If there are two engines, both must run

State, Market, Society

The Constitution gives exclusive jurisdiction over some things to the Centre, and other things to the State. The Union List has many things that only a national government can do uniformly. Defence, foreign relations, trade, taxes and duties, management of natural resources, surveys and statistics. These are all important, sure, but not the kind of issues on which one goes to voters with big promises.

On the other hand, for those with good antennae about public expectations, the State List is a treasure trove of political opportunity. Health, education, police, water, land, municipal administration. Naturally, it was only a matter of time before leaders at the Centre started eyeing the State List and thinking, “What if we did those, instead?”

It’s not easy to move things on these lists, but handily for the Centre, in the mid-1970s the Emergency provided an opening. A few things, including education and forests, were moved to the Concurrent List, which is about things that both of them can legislate on. This list has one advantage for the Centre -- whenever a law made by a State Assembly conflicts with one made by Parliament, the latter will prevail. The Centre can override a state on any Concurrent List matter by making its own law on the same subject.

The Centre has one other really big power. It gets a very big chunk of our taxes -- enough for it to spend on various programmes that really ought to be run by the states. By providing the money, the Centre can steer the domains as it likes. Several urban development missions from UPA as well as NDA governments, all of which failed, attest to this. Education is another universe of missed goals.

Policy is another instrument that New Delhi has wielded repeatedly. It puts out policies on all sorts of things, and even drafts laws that it then encourages the states to adopt. This is based on the assumption, often incorrect, that the Centre knows more about public problems and solutions. The Planning Commission kept this claim going for long, and now the Niti Aayog does.

Some states quickly take up whatever guidance the Centre gives them, and other states dither. It’s quite easy to see why; states run by the same party that rules in New Delhi will embrace the guidance. One might say the ‘double engine’ states follow the Centre’s lead. The Constitution proposes, party hierarchy disposes.

That’s true even when the Centre does things that diminish the powers of states. GST is a good example. States should have stood up to the Centre a lot more when GST was proposed, because their ability to steer their fiscal courses with their own taxes was being eroded. But with the high commands of both national parties in favour of it, Jayalalithaa’s was a lone voice of dissent.

All the discord in Centre-state relations thus appears to come from Opposition-run states. Swachh Bharat, National Education Policy, farm laws, forest rights...on several subjects, there is constant tension. What these states say is also often in the interest of the ‘double engine’ states, but usually there isn’t any support from them.

Despite appearances, we should see this discord as a good thing. The states deliver most of the public goods and services that the public wants. They must safeguard their ability to do that. If, in the process, there is constant political tension between the ruling parties of the state and the Centre, so be it. In the claims and counter-claims of that struggle, a lot of things emerge that would otherwise remain unknown to voters.

The real problem is not that Stalin, KCR, Mamata or Kejriwal have so much disagreement with the Centre. They’re political opponents, and they control different spheres of action. Heated exchanges are part of that reality. It is the silence of the ‘double engine’ states that we should be worried about.

In Karnataka, for the longest time, the perception was that whenever one party came to power in New Delhi, its opponent would gain power in Bengaluru. In hindsight, that seems like a good thing. Differences of opinion between the state and Central governments increased the attention paid to different public issues. People heard leaders articulate contrasting views of how problems should be solved. It’s a lot quieter with the ‘double engine’ these days, maybe because only one of them is running.

(The writer is a social technologist and entrepreneur, founder of Mapunity and co-founder, Lithium, who wakes up with hope for the city and society, goes to bed with a sigh, and repeats the cycle @ashwinmahesh)