Description
The idea of a distinctly Indian style of federalism has been much celebrated. While a semblance of its inclusive federal nature has always lingered, an inherent unitary tendency has only increased with time. Interestingly, this federal structure would ensure India sustaining itself as the vibrant secular pluralist democracy that it was conceived to be and would also embed and nourish the characteristic of ‘unity in diversity’ as the bedrock of its internal security. But, what has actually transpired has been an ever tightening noose from the centre which has ensured that even the modest tag of ‘quasi-federal’ becomes a bit too far-fetched. The Indian state, rather ironically has been plagued by a ‘national insecurity’ which while not unfamiliar to post-colonial states has been the starkest in India, more so because of its great potential of ‘rising’ as a pluralist democracy with a federal structure that takes all its diverse peoples along – a great but far from fulfilled potential. India’s federalism was always going to be an India-sized challenge, yet increasingly, the failures and the imaginations of ‘what could have been’ become starker. India’s federalism is hardly very inclusive, but with an ever-strengthening centre on a rampage undermining the autonomy of constituent states and the decentralisation of power therein, the exclusionary nature becomes more manifest. All this inevitably prompts the question of whether the emancipatory agenda of its constitution has been fulfilled and whether at all it has ever been inclusive enough, great proclamations notwithstanding, and that is where the margins speak for themselves.
