A Centralising Constitution Meets a More Differentiated India

India’s federal question begins with a paradox.

The Constitution was designed to give the Union enough authority to hold together an extraordinarily diverse country. The country that emerged from that constitutional settlement, however, did not remain institutionally static. Over the decades, States developed stronger political identities, more differentiated economies and greater administrative capacity.

That creates a problem that cannot be reduced to a simple Centre-versus-State contest.

The deeper question is whether a constitutional arrangement shaped by the conditions of the late 1940s can operate in exactly the same way when the political and economic capabilities of its constituent States have changed.

THE UNION WAS MADE STRONG BY DESIGN

India did not enter independence as a settled federation.

Partition had demonstrated the destructive potential of political fragmentation. The integration of 14 provinces and more than 500 princely States created an enormous task of political consolidation. There were also fears that centrifugal forces could threaten the survival of the new Union.

In that environment, a weak Centre was difficult to imagine.

The Constitution therefore gave the Union substantial authority. India was described as a “Union of States”, a formulation B.R. Ambedkar deliberately preferred to emphasise the indestructibility of the Union. Legislative powers were divided through the Seventh Schedule, but the Union was given residuary legislative powers. Articles 245 and 246 establish the distribution of legislative competence between Parliament and the States, while the Seventh Schedule sets out the Union, State and Concurrent Lists. Emergency provisions created exceptional avenues for central intervention. Article 356 allowed the Union to assume the functions of a State government when constitutional machinery was considered to have failed.

The constitutional settlement therefore reflected a clear priority: national consolidation was considered essential before regional autonomy could operate within a stable Union.

The Constituent Assembly debates also show that this was a conscious constitutional choice: the proposed federation was discussed in terms of maintaining a strong Centre while retaining constitutionally defined powers for the units.

But the Constitution did not simply create a unitary state. States remained constitutionally recognised governments with defined legislative spheres. Federalism was therefore embedded in a structure that combined shared rule with significant Union authority.

The result was an unusual constitutional arrangement: federal in its distribution of governmental authority, but deliberately tilted towards the Union.

The later federal debate is sometimes framed as though centralisation itself was an aberration. It was not. Centralisation was part of the original design.

The harder question is what happens when the circumstances that justified that design change.

WHEN NECESSITY BECOMES INSTITUTIONAL HABIT

A power created for exceptional circumstances does not automatically disappear when those circumstances recede.

India’s subsequent political history reinforced the Union’s position in ways that went beyond the constitutional text. The dominance of a single national party across the Union and many States created a political system in which constitutional federalism and party organisation often pointed in the same direction.

Later, the growth of regional parties and coalition governments altered that equilibrium. The bargaining position of States became more visible, and the relationship between the Union and States became more negotiated.

But the underlying constitutional architecture remained.

The tension became particularly visible around Article 356. The provision was intended as an exceptional mechanism for dealing with a breakdown of constitutional machinery. Yet it was repeatedly used to remove elected State governments. B.R. Ambedkar had hoped that Articles 355 and 356 would remain effectively dormant. Their historical use demonstrated how quickly an exceptional constitutional power could become part of ordinary political practice.

The Supreme Court’s judgment in S.R. Bommai v. Union of India in 1994 marked an important constitutional correction. The Court held that federalism forms part of the Constitution’s Basic Structure and that the use of Article 356 was subject to judicial review. President’s Rule could not simply become an instrument for political intervention.

The significance of Bommai was larger than Article 356. It established that the Constitution’s federal character was not merely an administrative arrangement that could be adjusted whenever political convenience demanded it.

Federalism had become a constitutional principle.

Yet that did not eliminate the underlying tension. It clarified a boundary without eliminating the structural imbalance that had produced the debate.

INDIA CHANGED FASTER THAN ITS FEDERAL ARCHITECTURE

The most important transformation in Indian federalism may therefore have occurred outside the constitutional text.

The States themselves changed.

India became increasingly differentiated across language, politics, economic structure, urbanisation, human development and administrative capacity. Regional political identities became entrenched rather than temporary obstacles to national integration. Economic liberalisation also created greater space for States to compete for investment, infrastructure and productive activity.

The federal question consequently acquired a different character.

In the early years, regional differentiation could be viewed primarily through the question of whether it might weaken national unity. Over time, some of those differences became sources of institutional and economic capability.

Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu and Karnataka competing for major technology investments illustrates this shift. States increasingly engage investors directly, compete through infrastructure, policy stability, skilled labour and administrative capacity, and learn from one another.

This is competitive federalism. NITI Aayog describes competitive federalism in terms of improving the performance of States and Union Territories through benchmarking, transparent rankings and comparison across jurisdictions. That gives an institutional expression to a broader change: States are increasingly treated not only as implementing units but also as sites of policy performance and experimentation.

