Why has Federalism succeeded in India? What policies adopted by India has ensured this success?
Reason for success of federalism in India are:
- Clearly laid out constitutional provisions providing a three-fold distribution of powers in the three lists - union list, state list and concurrent list between the union government and state governments.
- The nature of democratic politics in our country which ensures that the spirit of federalism, respect for diversity and desire for living together became a shared ideal.
- The creation of linguistic states. Boundaries of several old states of India were changed in order to create new states. This was done to ensure that people who spoke the same language lived in the same state. Later some states were created to recognise differences based on culture, ethnicity or geography.
For example : Nagaland, Uttarakhand, Jharkhand, Telangana etc. - Restricting centre-state relations. The constitutional arrangements for sharing power work depending on how the ruling parties and leaders follow these arrangements. For a long time, the same party ruled both at the centre and in most of states. Post- 1990 saw the rise of regional parties. Since no single party got a clear majority in the Lok Sabha, the national parties had to enter into an alliance which led to a new culture of power sharing and respect for autonomy of state governments.