The federalist principles

The federalist principles

Article

1. Varghese k. George has analysed the deeper question of equity in India and US.

Important Analysis

2. In US and India, there are many concerns in terms of federalism and the regional power balance, citizenship, identity and marginalisation of religious, linguistic and ethnic minorities.
3. In US, the decision of Trump Administration to include question on citizenship in 2020 census is being challenged by several states.

• The new census will suppress the count of non-citizens. The non-citizens are legal residents and potential future citizen. They pay taxes without legislative representation. This is against the founding principle of US ‘no taxation without representation’.
• The new census will shift political power from North east states like New York and Michigan to south states like Texas and Washington.
• The census will determine allocation of federal, state and local government funds for social service, community programme and infrastructure.
• Many fear that the citizenship question in the Census could be a prelude to citizenship-based redistricting and resource allocation which would disempower immigrants, legal and undocumented.

4. Second critical principle of democracy is ‘one person one vote’.

• In US, the massive growth of cities led Rural-Urban divide in terms of representation.
• US cities represents massive political power.
• Several Republican States in recent years have introduced measures that make minority voters less effective, diluting the “one person, one vote” principle

5. In India, current practice of distribution of parliamentary representation among various states is based on 1971 census, until the first census after 2026. Redrawing of constituencies is done without affecting the number of seats in individual states.
6. But when delimitation of constituencies will be done after 1931 census the states with higher success in controlling population, better education and welfare strategies will be penalized.
7. Due to this delimitation political power in India will shift to northern states such as Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, and Bihar post 2031.

• Kerala could lose six of its current 20 Lok Sabha seats and Tamil Nadu could lose 11 of its 39.

8. The impact on the political character of a region or the country as a whole due to these shifts is difficult to anticipate.
9. In recent years, the political power in India and relative share of tax revenue is slowly shifting from non-Hindi States to the Hindi belt.
10. Regionalism has always been a part of Indian and US politics but is more prominent in the recent years with growing emphasis on competitive federalism. This has been institutionalised and undermined by the market economy.

• NITI Aayog has been ranking states on the basis of Ease of Doing Business.
• Amazon is conducting a competition among American States to decide where to house its second headquarters.

11. This institutionalisation of competition among states would create tensions as the State which wins would have to give resources to the weaker states for the good of the nation.
12. Author also indicate that an imbalance of power is as problematic as the regional imbalance of power.

• The current Lok Sabha has 4% Muslim members against their share of 14% in the total population.

13. Debates over taxation and representation have been central to the evolution of democracy over centuries.
14. Democracy is based on the principle of equality. This involves redistribution of wealth from well off regions to the poorer regions.
15. The hyper-nationalism undercurrents in India in 2014 and in the U.S. in 2016 undermine the core issues of representation and taxation.

• Several policies enacted by governments in both countries is considered as a majoritarian project.

16. The challenge before both democracies is to manage a national community that is inclusive, representative and reassuring for all its minorities — religious, linguistic, ethnic and the economically marginalised.