Abstract
Despite the centrality of the federal idea to both the organization and the conduct of Indian politics, it is surprising how poorly informed most public discussions in India are about federalism. At one end, we have a farcical denial of the federal character of India, because of the choice of the word union, ignoring the fact that federations are nothing else than unions of states. At the other end, we have political debates which increasingly swear by federalism, in its different shades—cooperative, competitive and even collaborative. We therefore ask ourselves, why is it that the public imagination of what federalism is, what purposes it serves and how it works is so far removed from the academic and scholarly discussions on the theme? And if we were to try to bridge these two worlds, where do we begin?
The answer we believe lies in an innocuous but ubiquitous phrase ‘India is a quasi-federal country’. There is probably no other phrase that has dotted countless undergraduate and even master’s degree examination answer scripts year after year when asked to write on centre–state relations in India. In most undergraduate textbooks, quasi-federal is the only link the topic of federalism has with the scholarly world. We believe that if quasi-federal is the dominant idea that students take away from their courses on India’s political institutions, then the understanding deficit that echoes in public discussions, media commentaries, public speeches and policy documents is only to be expected.
This quasi-federal fixation reflects the inadequate comprehension that prevails about the vast changes in the practice, processes and working of Indian federalism since the inauguration of the polity, when the phrase was first enunciated. It appears that many of our venerable textbooks and commentators are locked in a time warp, as our perception of federalism continues to be framed by an understanding of our federal institutions that has long given way to new realities. This further means that the variety of new ideas, perspectives and approaches in the realm of federal studies available in research monographs and peer-reviewed journals have not made their way into the classroom. The fact that public discussion continues to be framed in traditional juristic and constitutional terms, ignorant of the vast corpus of work about the theory and the practice of Indian federalism, is a reflection on a singular loss in transmission from scholarship to teaching.
K. C. Wheare cannot be blamed for this state of affairs as the problem lies in what we have sought to appropriate and retain from his work. Wheare’s magisterial Federal Government, first published in 1946, has many features worthy of emulation, including its comparative lens, its cogent analysis and a remarkable clarity of explanation. The implicit assumption in his work is that there is an ideal type of federalism which is modelled on the structure and practice found in the United States. Writing in the dominant formal–legal tradition of his time, he compared and contrasted the features of other countries where there was a division of power between different levels of government with those of the United States, to not only define and refine his ‘federal principle’ but also to certify other countries as federal or quasi-federal (Wheare, 1963). In fact, had Wheare lived to see the development of the federal system over the last five decades, it is doubtful that he would have stuck to his initial assessment. Repeating his description unthinkingly today is doing a grave injustice to his scholarship, which was not static but was remarkable for its dynamic capacity.
It is therefore regrettable that in far too many textbooks and teaching material on federalism available across the country, Wheare’s thesis is the beginning and often the end of any ‘theoretical discussion’, forgetting to mention that the term quasi-federal had been applied only after a first reading of the text of the Constitution. Following the same tradition, the presentation in these books is essentially descriptive focusing on the constitutional division of power between the centre and the states, as well as the powers and functions of different ‘institutions’. Wheare implicitly looms so large that at the end of the day students believe that Indian federalism is marked by the absence of some ‘ideal’ features and is, therefore, an impoverished form of federalism.
That there can be a variety of federalisms is not brought into the imaginary of students who are trained in this tradition (Stepan, 1999). Federalism, as any contemporary scholar will tell you, is merely an institutional arrangement for sharing power across multiple levels of government based on the principle of ‘shared rule and self-rule’ (Elazar, 1987). The distribution of functions and how different systems apportion the shared and self-rule components vary depending on historical and societal circumstances, as also on their specific contexts and requirements.
While federalism in our textbooks appears to be a static component of the political system, contemporary studies, on the contrary, underline the dynamic nature of the federal principle (Benz & Broschek, 2013). Federations, including ours, have constantly adjusted and adapted depending on political, social and economic situations (Arora et al., 2013). The demands arising from these pressures and changes force federations to innovate, making change a permanent feature. The dynamism that the Indian federation has exhibited is however largely ignored in the vast majority of undergraduate and even postgraduate introductory courses on Indian politics.
Our current approach to federalism in classrooms is, therefore, neither sensitive to these developments nor sensible from a pedagogic point of view. The traditional formal–legal approach focuses primarily on bald institutional facts and is ahistorical. If we look around the world, there are a range of federal political systems, and the form of federation adopted by different countries depends a great deal on the particular requirements of those countries (Watts, 2001). The literature would also indicate that there is no one single model, but there are different models of federation, each one being as valid as the other to lay claim to the federal label.
