A comprehensive report evaluating ten years of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government’s record on federalism, an essential pillar of India’s Constitution and society, finds that despite states being the topmost entity in the Constitution in Article 1, which defines India as a Union of States, rather than a Unitary State, the last decade has witnessed a precipitous decline. https://thewire.in/politics/tenyearrecord-cooperative-federalism-has-just-been-a-slogan-continuously-undermined-after-2014
Bahutva Karnataka is a civil society organisation based in Karnataka focused on enforcing accountability of elected representatives. They note that states “are being reduced to administrative units that are implementation agencies for Union Government Programmes and Policies”. So, their existence “as independent entities, with distinct languages, cultures, histories, and indeed achievements, is under grave threat by the encroaching power of the Union Government”.
26/04
2024