Model answer & approach
- The recent developments in Indian Politics has not eroded the true spirit of federalism in India. Critically examine this statement with the help of appropriate examples. (Answer in 250 words)
Introduction
The statement is half right. India's constitutional federalism has been strengthened by the courts and by coalition arithmetic, while its fiscal and executive federalism has drifted steadily towards the Union.
Body
1. The judicial defence has held: S. R. Bommai in 1994 made federalism part of the basic structure and Article 356 justiciable, and President's Rule has been rare since. Mineral Area Development Authority in 2024 upheld States' power to tax mineral rights, and the Court has held Governors cannot sit indefinitely on Bills.
2. Cooperative institutions do exist: The GST Council under Article 279A is a genuinely joint forum, the Fourteenth Finance Commission raised devolution from thirty-two to forty-two per cent, and pandemic management ran through Centre-State coordination.
3. Political federalism is alive: Regional parties govern many States and the Union's majority rests on allies: federalism enforced by arithmetic where law is silent.
4. But fiscal space has narrowed: Cesses and surcharges sit outside the divisible pool, so actual devolution runs well below forty-one per cent. GST removed the States' independent tax handle, compensation ended in 2022, and centrally sponsored schemes dictate design and branding.
5. And executive federalism has frayed: Governors withholding assent in Tamil Nadu, Kerala and Punjab; central agencies operating in States that withdrew general consent; and the reduction of a State to two Union Territories in 2019 without its own legislature's concurrence.
Conclusion
Federalism's legal spirit is intact; its working spirit is not, so the statement cannot stand as put. Ambedkar's Constitution is federal in structure and unitary in temperament, and recent practice has leaned on the temperament.
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