The federalism fetish

The party which is in power at the centre is generally anti-federal. Parties in power in the states are generally for federalism and the so-called rights of the states. The Congress has generally been an anti-federal party because it has been in power at the centre for a long time. Also, the Congress makes a virtue of being as a national party long after it has ceased to be one. One of the ways of being a national party is to argue that the interests of the states are not above that of the nation. If there is a conflict of interest between the states and the centre, the centre must prevail because the centre represents the nation. And the interests of other states must also be taken into account. It becomes easy to divide the states and retain the advantage of being the arbiter among them. That is the role the centre and party in power at the centre play.

Of course, this is an imperialist attitude and the Congress enjoys being an imperialist party. It has inherited the mantle of the Mauryas, the Mughals and the British. The Congress led the freedom movement as a national party but it has ended up like the imperial British power that ruled the country. The Congress practices dyarchy, put in place through the Government of India Act of 1937, where the central government is superior to the state government, and the governor, who is the representative of the centre in the states, is superior to the chief ministers and the state governments. This power arrangement is both constitutional and political. That is why the Congress had never showed any constitutional or political contrition in resorting to Article 356 of the Constitution, and of imposing President’s Rule.

Interestingly, the BJP, the main opposition party, pretends to be a champion of the rights of the states and of the federal system and claims it to be part of the basic structure of the constitution. The BJP’s voice has been the loudest over the powers of the National Counter-Terrorism Centre. It does not sound convincing because as a right-wing party that has strong views on terrorism and national security, it should have been supporting the NCTC’s overriding powers. If the BJP had been in power at the centre, it would have worked for a ‘draconian’ — that is the word that the BJP leaders ironically used to describe the anti-terror agency — NCTC. Political realities drive the BJP into the federalist camp. 

Regional parties represented by chief ministers J Jayalalithaa, Naveen Patnaik, Nitish Kumar, Mamata Banerjee, and even BJP chief ministers like Narendra Modi, Shivraj Singh Chauhan, Raman Singh form part of the natural federal party, speaking up for the rights of the states. There is, however, a catch in this loud and ardent federalism. Each one of the states always seeks an increased economic package and other allocations from the central government. During natural disasters, states demand relief packages worth thousands of crores of rupees from the central government. The argument is that the states have a right over the centre, and the resources in the form of taxes and revenues — an issue that successive finance commissions have worked on and come up with complicated and detailed arrangements of sharing taxes — and that the centre is doing no favour to the states. There is also the interesting fact that the states still knock at the door of the planning commission — a dinosaur of the planning era — and work out their budget outlays. It seems more the case that those loud protests from state governments is not really about the federal structure and the rights of the states, and it has more to do with deriving financial advantage from the central resources.

The centre-states tussle is more like the strained power equations one witnesses in an Indian joint family, where individual members seek personal advantages from the institution of the joint family and enjoy maximal individual freedom. The bickering political debate over centre-state relations has something nicely Indian about it. This is federalism with the Indian flavour.

If on the other hand, these CMs want to defend the rights of the states, they must break away from the dependence on centre’s financial largesse. The states must know how to raise resources for economic development, there should be more commerce between the states and without the centre playing the mediator’s role. This is a more difficult task compared to mouthing slogans. The day these chief ministers can work out financial plans of their own, then no central government can ever hope to bully the states. It is not the powers of the NCTC that undermine states. It is the states’ claims on financial resources of the centre that makes the central government an imperialist power.