Does the actual working of Indian federalism conform to the centralizing tendencies in Indian polity? Give reasons for your answer

Centralising design in the text

• K. C. Wheare called India quasi-federal. Granville Austin called the practice cooperative, but the Union remains the heavier partner.
• Article 3 allows Parliament to form and alter States; the Union is not a compact of indestructible States.
• The Union List, residuary power in Article 248, All-India Services, and Articles 256, 257, 355, 356, and 365 give the Centre tools of direction, protection, and takeover.
• Emergency provisions and a unified integrated judiciary pull interpretation toward national power.
• Single citizenship and a national election commission are nation-making centralisms that Austin’s cornerstone required after Partition.

Actual working that conforms to that design

• President’s Rule was used frequently until S. R. Bommai v. Union of India (1994) subjected it to judicial review and to the floor-test principle.
• Centrally sponsored schemes, the Planning Commission’s old Plan grants, and now Union indices and agencies still steer State policy in List II subjects such as health and urban development.
• Governors, the Lieutenant Governor in Union Territories, and central investigating agencies are recurrent sites of Union weight.
• GST created a shared tax but also a Council in which the Union’s voice and the need for a common rate structure limit State tax autonomy.
• During national crises, as in internal emergency 1975–77, the polity worked as a unitary command.

Counter-working that does not fully conform

• After 1989, regional parties and coalition governments federalised the Union cabinet itself, which Dahl would read as contestation inside the Centre.
• The Finance Commission’s rise after Plan grants ended, and the Fourteenth Finance Commission’s higher tax devolution, moved money by formula rather than by Plan bargaining.
• Linguistic States, Article 370’s long special status until 2019, and the 73rd and 74th Amendments created other power centres.
• Bommai, Kesavananda, and inter-state water benches are judicial federalism, not only Union will.
• Ambedkar had said the Constitution can be both federal and unitary as conditions require; the question is whether conditions or convenience drive the shift.

Reasoned answer

• Yes, actual working still conforms in large part to centralising tendencies, because the text invites them and because Union politics uses them.
• No, not as a completed unitarism, because States, parties, and courts regularly force bargains.
• The accurate political-science statement is a strong-Centre federation whose centralising tilt is structural, and whose federal practice is cyclical with the party system.