Academicians and retired bureaucrats on Saturday deliberated on a range of issues related to the safeguard of constitutional rights and institutions, and federalism, on the first day of two-day Democracy Convention 2024.
The “Federal Contract” group presented its views on “Federalism, Equality of States, and State Rights”, stating that measures like “One Nation One Election” undermined India’s federal structure and conflated the different priorities voters had for national, State and “panchayati raj” institutions, degrading each one’s different sphere of responsibility.
Zoya Hasan, Professor Emerita, Centre for Political Studies (SPS), Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU), and currently Distinguished Professor, Council for Social Development, said over the past few years, increasingly, policy measures were being announced without consulting States and parties. She said investigating agencies were being used actively to weaken State governments and opposition parties. The office of the Governor had also been misused to weaken the State governments ruled by the Opposition parties.
Professor Hasan also highlighted the issues of abolition of Jammu and Kashmir as a State and “inadequate” tax devolution to States, besides that of “centralisation” of resources by the Centre. “The effort clearly seems to be one of undermining, by the use of economic/fiscal lever, the Opposition-led governments to win legitimacy with voters at the State and Central level,” she said.
‘Impossible dream’
Balveer Arora. former Professor of CPS and former Rector and Pro VC of JNU, said nine years ago he had penned an assessment of the first year of the Prime Minister Narendra Modi-led Central government. It was titled “The distant goal of cooperative federalism”. “...today, I would say that it is not just a distant dream, it is an impossible dream..,” he said.
He advocated restoration of “asymmetric federalism”, saying that there was a need to defend against the dangers” of “differential and selective centralisation”, and “unconstitutional concept of double-engine sarkar” as it also implied the Centre’s check on States.
CPS Professor Vidhu Verma said in the past few months, the Centre had taken “unprecedented steps to tighten its control over States, which would have been unimaginable to the framers of the Constitution”. Pointing out that some States had raised the issue of “discrimination and economic injustice” meted out to them, she said there was a lot of resentment and frustration as they were not being heard and were unable to participate in the decision-making process.
On the delimitation aspect, she said States like Kerala and Tamil Nadu would be punished for curbing population growth more effectively than those with huge population growth in the north, as it would have a bearing on the composition of the Lok Sabha.
Pulin Nayak, a former director of the Delhi School of Economics, said post 1991, during the reform period, along with the economic growth came the idea of moving towards a greater degree of centralised decision making, as most of the reformers were at the Centre. Although at the State level, many were keen on issues of economic development, they were “diffident”.
About the Goods and Services Tax (GST), the group said it meant that States were foregoing their most potent revenue earning source in exchange for being part of a unified common market. In the GST Council’s decision-making process, the Centre has a weightage of one third, and the 28 constituent States two third.
Amitabha Pande, a retired Indian Administrative Service official, recommended the strengthening of “panchayati raj” system and decentralisation of the problem identification and policy formulation mechanism for resolution in the specific local context. Stressing on the need for capacity building at the local level, he said the States could also revive upper houses that could have representatives from district and gram panchayats.