The primary question for Wheare was the location of sovereignty. This is not an issue today either in federal studies or in India, and the concept itself has undergone major changes. Federal studies have for some time now been grappling with the issue of accommodation of political diversity and how to give adequate ‘expression’ to the demands and requirements of diverse groups. This encompasses a whole gamut of questions that arise from the interface of democracy and federalism including issues of intra-state conflicts and the challenges of the demands for autonomy, self-determination and even secession. The search for new power-sharing arrangements has found space both in peer-reviewed scientific journals as well as in scholarly books.
Some of this discussion is relevant to the challenges that India faces in accommodating its diversities. These issues are unlikely to find space and to be discussed in undergraduate classrooms, since the focus is primarily on structure and functions. Consequently, the general understanding of federalism or centre–state relations, as it is popularly referred to in India, is poorer. The primary material available leaves little room for students to think about different dimensions and examine the interaction between various elements. They are therefore poorly equipped to both identify problems and to choose among alternative proposals.
Since the adoption of the National Curriculum Framework (2005), textbooks at the school level have seen a massive overhaul. The formal–legal analytical and functionalist perspective, which views federalism in terms of a pure division of powers and functions between different units of government, has given way to a more sophisticated understanding of federalism as a power-sharing and democracy enriching mechanism. School-leaving students therefore probably have a higher order of understanding compared to what textbooks currently in use in the colleges and universities make of federalism. This makes the need for change at the undergraduate level all the more pressing.
To remedy this situation, we suggest three areas where a change may help. First, students should be introduced to the main issues and questions that have confronted the practice of federalism in India. The structure of government and its functions at multiple levels is a topic that students would have covered many times over by the time they get to college. While it merits only passing attention, it is more important to highlight the point that almost every issue in Indian politics and democracy has a federal dimension. The working of the federation, therefore, needs to be at the centre of classroom transaction.
Second, students need to be exposed to the findings from federal studies that have both understood those problems and attempted to answer these questions. This is probably the biggest challenge and the main reason for the hiatus between the world of the classrooms and the scholarly world. Scholarly academics in India that have pursued a dedicated research agenda have generally kept away from the textbook arena, and this may explain the near absence of evidence-based teaching materials drawn primarily from the Indian experience. What we need are textbooks that use a different lens as compared to the current perspective to look at the federal dimension and to shed the obsession with federalism adjectives and epithets.
Third, we also need to adopt a student-centred transaction strategy. The old lecture model that relied primarily on information delivery should give way to a more participatory learning environment. Federalism easily lends itself to such a strategy, given the federal connection with political issues and problems. Issues such as the role of the Governor and intergovernmental relations, sharing of river waters, the question of divided majorities and the role of the Rajya Sabha are live issues. The sharing of taxes between the centre and the states and the introduction of new tax regimes for a common national market constantly crop up in public discussions. Students are more likely to be motivated to reflect about contemporary events, and the instructor could use this opportunity to creatively steer the discussion towards the preferred learning objectives. This may give students not only a better understanding of the federal idea but also skills to make sense of new information beyond the course syllabus narrowly defined.
Transformation of Federalism
Since the inauguration of the Indian Republic, the structure of federalism has remained almost unchanged, yet the practice and processes of federalism have changed vastly. One can probably identify many areas of change and some of deliberate redesign in the federal structure and arrangements with regard to power and resource distribution over the last six-odd decades. These include the institutionalization of local self-government (1992), removing the domicile criteria for elections to the Rajya Sabha (2003) and the introduction of the Goods and Services Tax (2017). Most other changes have come in the form of tweaks and adjustments, as well as judicial interpretations of existing provisions in ways more consistent with a federal democracy.
Therefore, while the structure remains the same, some new routines and processes are worked into it. This particular mode of institutional change has been characterized as change by layering (Mahoney & Thelen, 2010, pp. 15–17). Much of the federalization of the Indian polity in the 1990s that is referred to in the literature is about new practices and patterns of interaction. However, these routines are not necessarily institutionalized and are either dependent on the strategic choices of the actors involved or the nature of existing power relations or on the role and goodwill of other institutions like the judiciary. Nevertheless, they do call for a revision of our understanding of the federal system in operation.
For instance, there has been a dramatic reduction in the (mis)use of Article 356 of the Constitution since the mid-1990s, and central governments have since then hesitated to intervene in the functioning of state governments (Sadanandan, 2012). This reluctance was by and large court induced, thanks to the Bommai Judgement (S. R. Bommai v. Union of India, 1994) which put an end to the arbitrary exercise of the power of the president to dismiss a state government. Here we see that the provision of Article 356 continues to be in the Constitution but has worked in a completely different manner since the mid-1990s, thanks to the clear judicial interpretation in a federal direction. Practices inconsistent with federal principles have thus slowly withered away.
