The March towards Centralism

THE BJP’S PUSH TOWARDS A MORE CENTRALISED SYSTEM OF GOVERNANCE CHALLENGES THE POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC AUTONOMY OF STATES, CROWDING OUT REGIONAL AGENDAS

THE SECOND-TERM Modi government has signalled its intention to deepen centralisation within India’s federal system. This agenda, already seen in outline in its first term in office, seeks to empower the central government to coordinate, finance and implement policies even in areas where states have been leading players. Simultaneously, it seeks to bolster the competition between states, by strengthening the idea of India as a single national market, in which businesses, consumers and workers are mobile. These are the central themes of ‘cooperative’ and ‘competitive’ federalism, as promoted by the BJP since coming to office in 2014.

In the second-term Modi government, attempts to create a national market and reduce the barriers to inter-state trade (One Nation, One Tax) and encourage labour mobility (for instance, through the portability of ration cards—One Nation, One Ra

tion Card) have been vigorously promoted alongside the assertion of a more singular form of national citizenship. The abrogation of Kashmir’s autonomy and the reopening of the question of Hindi as a national language have unsettled central tenets of the creative and flexible use of federalism to create a multi-layered form of citizenship, which has helped to accommodate national and regional diversity.

The invocation of One Nation, One Market brings together a number of policies such as those intended to unify agricultural markets, the introduction of the Goods and Services Tax (GST), the promotion of a national grid for states to purchase short-term power requirements and others. The origins of many of these policies predate the BJP’s time in office, but they have been lauded afresh.

In recent months, the government has additionally pledged to introduce a One Nation, One Ration Card scheme, under which beneficiaries would be able to collect their food entitlements under the Public Distribution System from any ration shop. The government has introduced legislation to create a single national river water disputes tribunal. It would also like to move ahead with a proposal to streamline the timetable of elections across all tiers of government (One Nation, One Poll). There is no guarantee that simultaneous elections would produce symmetrical results at the national and state levels. Yet they would help to nationalise political debate and to focus people on national rather than state-specific issues when voting in elections.

The discourse of one nationism, which has been heightened since this year’s Lok Sabha election, builds on another form of political nationalisation seen in Narendra Modi’s first term as prime minister. During that term, the central government relentlessly framed centrally sponsored government schemes as policies of the central government. Furthermore, the push to Aadhaar and to Direct Benefit Transfers heightened the visibility of the central government, rather than state governments, as the disbursing agency for welfare benefits. This centralised credit-claiming broke with a logic that prevailed in the era of political regionalisation between 1989 and 2014. In this earlier period, state governments were more able to share in the credit for centrally sponsored

schemes, which, while designed by the central government, are typically co-financed and implemented by the states.

Many of the attempts to coordinate national policy and break down inter-state barriers to trade and commerce have long histories. Policies such as GST, Aadhaar, the push to a national grid were in train well before the BJP came to power at the Centre in 2014. There are strong rationales behind many efforts at national coordination. For instance, a number of states have been experimenting with ration card portability for some time to allow ration card-holders to shop around and thereby improve the performance of ration shops. Creating a national scheme has the potential to address the rights of migrant labourers who struggle to access their entitlements outside their home states.

However, it is the presentation of these policies together as part of a singular agenda that raises concerns about challenges to India’s federal balance.

Among regional parties, the DMK has been one of the most vocal critics of the implications of some one-nation policies for federalism. For instance, it opposes the one nation, one ration card scheme. DMK president M.K. Stalin explained, “Public distribution is a fundamental right of state governments. The Union food minister does not understand the repercussions that would follow if such a right is infringed upon…. It is to be understood that the Centre, by implementing such initiatives, is trying to establish its dominance.”

The sensitivity about the potential sidelining of state governments in the implementation of the Public Distribution System is likely also informed by the electoral implications of such a move. Data from the National Election Study 2019, conducted by Lokniti-CSDS, provides an insight into the changing ways in which voters attribute responsibility for different policies either to the state or central government. In a forthcoming paper, Rajeshwari Deshpande, K.K. Kailash and I analyse this data and show that voters are still more likely to attribute credit for implementing the PDS to their state governments. By contrast, they have become more likely to attribute credit for schemes such as MGNREGA or Ayushman Bharat to the central government rather than state governments. Thus the creation of a national ration card scheme would potentially challenge the centrality of the states in a policy realm in which they have long been leading players and which has been an important part of the electoral connection between many state governments and their voters.

Simultaneously, the central government is attempting to rebalance the fiscal relationship between the Centre and the states by halting and even reversing the moves towards greater fiscal decentralisation initiated by the previous Finance Commission. This has reinforced the impression that there is a move towards centralisation across the board with important ramifications for both the political and economic autonomy of the states.

The BJP’s approach to federalism builds on central ideological strands within Hindutva that are rooted in a more unitary conception of the Indian nation and thus of its political institutions too. Yet, in its long rise to national power, the BJP accommodated itself to federalism, moving away from the earlier calls by the Bharatiya Jana Sangh in the 1950s to convert India into a fully unitary state. During the later stages of Indira Gandhi’s premiership, the BJP increasingly argued that strong states were needed alongside a strong Centre in order to serve as a bulwark against authoritarianism. In the two decades before 2014, it was at the state level that the BJP developed and expanded its base by forging distinctive state-level political and economic agendas.

The second-term Modi government has been emboldened by the national consolidation of Hindu voters, across caste and class, behind the BJP in the 2019 elections. It is on this basis that it is pushing ahead with a more forceful agenda of one nationism in ways that depart from its approach to federalism in recent decades. This agenda challenges the political and economic autonomy of India’s states, while the new ideas shaping the policy and politics of federalism also have important implications for a multi-layered conception of citizenship.

THERE’S NO GUARANTEE SIMULTANEOUS ELECTIONS WILL PRODUCE SYMMETRICAL RESULTS, BUT THEY COULD NATIONALISE THE POLITICAL DEBATE