A strong Union can coordinate national priorities. But a State that has developed distinctive capabilities may also possess knowledge, incentives and institutional capacity that a uniform national framework cannot replicate.

Federalism therefore becomes less about dividing a fixed set of responsibilities and more about deciding which level of government is best placed to exercise a particular power.

That is the question K. Santhanam raised during the Constituent Assembly debates: a real federal system depends not only on determining what the Union can do, but also on determining what it should leave to other levels of government.

THE PROBLEM WITH UNIFORMITY

India’s diversity becomes more consequential when it is treated not merely as a social fact but as a constitutional variable.

Uniformity has obvious advantages. Common standards can reduce administrative fragmentation. National programmes can address problems that cross State boundaries. Economic integration requires rules that cannot be redesigned independently by every State. National security, inter-State coordination and certain forms of redistribution necessarily require Union capacity.

But a common national objective does not always require an identical method of achieving it.

Coordination allows different governments to pursue the same broad objective while adapting implementation to local circumstances. Uniformity, by contrast, reduces that room for adaptation by applying substantially the same institutional approach across different conditions.

A differentiated country may therefore need to distinguish more carefully between areas where national consistency is essential and areas where variation can improve outcomes.

The constitutional debate around federalism is therefore not simply a struggle between national integration and regional autonomy. Both are constitutional objectives. The difficult question is how to reconcile them.

India’s Constitution already contains elements of this reconciliation. The Seventh Schedule distributes legislative competence. Constitutional amendments affecting State powers require special procedures. States participate collectively in institutions such as the GST Council. Federalism has also acquired Basic Structure protection through judicial doctrine.

At the same time, the Union retains substantial instruments through legislation, fiscal transfers, centrally sponsored schemes and emergency powers.

The architecture therefore contains both impulses. It is neither purely centralised nor purely decentralised. The friction arises when one impulse becomes dominant across too many domains.

DIFFERENTIATION DOES NOT MEAN DISINTEGRATION

A stronger State does not necessarily mean a weaker Union.

Nor does a stronger Union automatically produce a stronger India.

The experience of economic competition between States illustrates the first point. States can pursue different policies while participating in a common national market. One State’s success can create pressure for another to improve. Different administrative models can coexist and generate policy learning.

The experience of Article 356 illustrates the second. A constitutional power intended to protect the constitutional order can itself become destabilising when used without sufficient restraint. The Supreme Court’s reasoning in S.R. Bommai placed judicial limits on that power and treated federalism as a constitutional principle.

The objective, therefore, cannot simply be to maximise power at either level.

It is to ensure that responsibility and institutional capacity are aligned as closely as possible.

That is why the history of Centre-State relations has repeatedly produced attempts to recalibrate the balance. The Rajamannar Committee, the Sarkaria Commission and the Punchhi Commission all represent different moments in a continuing effort to examine how Union and State powers should interact.

Their existence shows that federalism is not a constitutional question settled once in 1950. It is an operating relationship that has to adapt as the political economy of the country changes.

THE NEW FEDERAL QUESTION

The contemporary debate therefore moves beyond the old question of whether India is federal or unitary.

It asks something more difficult:

How much uniformity does a diverse country actually need?

Consider the pressures now visible around issues such as electoral synchronisation, education, fiscal transfers and State-level economic policy.

Each involves a legitimate national concern.

But each also encounters a country in which States differ substantially in demographic trajectories, economic structures, administrative capacity and political priorities.

The problem is not that these differences exist. It arises when a system designed to manage difference begins to treat difference itself as an obstacle to be standardised away.

This is particularly important for a Constitution whose original centralising logic was shaped by the need to prevent fragmentation. The success of that project has changed the context in which the logic operates.

India today is not the India of 1950.

The States are no longer simply administrative units through which national integration must be implemented. They are political governments, economic actors and institutional centres in their own right.

That does not make the original constitutional design obsolete. It makes its internal balance more consequential.

FROM CENTRALISATION TO CALIBRATION

The most useful way to understand India’s federal evolution is therefore not as a movement from centralisation to decentralisation.

It is a movement from integration through centralisation towards integration through differentiated capacity.

The Union still has functions that States cannot perform effectively on their own. National security, macroeconomic coordination, inter-State infrastructure and redistribution require institutions capable of operating across the country.

But the existence of national objectives does not automatically determine the institutional level at which every policy should be designed or implemented.

That is where India’s federal debate is heading.

The Constitution created a strong Union because a fragmented India first needed to become an integrated one. The decades since have produced a different challenge: an integrated India that has become increasingly differentiated.

The tension is therefore no longer simply between unity and diversity.

It is between a constitutional architecture built to secure unity and a political economy that increasingly depends on differentiated State capacity.

That tension does not demand the abandonment of central authority.

It demands a more precise question about where central authority adds value and where State-level capacity can produce better institutional outcomes.