Cooperative Federalism in India: Myth or Reality?
Introduction:
The Indian Federal system is known for its unique nature among other systems across the world.
If questioned on this type of system among our people, the answers the same would never be constant and would oscillate between good and bad.
The concept of cooperative federalism becomes more important in the near future,
both for the existence of federalism in India and to sustain it as a democratic country with powers in the hands of the people.
This essay will analyze the concept of cooperative federalism in prominent areas such as legislative, administrative and finance in order to ascertain the existing scope of cooperative federalism in India.
With One Nation; One election being given importance and with political systems being centralized with no importance to state government these days,
it is very important, in a country like India to secure the nature of cooperative federalism to uphold the Indian Constitution, which is the Supreme Law of the land.
What is Cooperative Federalism?
Before looking into whether cooperative federalism is still a myth or has been serving its best, it is important to define the nature of cooperative federalism.
Having known that there will be two-tier governments in a federal country, it is relevant to know that in cooperative federalism,
the centre and state governments carve up a horizontal relationship with each other. To be precise, they cooperate together, keeping the larger public interest in mind. This togetherness can be witnessed in areas like formulating and executing political policy measures across the country.
This need for cooperation has also been enlisted in the 7th seventh schedule of the constitution,
where three lists have been provided to states and centres to legislate and execute on the same.
Cooperative Federalism and Administrative relations:
It is a fact that CBI was constituted by a pre-independent government through the Delhi Special Police establishment act to investigate different crimes,
such as corruption, and economic and special crimes, which included the state and central government officers and other bodies.
As it is established through the Ministry of Personnel, Pension and Public grievances,
it directly falls under the control of the Prime Minister’s Office.
The main issue is that through this power given by the Central government, CBI, with the central vigilance commission,
would investigate even state crimes as per the direction of the Union government. At times, the Center would empower CBI to curtail dissent also.
Even though it interferes with the investigation of crimes of the state government with its permission,
the powers of the State police are diminishing, and it is against the quasi-federal structure of the Indian constitution relating to criminal investigations. Recently, the Maharashtra state government withdrew its consent for any CBI action or investigation in state matters.
This would be the best example of the result of such diversion from the democratic agenda.
It has been in the news for several decades that CBI-a non-statutory body, should not interfere in matters of state, especially with respect to investigation matters. This completely takes away the state police from their power to investigate under Cr.P.C.
Politics, Finance and Cooperative federalism
Finance minister Mrs Nirmala Sitaraman has notified that there is a need for more coordination between states and the centre in the case of the financial aspect.
But, earlier this year, states like Rajasthan, Tamil Nadu and Odisha pointed out the reduction of funds to each government.
The central government stated that this is because of the existing economic situation in this fiscal year.
For example, the Tamil Nadu budget pointed out that the union has reduced their share in central taxes by around Rupees Eight Thousand crores.
Stating this as unprecedented, the centre stated that the same could be coped up by borrowing 5000 crores.
It can be noted that Tamil Nadu has been governed by the ADMK government, where BJP has an alliance. Rajasthan, on the other hand, where the Congress-led government, also suffers the same issues as Tamil Nadu.
The question is whether the political ideology or the alliance also decides the fate of people’s funds.
The answer should be yes, because of the recent past examples.
It can be inferred from this that politics has also influenced cooperative federalism between the centre and the state.
This question should be proactively reacted to, and the same should be looked up for discussion.
There should be more transparency in cooperative federalism in order to promote the welfare of the people.
Politics should never control any central government to hold back the welfare schemes of states such as AIIMS in Tamil Nadu, which was still criticized heavily.
Conclusion/ Suggestions:
Above mentioned problems in the recent past show a downward curve relationship between the centre and states.
If such situations continue, both the states and federal supremacy of India will turn around in the near future.
One of the few solutions is to give a strong opposition in the centre to protect democracy.
Many leaders have felt that, in a country like India, there should be state autonomy at the regional level.
Secondly, the states should be strong enough to bargain their shares from the centre.
They should also take part in the policy-making process.
The states with higher elected MPs should be more responsible, and they are the only hope for the state people’s concern at the central level.
In that case, it can be concluded from the above facts that cooperative federalism should be carved a little sharper than exists now,
and both governments should focus on the welfare of the people and not the political aspect of it.
[1] https://www.drishtiias.com/pdf/cooperative-and-competitive-federalism-in-india.pdf, Page 1.
[2] https://www.thestatesman.com/opinion/cbi-in-a-democracy-1502737915.html [Accessed on 20th May, 2022]
[3] https://theprint.in/opinion/maharashtra-govt-vs-cbi-the-law-and-politics-behind-clash-why-it-is-not-about-trps/529384/ [Accessed on 20th May 2022]
[4] Pradeep Mehta, “Current state of Co-operative federalism in India”, (March 2021), https://www.livemint.com/opinion/online-views/the-current-state-of-cooperative-federalism-in-india-11583339615557.html [Accessed on 15th May 2022]
[5] Pradeep Mehta, “Current state of Co-operative federalism in India”, (March 2021), https://www.livemint.com/opinion/online-views/the-current-state-of-cooperative-federalism-in-india-11583339615557.html [Accessed on 15th May 2022]
