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Authors: Bipan Chandra
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the States to join in a federation and that the federation not being the result of an agreement, no state has the right to secede from it. The federation is a Union because it is indestructible. 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.
Indian federalism has certain distinctive features. For example, unlike the US, where a person is a citizen of the US, as well as of the state in which he or she resides, in India there is only Indian citizenship.
The Constitution has also tried to minimize conflict between the Union and the states by clearly specifying legislative powers of each. It contains three lists of subjects. The subjects listed in the Union List can only be legislated upon by the union parliament, the ones in the State List only by the state legislatures, and those in the Concurrent List come within the purview of both, but in case of conflict between Union and state legislation, the Union law will prevail.
While it is true that the overwhelming financial power of the Union and the dependence of the states upon the Union for grants-in-aid for discharging their functions places limits on federalism, nevertheless it would be an exaggeration to maintain, as some analysts do, that federalism has withered away in the actual working of the Constitution. The most conclusive evidence of the survival of the federal system perhaps is to be found in the coexistence of state governments with sharply divergent ideological complexions: Left Front and United Front governments in Kerala, West Bengal and Tripura, DMK and AIADMK in Tamil Nadu, Telugu Desam in Andhra Pradesh, Janata Dal governments in Gujarat and Karnataka, BJP in U.P., Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Gujarat and Himachal, etc., with a Congress or Janata Dal or United Front or BJP government at the Centre. Agitations for formation of new states and demands, often successful, for more financial powers to the states, also testify that the federal impulse is alive. The Left Front government in West Bengal recently created history on 18 June 1998 by questioning the right of BJP-led government at the Centre to send a fact-finding team to assess the state’s law and order situation, citing that law and order is a State subject. The CPM-led government clearly found the federal principle a useful weapon of defence in the face of BJP’s attempt at applying political pressure in response to its ally, the Trinamul Congress. It alsodemonstrates that constitutional arguments are often occasioned by political contests and not by constitutional anomalies and further that the balance between the federal and unitary features of the Constitution at every point in time is a function as much of the political balance of forces in the country as it is of constitutional developments, court judgements and the like.
It would then perhaps be fair to conclude with D.D. Basu, a leading authority on the Indian Constitution, that it introduces a system ‘which is to normally work as a federal system, but there are provisions to convert it into a unitary or quasi-federal system under specified exceptional circumstances.’ 10 It is perhaps this flexibility which is usually missing in purely federal constitutions that has enabled the constitutional framework to accommodate the wide variety of Centre-state relationships encountered in the fifty years since independence.
Institutions of Governance
The President
The executive power is vested by the Constitution in the President of India but in the words of Ambedkar, he is a constitutional head who ‘occupies the same position as the King under the English Constitution. He is the head of the State but not of the Executive. He represents the nation but does not rule the nation.’ 11 The head of the Executive is in fact the prime minister at the head of the Council of
Indian federalism has certain distinctive features. For example, unlike the US, where a person is a citizen of the US, as well as of the state in which he or she resides, in India there is only Indian citizenship.
The Constitution has also tried to minimize conflict between the Union and the states by clearly specifying legislative powers of each. It contains three lists of subjects. The subjects listed in the Union List can only be legislated upon by the union parliament, the ones in the State List only by the state legislatures, and those in the Concurrent List come within the purview of both, but in case of conflict between Union and state legislation, the Union law will prevail.
While it is true that the overwhelming financial power of the Union and the dependence of the states upon the Union for grants-in-aid for discharging their functions places limits on federalism, nevertheless it would be an exaggeration to maintain, as some analysts do, that federalism has withered away in the actual working of the Constitution. The most conclusive evidence of the survival of the federal system perhaps is to be found in the coexistence of state governments with sharply divergent ideological complexions: Left Front and United Front governments in Kerala, West Bengal and Tripura, DMK and AIADMK in Tamil Nadu, Telugu Desam in Andhra Pradesh, Janata Dal governments in Gujarat and Karnataka, BJP in U.P., Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Gujarat and Himachal, etc., with a Congress or Janata Dal or United Front or BJP government at the Centre. Agitations for formation of new states and demands, often successful, for more financial powers to the states, also testify that the federal impulse is alive. The Left Front government in West Bengal recently created history on 18 June 1998 by questioning the right of BJP-led government at the Centre to send a fact-finding team to assess the state’s law and order situation, citing that law and order is a State subject. The CPM-led government clearly found the federal principle a useful weapon of defence in the face of BJP’s attempt at applying political pressure in response to its ally, the Trinamul Congress. It alsodemonstrates that constitutional arguments are often occasioned by political contests and not by constitutional anomalies and further that the balance between the federal and unitary features of the Constitution at every point in time is a function as much of the political balance of forces in the country as it is of constitutional developments, court judgements and the like.
It would then perhaps be fair to conclude with D.D. Basu, a leading authority on the Indian Constitution, that it introduces a system ‘which is to normally work as a federal system, but there are provisions to convert it into a unitary or quasi-federal system under specified exceptional circumstances.’ 10 It is perhaps this flexibility which is usually missing in purely federal constitutions that has enabled the constitutional framework to accommodate the wide variety of Centre-state relationships encountered in the fifty years since independence.
Institutions of Governance
The President
The executive power is vested by the Constitution in the President of India but in the words of Ambedkar, he is a constitutional head who ‘occupies the same position as the King under the English Constitution. He is the head of the State but not of the Executive. He represents the nation but does not rule the nation.’ 11 The head of the Executive is in fact the prime minister at the head of the Council of
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