Goodbye to cooperative federalism?

The spat over the Delhi Metro fare hike shows how the Centre and the Delhi government refused to deal with the central issues of governance

An aspect that got ignored during the controversy over last week’s steep increase in Delhi Metro rail fares was the abject manner in which principles of cooperative federalism were brazenly undermined. Even as ministers of the Centre and the Delhi government were engaged in a public spat over the question of a 25-100 per cent fare increase in two phases, it became clear that they were only trying to score political points against each other. Neither of them addressed the central issues underlying what was certainly a steep increase in the fares of Delhi Metro that transported over three million