THE COMPARATIVE STUDY OF CENTRAL AND STATES GOVERNMENTS RELATIONS

POLITICAL SCIENCE

Indian constitution establishes a quasi federal system. It means the outward structure of the government is federal but spirit is unitary. The union is not a league of states, united in a loose relationship; nor are the states the agencies of the Union, deriving powers from it. Both the Union and the states are created by the constitution. In 1967, in eight state the non congress governments came in power and after that the issue of preservation of autonomy of the state was raised. In this unit we will study about the working of the Indian federal system during the 20th and 21st century. The union can pass a law on any of the subjects of the state list, if Rajya Sabha passes a resolution, supported by a majority of 2/3 rd members present and voting, to the effect that, in the national interest, the Parliament should make a law on a subject included in the state list. In other words, the Central Government, the State Governments, the PRIs, the ULBs, and the non-Governmental organisations, the voluntary action groups and most of all, the people at the grass-roots have to be involved in the process of formulation and implementation of the Plans. The equity-promoting role of central planning assumes added importance in the wake of the emerging policy environment in the country as well as globally. With the opening up of the economy and removal of controls, the market forces have been unleashed, which may have a tendency to exacerbate the disparities among groups of people and regions which can be further widened because of the operation of large global players. Similarly, often there is a tendency on the part of the States to allow tariff concessions to various sections. Power tariff is a case in point and many States have been supplying power to various sectors at a price much lower than the cost of generation. A national consensus had evolved at the Chief Minister's Conference for fixing the minimum tariff for agriculture and to move over to a regime of fixing tariffs for recovering the costs. Some States have, however, gone against this consensus and allowed free electricity to agriculture sector.

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