained a coalition without the muscle of the past. It was dependent on a number of regional parties keen to protect their own turfs, and the Prime Minister wasn’t really the combative type. That kept in check any inclination there might have been to return to an overbearing Centre.

NDA-2 has reversed that. The majority of the first term and an even bigger majority in the second term have returned us to pre-1990s politics, with the BJP at one pole of national politics. And once again, the Centre has picked up where it left off when Rajiv Gandhi left office, increasingly usurping the jurisdictions of the states, and sometimes even the municipalities. From national security to street cleaning, New Delhi is looking for its part in every job.

Gobbling up others’ jurisdiction isn’t the only return to the past, however. Much like in the Indira Gandhi years, the Centre is comfortable brazening its way ahead with the states. This week alone, Punjab lost its traditional and assumed representation in the Bhakra-Beas Management Board, and its police were shunted out of guarding the dams in the state. Not long ago, a wide swathe of the state’s border was made part of the jurisdiction of the Border Security Force.

Examples of this can be found from other states, too. There is a whole new interpretation of ‘elected Assembly’ in Delhi, as the Centre has sought to take away powers that were hitherto clearly exercised by the state government. Tamil Nadu appeared to wage a lone battle against the GST regime before it was introduced, but since then many other states have discovered what exactly they’ve signed up for, and they don’t like it. Mamata Banerjee and some other Chief Ministers are in endless combat with the Governors of their states, flatly declaring them to be no more than agents of the Centre, rather than constitutional functionaries. Centre-state skirmishes abound in Kerala, J&K, Odisha, and elsewhere.

In many of these cases, the states are quick to argue that the actions of the Centre violate the federal arrangement between it and them. New Delhi, for its part, has simply rejected it or shrugged it off, and gone about doing what it pleases anyway.

One noteworthy thing is that these flashpoints in Centre-state relations occur mostly in states that are ruled neither by the BJP nor the Congress (Punjab appears headed in that direction too, per opinion polls). Not only now, but earlier when the UPA was in power, too, this was the case. That suggests that in national parties, the hierarchy of the party still holds great sway, and state leaders dare not cross the line separating them from their national colleagues. Even MPs from national parties rarely speak up for their states against positions taken by the Centre.

Where is all this headed? If the next Lok Sabha elections result in a return to coalition governments, we may once again see the Centre take a more peer-like stance to the states. Shades of that could be evident sooner, if the results in UP and Punjab favour regional parties; their representatives in the Rajya Sabha would displace incumbents from the Congress and the BJP, giving that House more heft in advocating the interests of the states.

But even with such a turn of political fortunes, it is unlikely that federalism will receive much of a boost. For all their talk of it, the regional parties don’t really believe in federalism. They merely find it useful to keep referring to it, as a way of seeking a greater share of power for themselves. This is one reason why the Centre can safely ignore them -- it too knows that a game is afoot, and that beneath the veneer of talk about federalism, all parties carefully avoid anything that might actually produce it.

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