Significance of state politics and theoretical framework for the study of state politics.
Answers
The study of provincial politics and of native states in British India was an underdeveloped area. Native states in any case formed a backyard of the British Raj, but politics, especially constitutional and institutional politics in British Indian provinces were also largely eclipsed by the nationalist movement politics. But in retrospect, constitutional reforms introduced in the first half of the 20th century in the British Indian provinces by the imperial government in London were significant early experiments in representative, responsible, and federal governance. Bolder moves in all these respects under the 1950 constitution after India’s independence must be studied in this historical backdrop. Yet there are serious gaps in studies of devolution of powers to the provincial governments under the government of India Act, 1909; this is also true of the studies of diarchy at the provincial level under the Government of India Act, 1919, and of provincial autonomy under the first federal constitution in British India, the Government of India Act, 1935.
Study of State politics in independent India also continues to be a rather under-cultivated field of inquiry. This state of affairs may be explained in terms of a number of reasons. First, in the Nehru era there was a carryover of the nationalist ambience and fervour of the freedom struggle, and for this reasons all that really mattered was the politics at the national level. Congress dominance at the union as well as state levels submerged politics in the states under the overarching national patterns. Popular mass movements for the creation of unilingual states in various parts of the country during the 1950s and 1960s briefly brought state politics to forefront, but once such demands were conceded, the leaders of these movements in Andhra Pradesh, Maharashtra, and Gujarat tended to join or rejoin the Congress Party. And, the overarching one-party dominance was easily restored.
Secondly, the breaches in Congress dominance in the late 1960s and the late 1970s were rather of relatively short spans of time after which Congress dominance was restored. The emergence of states as important arenas of politics turned out to be rather brief episodes. Thus, the Nehru and Indira Gandhi eras and Rajiv Gandhi years, especially the reigns of the first and the third prime ministers (Rajiv Gandhi was the sixth PM), were characterized by a great deal of centralization or "nationalization" of the Indian political system. State politics were then either a subsidiary arena or were appendage to national politics.
Thirdly, the distribution of powers and revenue resources in the Indian constitution is heavily skewed in favour of the centre. This feature greatly reduces the importance and effectiveness of the state governments, and makes them heavily dependent on federal mandatory and discretionary fiscal transfers under the constitution and shared-cost-centrally-sponsored schemes of development under the federal spending power. Notably the union and state jurisdictions are demarcated with at least some exclusive areas reserved for each order of governments, but the constitution does not expressly prohibit the union government to spend its money even in exclusive state concerns.
Fourthly, even though law and order is supposed to be an exclusive state concern, there has been an enormous expansion of the central paramilitary police forces. The 42nd constitutional amendment (1976) has made the deployment of armed forces and central paramilitary forces in aid of civil power in a state an exclusive union competence. Incidence of internal disturbances and terrorist activities by external and indigenous groups has resulted in a great deal of increase in the coercive power of governments and centralization in the political system. These developments tend to overshadow the state governments and subordinate state politics to the imperatives of national politics.
Nevertheless, there has been paradigm shifts in the politics and political economy of India since the 1990s which have enhanced the role and autonomy of state governments, civil society, and the market forces. The arena of state politics has in this process acquired an unprecedented importance. It might very well be said that state politics have really come into their own for the first time in the contemporary history and politics of India. Our study of state politics at this moment is very timely and topical.
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