Do you think that the Indian federalism needs institutional amendment in order to become democratically federal? Comment (200 Words)
Refer - The Hindu
Enrich the answer from other sources, if the question demands.
IAS Parliament 3 years
KEY POINTS
· Events coinciding with the jubilee of India’s Independence draw attention to the federal structure of India’s Constitution, which is a democratic imperative of multi-cultural India.
· This built-in structural potential for conflict within and among the units, and that between them and the sovereign state, need imaginative federal craftmanship.
Fault lines
· The Parliament session, where the Rajya Sabha Chairperson broke down 2021 unable to conduct proceedings despite the use of marshals;.
· Cross-border police firing by one constituent State against another, inflicting fatalities.
· Such unfamiliar events of federal democracy are recurrent in India, except their present manifest intensity.
· Democratic federalism presupposes institutions to ensure equality between and among the units and the Centre so that they coordinate with each other.
· But India’s federal structure is constitutionally hamstrung by deficits on all these counts, and operationally impaired by the institutional dents.
· India’s federal structure, underpinned on the colonial ‘1935 Act’ which initiated ‘provincial autonomy’, attempted democratising it by: renaming “Provinces” to autonomous “States”;
· The Indian Constitution itself has been amended 105 times in 70 years compared with 27 times in over 250 years in the United States.
· Whenever any party with a massive majority in any state finds itself marginalised in the central legislature, it disrupts proceedings, just as popular issues not reflected in legislative proceedings provoke undemocratic expressions.
Priyanka Rastogi 3 years
Please review.
Thank you.
IAS Parliament 3 years
Try to provide some specific examples. Keep Writing.
Manish 3 years
IAS Parliament 3 years
Good attempt. Keep Writing.
thiruvengadam 3 years
Please refer
IAS Parliament 3 years
Good attempt. Keep Writing.