New politics: States have the power, not Delhi

It’s time to brace for the new political reality. Power would soon stop flowing from New Delhi. As the trend suggests, states sooner rather than later would remote control central politics and dictate terms on a range of issues, policy or otherwise. There’s nothing really to be judgemental about here — democracies are not static entities. They are expected to evolve in sync with changing dynamics of politics and throw up new arrangements. Federal in form but unitary in spirit, that’s the textbook description of the Indian Constitution. However, in the 61 years since the the Constitution was adopted it has been heavily unitary in nature, with the Centre having a disproportionately big say on the affairs of the country compared to the states. The unstable situation then called for such an arrangement. The continuing dominance of one party — Congress — through decades made the unitary bias strong. The political reality has been changing since the late 90s. Both the national parties, the Congress and the BJP, are in existential crisis. The footprint of the former in the national politics is shrinking, while that of the latter is stubbornly refusing to grow bigger. The space vacated by them has come to be occupied by players from the states. Since neither party is in a position to form a government on its own at the Centre, they have to depend heavily on regional satraps. Regional satraps such as AIADMK’s J Jayalalithaa, Trinamool’s Mamata Banerjee, BSP’s Mayawati, Janata Dal(U)’s Nitish Kumar and BJD’s Naveen Patnaik can easily rock the boat in the alliances they are in. The Congress has virtually no leadership in states. For the BJP the problem is the opposite. The quality of leadership in the party at the state level is far superior to that at the national level. If Narendra Modi, Gujarat’s Chief Minister, decides to put his foot down on any particular issue, the central leadership would not find it easy to hush him up. 

There’s nothing wrong or right about regional satraps getting powerful. Particularly since the recent trend is the culmination of a long process. The shrinking of big parties had to happen at some point as democracy has gone deeper and wider over the decades. Forces hitherto subdued and marginalised — farmers, peasants, land losers, tribals etc — have started asserting their rights in the democracy. The process of reforms undertaken 20 years ago and the expanding prosperity pie has accentuated the process by bringing in new classes into the national mainstream. The civil society is no more a silent player in matters affecting people. Moreover, there is no single pan-Indian ideology to address a whole range of new expectations. There are too many local issues which need to be handled at the level of states. National parties, thus, cannot make policy decisions without taking the sentiments of the states into account. The redistribution of power — and responsibility — was long overdue. Probably we have come to that critical stage where changes begin. The process might end up making the national government weak and leave it at the mercy of the whims and fancies of the states. This was evident during the Lokpal debate when Mamata Banerjee refused to play ball with Congress, leaving it in a politically humiliating situation. A single party with a few Parliament members at its command could stall any bill and even bring down governments. If the politics in the states is not aligned with policies at the Centre, which would be the case more often than not, it could lead to a potentially problematic situation. Instability could be a price we would pay for assertive and inflexible states but it is one of the short-term risks the country will have to bear. To make the new arrangement, where the role of the Union government is curtailed and states exercise more power, successful coalition politics need to mature a lot. Such a situation would call for more adjustments and accommodation from both the sides, particularly the states, which may or may not have very capable leadership. There’s every possibility that the new political reality would leave national politics and parties in an awkward situation. But that is what we have got and that is what we have to accept. Democracy was never supposed to be static.