Water rows, disparities biggest challenge to federalism: PM

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh today said arriving at water-sharing agreements with neighbouring countries is becoming easier than managing river water disputes between states.

Citing water sharing and regional disparities a major challenge to "federalism", Singh said, "It is perhaps no exaggeration to say we have found it easier to manage bilateral agreements with neighbours on river water sharing than domestic disputes between states."

Singh was referring to disputes between Tamil Nadu and Kerala in the south and the equally volatile conflict between Punjab and Haryana. Singh said besides water, sharing of natural resources like hydrocarbons and minerals was posing a major challenge to India's federal structure.

The prime minister was speaking at the inauguration of the fourth international conference on federalism here.

The conference is being attended by delegates from 26 countries, including the president of Comoros and Swiss Confederation, the vice-president of Nigeria and the prime minister of Ethiopia.

Singh said his government continued to have "some difficulty" in eliminating fiscal barriers to inter-state movement of goods and use of natural resources. "This has posed a major challenge in the management of federal polity," he said.

Singh said globalisation had been acting as a hormonising force and he could visualise this making sovereign states irrelevant. "I wonder if the day is not far away when the concept of absolute sovereignty may itself come into question."

This, he said, was likely to happen as the world faced major threats like global warming that transcend national boundaries.

Citing instances from India's tryst with federal policy, Singh said the governments should have a broader vision to accommodate plurality and sub-regional aspirations or else "narrow political considerations" based on regional or sectional loyalties could distort the national vision.

"Sometimes the resolution of problems acquires an excessively political hue, and narrow political considerations, based on regional or sectional loyalties and ideologies, can distort the national vision and sense of wider collective purpose," he said.