The diversity of views in the scholarly works referred to above could, of course, be illustrated by quoting other eminent social scientists who would disagree with Ajuha and Varshney, and would not, in their own assessments of the India’s achievements, confine themselves to the criteria of durability of India’s territorial integrity and the recent trends towards distribution of political power. 
An appraisal of the federal system of India as a ‘model’ for emulation must, first of all, be placed in the context of the extraordinary territorial and demographic dimensions of India which entail, among other things, a degree of “remoteness” of its people from the institutions of the central government which one does not find in small countries with representative forms of government. The size of a national entity is, of course, not the only determinant of the “distance” between the government and the governed. Nevertheless, the significance of the size factor from present perspectives which has tended to be overlooked could be illustrated with reference to the fact that Sri Lanka (with a population equivalent to about 2% of that of India), if it was a component of the Indian union, would have been represented in the 545-member ‘Lok Sabha’ by only about nine members with, say, the entire Colombo District or the Central Province constituting single-member constituencies. It could thus be argued that, given the enormity of the Indian “scale”, sub-national institutions of government are far more vital in that country to provide even a semblance of popular participation in the direction and control of the daily lives of the people in that country than they are in tiny and spatially compact nation states like Sri Lanka.Another relevant but frequently overlooked consideration is that the evolution of the present geographical mosaic and the power-sharing arrangements of the Indian federation represents a long drawn-out and tortuous process, the initial impulses of which could be traced back to the ‘Swaraj’ Movement. Even more importantly, since independence, this evolutionary process has been regulated by a powerful government at the Centre, which, though never entirely unresponsive to the more important sub-national electoral pressures, has always had both the capacity to retrace its steps when costly blunders were made as well as the strength to overwhelm (through recourse to military power when necessary) any serious resistance to its fiat, with hardly any external challenge barring the past Chinese links of the Naga rebels and the allegedly continuing Pakistani links of the Kashmiri rebels. Unlike in many other federations India’s federal arrangement has been, in that sense, the product not only of trial and error but also of compulsion from the Centre and, at least occasionally, involuntary obedience from the States.
There is much controversy among researchers on the relative success of devolution (and, more generally, of the overall complex of consociational power-sharing arrangements) in India from the viewpoint of their expected objectives of democratisation and national consolidation. The best illustrations of this are provided by the mutually irreconcilable assertions on the related issues found in abundance even in some of the most authoritative commentaries on India such as those by Arend Lijphart (1977& 1996), Myron Weiner (1978, 1979, 1996), Donald Horowitz (1985), Rajni Kothari (1989), Paul Brass (1990, 1991, 1994, 2002), Atul Kohli (1990), Christophe Jaffrelot (1993), Dipanker Gupta (1997), Dreze & Sen (2002) and Ashutosh Varshney (2004). Most scholars evaluating India’s record tend to take a stance of qualified commendation rather than outright condemnation. Moreover, the hazy consensus one could discern on the positive contribution of territorial power-sharing towards preserving the nation’s territorial integrity and towards diffusion of the destabilising effects of language-based rivalries is not entirely free of discordant nuances.
The following passage is an extract from an article by two reputed Indian scholars (Ajuha & Varshney, 2005: 242) which could be considered typical of the “favourable” end of the spectrum of conclusions on the performance of the Indian system.
“More than anything else, two enduring continuities – geographical and constitutional – sum up the overall success of Indian federalism. Since independence, India has not experienced secession, though it has witnessed a few secessionist movements here and there; there has been no replay of the terrible partition of 1947. India’s constitutional continuity also calls for attention. The federal features of India’s constitution debated over several years in the constituent assembly and promulgated in 1950, remain intact. The constitution has gone through several amendments, but no amendment has altered the basic outlines of centre-state relations permanently in favour of the centre. Indeed, the current situation is the obverse of a centralizer’s dream. If anything, the polity is becoming more and more decentralised”. (emphasis added)
The diversity of views in the scholarly works referred to above could, of course, be illustrated by quoting other eminent social scientists who would disagree with Ajuha and Varshney, and would not, in their own assessments of the India’s achievements, confine themselves to the criteria of durability of India’s territorial integrity and the recent trends towards distribution of political power. For instance, through a more broad-based evaluation, Paul Brass (2002: 3026) has arrived at the conclusion encapsulated in the following quotation:
“So implicated were political scientists in the developmentalist goals of elites that they failed to provide an independent basis for critique that has become increasingly necessary as it has become more and more obvious that those goals have failed to transform India into the modern, industrial state of its elite’s imaginings, have failed at the same time to provide for the basic minimum needs of its people, have failed to eliminate the causes for unrest and have instead drawn the country into the ugly morass of state terrorism in the north-east, Punjab and Kashmir, and have failed to provide a basis for accommodation between the Hindu and Muslim populations of the country”. (emphasis added)
That certain Indian critics of scholarly repute have also been in agreement with Paul Brass’ verdict is illustrated by the passage cited below (extracted from Dua, 1994: 20):
“India seems to be at war with itself. This is driven home with brutal evidence in Punjab, Kashmir, Assam, and in the north-eastern states of Nagaland, Manipur, Mizoram and Tripura. Marked by a variety of militant movements, these states have become virtually ungovernable. In most other parts of the country, caste and communal violence, aided and abetted by mafia leaders, seems to have become the normal way of life. The politics of Mandal and Mandir, of Yadavs and Thakurs, of Jats and Rajputs, of Hindus, Muslims and Sikhs, of Senas (or military fronts) and Saffrons, of polarising marches (Bharat Yatras, Ekta Yatras) have drawn the country into the edge of collapse”.
Nevertheless, there could obviously be no charge of serious distortion against the sketch by Ajuha and Varshney. One could, for example, accept the claim that the post-independence secessionist movements witnessed “here and there” have not been as convulsive as the partition of 1947 (which was not exactly a secessionist movement - no matter), in the same way that one could accept the assertion regarding the absence of changes in the basic outlines of Centre-State relations as designed in the Indian constitution of 1950. The claimed trend of increasing decentralisation could also be considered valid especially in the light of the weakening of the nation-wide grip of the Indian Congress that existed in the Jawaharlal-Indira era, and the increasing propensity in the recent decades for coalitions that include State-based parties to hold the reins of office at the Centre. We can certainly share in the satisfaction expressed by the authors of the above passage regarding the fact that the Indian federation “has worked reasonably well”.
Such a verdict, however, does not help in resolving the question of whether it is devolution that explains the success. What about the sporadic secessionist movements which the authors have referred to but trivialised. And, was it devolution that prevented their culmination in secession? How effective and how genuine has territorial power-sharing really been, especially from the viewpoint of both the numerically largest as well as some of the smallest minority communities of India? Has devolution or other forms of power-sharing brought about greater ethnic harmony? These, surely, are the issues that must be pursued from the perspective of our present concerns.
To be continued…........
Link for the previous parts
PART 01
PART 02
The writer is Professor Emeritus, University of Peradeniya .If you have any comments on this serious of article please send editorazad@gmail.com. We are ready publishing your comments on this site too.
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