Kiran Bedi and the farce of ''cooperative federalism''

As Delhi’s assembly election campaign enters the final round,  one is increasingly hearing a statement from Kiran Bedi, BJP’s newly imported ‘clean’ CM mascot face. She is repeating at every opportunity the ‘advantages’ of the Delhi government and the central government being from the same party. Apparently, such advantages extend to many fields. Recently, she claimed that if the governments of Delhi  and the Centre were in ‘alignment’, then the central government would be able to supply electricity to Delhi at cheap rates. Clearly, she isn’t  making such claims and promises without getting a green signal from the BJP high-command.

We must recognise the deep significance and dangerous implications of these statements. They hit at the constitutional separation of powers between the Centre and states, at the independence of Lok Sabha and Bidhan Sabha elections. All this talk of “alignment’’ between central and state government being a pre-condition for cooperation and benefits, exposes the Centre’s  ‘cooperative federalism’ rhetoric. A reporting-to-PMO CBI  is going after incumbent parties in non-BJP-ruled states and handing clean-chits in encounter killing allegations in BJP-ruled states.  It's a war against federalism.

Let's return to the electricity example. If the central government is able to sell electricity produced by its facilities at lower rates to Delhi, why are private players allowed to sell electricity at higher rates in the first place? Moreover, all states have an equal right on this supposed central government asset of cheap electricity. If so, why is the electoral success of Kiran Bedi and the BJP crucial to Delhi getting this electricity at cheap rates? Are central government assets to be allocated so as to reward states whose people elect the same party in Centre and state? Conversely, are states whose people decide to reject the central government party in their state elections to be punished? What Kiran Bedi has put into words explicitly is the implicit  rule by which federalism has been made into a farce by successive ‘national’ party-led governments at the Centre. Proud peoples of various states are reduced into vassals of the Union government.

The Centre can do this because of its discretionary powers in terms of allocation through extra-ordinary and special grants, finance commission, various ‘national policy’ parameter setting in Concurrent and State subjects. The Centre carries off most of the revenue produced inside a state. That’s the source of the Centre’s power and its discretionary abuse. 

The Centre is situated in Delhi. This has  resulted in the worst opportunists of the powerful sections of the states situating themselves in Delhi. In that world, where connections can be shamelessly peddled as merit, some have established themselves deeply. Some erstwhile fixers who hit sixers at the cost of the people have their next generation trying their luck in the elections. They have liberally sprinkled Delhi with Central money -- a case of elites with access to power subsidising themselves and their ‘homeland’ using revenue from states

. The Delhi contest is partly a fight between this parasitic class and its working people. Its important that the Indian Union takes back Delhi from India before the Delhi-vision of India devours the Union.

The anglicised brown sliver has a vested interest in the Hinglish capital of a majority non-Hinglish Indian Union. The representation of Delhi as ‘mini India’ and other such cute but absurd myths are produced by a media that has started believing in its own propaganda. It wants the rest of us to follow suit. Self-respecting peoples in the Indian Union’s states can ill-afford to pay electoral rent to its absentee landlords looking at trans-generational futures in their NCR.

The author is a commentator on politics and culture @gargac