India’s federalism is in need of a structural reset

The Constitution of India, while federal in structure, was designed with a pronounced centralising bias. Drawing heavily from the Government of India Act, 1935, it concentrated significant authority in New Delhi while assigning a comparatively modest sphere to the States. This architecture was shaped by the circumstances of its birth — the trauma of Partition, the integration of 14 provinces and over 500 princely States, and the pervasive fear that centrifugal forces might threaten national unity. In that climate, centralisation appeared not merely prudent but also indispensable.

Yet, even in those anxious deliberations, there were voices of rare clarity. K. Santhanam cautioned the Constituent Assembly that the Union’s strength lies not in the indiscriminate accumulation of functions, but in the disciplined refusal of responsibilities that do not properly belong at the national level. “It is in this positive as well as negative delimitation of powers that a real federal system rests…,” he observed.

In that single formulation lay two enduring principles: first, authority is most effective when exercised closest to knowledge and accountability; and second, excessive centralisation breeds fragility by overburdening a single authority with tasks that it cannot efficiently discharge. A government that attempts to supervise everything — from space exploration to rural sanitation — may expand in reach but this inevitably diminishes its effectiveness.

Reinforcement of dominance

History demonstrates that power assumed in the name of necessity rarely retreats when necessity fades. In the decades that followed, centralising tendencies were reinforced by the dominance of a single national party at the Union and State levels, fostering a “high command” culture that attenuated the autonomy of State leadership. Later, the emergence of coalition governments at the Union and the rise of regional parties in States led to a more balanced federal order without endangering unity. One may reasonably surmise that had today’s politically mature and linguistically consolidated States existed in 1950, the constitutional design might have evolved along a more decentralised path.

Just as an individual cannot remain perpetually captive to the neuroses of childhood, so too a nation cannot forever labour under the anxieties of its formative years. India’s unity is no longer fragile, and the idea of India now rests on firm and enduring foundations. Yet, 76 years later, constitutional practice continues to reflect the reflexes of the late 1940s. Centralisation, once defended as a necessity, has hardened into habit.

Through successive constitutional amendments, expansive Union legislation in Concurrent List subjects, conditional Finance Commission transfers, and centrally sponsored schemes with rigid templates, the balance of power has tilted even further toward the Union. Large ministries exist in New Delhi that duplicate State functions and often attempt to steer State priorities through micromanagement and procedural oversight. In an inversion of democratic hierarchy, the Union Executive is attempting to override plenary State laws in Concurrent List subjects through subordinate legislation.

It is a principle

Such a drift sits uneasily with constitutional doctrine. In S.R. Bommai vs Union of India (1994), the Supreme Court of India declared federalism part of the Constitution’s Basic Structure and affirmed that States are not mere appendages of the Centre but are supreme within their allotted spheres. Federalism, the Court held, is a principle rooted in India’s history and diversity; not a matter of administrative convenience. Despite this judicial affirmation, State autonomy has continued to erode — through legislative expansion, executive overreach, and certain other judicial interpretations that privilege uniform national solutions over contextual diversity.

Underlying this trajectory is a persistent illusion — that the Union becomes stronger by diminishing the States. In truth, the Union and the States are not competitors in a zero-sum contest; they are partners in a shared constitutional enterprise. India’s size and heterogeneity render centralised policy design inherently limited. No authority in New Delhi, however enlightened, can tailor policy with equal sensitivity to every linguistic region, agricultural ecology, industrial cluster, or labour market.

Decentralisation addresses this limitation by enabling parallel experimentation. States can design and test policies at manageable scale, contain failures without national disruption, and allow successful innovations to diffuse horizontally or be adopted nationally. Many of India’s most effective programmes followed precisely this path. Tamil Nadu’s noon meal scheme, Kerala’s achievements in public health and literacy, and Maharashtra’s employment guarantee initiative all began as State experiments before informing national policy. Over-centralisation suppresses the very diversity of strategies from which innovation and discovery arise.

Centralists often argue that States lack administrative or technical capacity and, therefore, require Union intervention. Yet, such intervention stunts the very capacity it claims to remedy, creating a self-perpetuating cycle of dependence. Parents who do not entrust their children with responsibility, and leaders who refuse to delegate authority, inevitably breed dependence. Governments are no exception.

Capacity arises from responsibility, accountability, and the freedom to make, and correct, mistakes. To suggest that India’s States — many comparable in scale to sovereign nations — are inherently incapable and must, therefore, be subjected to intrusive central control is incompatible with national self-respect.

Centralisation might still be defended if it had delivered superior outcomes. But by comparison with decentralised federations, global benchmarks, or India’s own aspirations, the record is unpersuasive. The centralised model has struggled to deliver universal access, sustained quality, genuine equity, or global competitiveness. Instead, it has produced regulatory complexity, chronic underfunding as resources are stretched across expanding mandates, blurred accountability, and gradual erosion of State capacity.

Tamil Nadu recognised these dangers at an early stage. In 1967, C.N. Annadurai observed that the Union must indeed be strong enough to maintain the sovereignty and integrity of India. But that did not mean that it should assume control over every subject, such as health or education, which bore no direct nexus to national defence.

His successor, Kalaignar M. Karunanidhi, advanced this philosophy through the maxim, “Autonomy to the States, Federalism at the Centre”, and in 1969 established the first independent Committee on Union-State Relations under Justice P.V. Rajamannar. The Committee’s 1971 Report became a landmark in India’s federal debate. Later national commissions — the Sarkaria (1983-88) and Punchhi (2007-10) — acknowledged the need for rebalancing, though they stopped short of recommending fundamental structural reform.

Time to right-size

India now stands at a constitutional juncture that calls for recalibration rather than complacency. The objective is not to weaken the Union but to right-size it, allowing it to concentrate on genuinely national responsibilities while restoring to States the autonomy essential for effective governance. Such recalibration would not diminish national unity; it would deepen it by aligning authority with responsibility.

In this spirit, the Government of Tamil Nadu constituted a High-Level Committee on Union-State Relations in April 2025 under the chairmanship of Justice Kurian Joseph (a retired Supreme Court judge), with K. Ashok Vardhan Shetty (a retired IAS officer) and Dr. M. Naganathan (former State Planning Commission vice-chairman) as members. Thought of as a non-partisan exercise, the Committee undertook a comprehensive review of contemporary federal challenges.

Part I of its Report, which was submitted on February 16, 2026, addresses issues that range from the role of Governors and language policy to delimitation, elections, education, health, and Goods and Services Tax.

The Government of Tamil Nadu presents this report to the public in the hope that it will stimulate informed debate, restore balance to the Union-State relationship, and contribute to a constitutional settlement in which the Union is strong because it is focused, and the States are strong because they are trusted.

M.K. Stalin is the Chief Minister of Tamil Nadu