Similarly, we have seen how the group of ministers (GoM) mechanism has been used by federal coalitions for both inter-ministerial coordination, as well as to take care of issues and policies that have a federal dimension (Arora & Kailash, 2018). We have argued that the harmonious centre–state relations witnessed during the National Democratic Alliance-I (NDA-I) and the United Progressive Alliance-I (UPA-I) was to a large extent because of mechanisms like the GoM. Tensions arose when these mechanisms were either not used or categorically abandoned subsequently.
In both cases, we can see that there is no formal change in the institutional structure of relations between the centre and the states, and yet it has not been static, since the working of the federation has undergone change. At the same time, since the processes were not institutionalized, governments have slipped back into the old mode as and when it suited them making it appear as if no different way of approaching the problem had ever existed.
This then brings into play other elements such as the nature of the party system and how political parties are organized at multiple levels. To make sense of the working of federalism, it is clear that we have to move beyond structures and examine the processes more closely. The description of quasifederal is applied to structures, since the processes were yet to unfold. The central question that students of federalism in India need to understand is what explains this particular pattern of change and continuity at the same time.
Making Sense of Continuity and Change
To make sense of the working of federalism and to explain change and continuity, we should examine the interplay of three dimensions of federal regimes: the normative, the institutional or structural and the societal. Federations are not only distinguished from each other but also vary internally overtime in terms of these three dimensions and their interrelationships.
The basic normative principle that underlines any federal organization of power is the federal idea, succinctly stated by Elazar as a combination of ‘self-rule and shared rule’. This essentially involves ‘the linking of individuals, groups, and polities in lasting but limited union in such a way as to provide for the energetic pursuit of common ends while maintaining the respective integrities of all parties’ (Elazar, 1987, p. 5). The federal principle, it is abundantly clear, simultaneously expresses both unity and diversity. While on the one hand, it seeks to promote the advantages of commonality, on the other hand, it fiercely protects individual identities and thereby the diversities that make up the whole.
This essentially means that beyond the fact that there is no one model of federalism the federal idea cannot be reduced to any particular political arrangement and can manifest itself in a wide range of federal systems. Besides the core normative principle of self-rule plus shared rule, different federations could also have other aims and values that are essentially a product of their history, circumstances, cultures and so on. Essentially all federations are inspired by different cultural and societal ideals, and this is what differentiates their dynamics. The normative dimension deals with questions which revolve around issues of power sharing, accommodation, legitimacy, respect for diversity, liberty and the relationship with democracy.
The more popular and commonly understood notion of federalism as a principle of division of powers among different levels of government constitutes our second dimension. This structural or institutional dimension serves as a handy descriptive tool, and it is what principally distinguishes a federation from other forms of political organizations. While we approach critically the traditional formal–legal approach to federalism, the study of institutions remains relevant for understanding the framework in which processes evolve. We propose that we look at institutions in the tradition of new institutionalism, as variables that shape society and its politics. Institutions can be seen as explanatory variables where they not only affect the outcomes but also the articulation and expression of the goals themselves, besides of course the strategies of actors.
Moving beyond the constitutional distribution of power thesis, we should examine how the political ordering in a federation provides goals and opportunities for political activity and also shapes the conduct of political actors. Overtime, actors working within a system of rules and arrangements gradually develop a stake in it and ensure that the existing arrangement gains legitimacy and stability. This new institutional twist gives the traditional institutional dimension a new perspective and may help explain the essential relationship between change and continuity.
The societal element is the third dimension useful to understanding federalism. Federalism according to this perspective is primarily a social phenomenon. While the structural aspect deals with the ‘how’ of the federal idea, the societal dimension deals with the ‘whom’. To use an analogy from biology, the structure is akin to the skeletal system of the body, while the societal is the flesh and blood of the system. William Livingston (1956) argued that the guide to federalism is not in the formal–legal constitutional mechanisms but in social diversity. It is the federal nature of the society, the forces (territorially manifested) in a society, such as ‘economic, social, political, cultural have made the outward forms of federalism necessary’. Federal government is thus ‘a device by which the federal qualities of the society are articulated and protected’.
The institutional arrangement reflects the normative goals and values, as well as the societal demands and exigencies. Change in any federation is thus an interplay among these three dimensions. Institutional structures are constantly tweaked to respond to demands arising from a federal society. Wide-ranging changes in institutional arrangements are rare except in the case of abrupt regime change, especially, given the stakes in the existing regime of different political actors. This underscores the need to carefully study incremental changes and changes in the form of processes.
To conclude, it follows that all federations are constantly in flux, and change is a permanent feature. Furthermore, there is no clear ideal model of federalism as each federation adopts the federal idea to suit its requirements. Consequently, it would be inappropriate to both deny that India is a federation and to categorize it as quasi-federal. We hope that this note serves as a resource and motivates those teaching the topic of federalism to rethink the learning objectives and attempt to approach the subject differently.
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The authors declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The authors received no financial support for the research, authorship and/or publication of this article.