The Indian federal practice is not merely a theoretical issue. It has emerged as one of the most important vehicle for managing our enormous diversity, enabling expression of the genius of our people and running the nuts and bolts of a modern nation state. We have adapted the federal model to our unique needs. However, pressing challenges remain and three of these need to be mentioned here: The most important challenge is instituting means of conflict resolution among the various vertical and horizontal levels of the state. The Constitution provides, under Article 263, for the setting up of an Inter-State Council. Its mandate though is primarily deliberative, advisory and recommendatory and the experience of its functioning in arbitration and conflict resolution has not been encouraging. The judiciary has tended to refrain from intervening in inter-state and Centre-state disputes, leaving it to the polity to politically mediate and resolve such disputes. This has become a very difficult, if not an impossible task, especially when different political formations are at the helm of the administrative units that are party to the dispute.
Secondly, Indian federalism is increasingly competitive at the economic and fiscal level. Allegations of political considerations influencing the quantum of financial transfers from the Centre to the state governments have been made. Some have even questioned the constitutional division of the powers of taxation. International Grants-in-Aid and competitive seeking of investments by state governments have queered the pitch. The challenge of placing fiscal transfers in a transparent and rule-based framework is pressing. The nature of central intervention in reducing the debt of state governments and correcting developmental imbalances should also be addressed. It is hoped that the 13th Finance Commission would suggest solutions to these grievances. Thirdly, the devolution of functions, finances and functionaries to Panchayati Raj institutions has been, in the words of Minister Mani Shanker Aiyar, “uneven, fitful and subject to reversal”. Fifteen years have passed since the 73rd and 74th Constitutional Amendments and Central and state governments must deliver on their pledges of decentralisation and grassroots empowerment.
There is a pervasive sense of pessimism about the efficacy of institutions. The instrumentalities at the disposal of our legislatures have either been blunted or become dysfunctional. The balance between the executive political and professional components has been disturbed; this is evident in the functioning of the civil service. ‘The myth of authority’, on which the power of the state depends, has been dented and has resulted in what has been called ‘executive under reach’. Even the judiciary has not been immune to allegations of corruption and concern has been expressed about the absence of a mechanism of accountability other than impeachment.
A less scrutinised aspect of the functioning has been the role of political parties in the promotion or otherwise of democratic and federal functioning. Is representative government the same as responsive government? Do practices of governance satisfy the requirements of rule of law? A senior law officer of the government addressed this question and concluded that the Rule of Law in India is under serious threat, that there is widespread popular disillusionment, that there are cancerous developments eating into the fabric of state institutions and that if these trends are not arrested, they are bound to be destructive of the Indian State.
In a similar vein, civil society groups in the country and abroad have observed that ‘the rule of law in India is in a downward spiral’ and that the primary responsibility for it lies with the ‘delayed justice dispensation system’. Surveying the functioning of our democracy, political scientist Pratap Bhanu Mehta notes that “the lines between legality and illegality, order and disorder, state and criminality have come to be increasingly porous”.
The dismal scenario cannot be allowed to dampen the will. In the final analysis, therefore, there is no option but to go back to Gandhiji’s dictum that politics without principle is a sin. Only this can be the basis of good politics; only good citizens can bring it about; only this will retain and sustain the spirit of the Constitution and lead to the fulfilment of its objectives.
Excerpts from an address by Vice-President M Hamid Ansari at the Fifth Krishan Kant Memorial Lecture in New Delhi on July, 28, 2008.
