Q.Who decides the powers of the central government in a federation? How are conflicts between central government and States resolved?

Even before India became independent, leaders of the national movement understood that a country as vast and diverse as India — with many languages and regions, each wanting a genuine say in governing itself — would need power to be divided between a central government and the provinces/regions. The real debate was never over whether to share power, but over how much power the regions should get; in fact, before Partition, a compromise formula giving very large powers to the regions was seriously discussed, partly in response to the Muslim League's demand for greater representation.

Once Partition was decided, the Constituent Assembly took a deliberate approach: it built the new government around the principles of unity and cooperation between the centre and the States, while still assigning the States their own distinct powers. The defining feature of this design is that centre-State relations are meant to run on cooperation rather than rivalry — so even while the Constitution genuinely recognises India's diversity, its overall emphasis leans toward unity.

A detail that captures this emphasis well: the Indian Constitution never actually uses the word "federation." Article 1 instead describes India as follows: "India, that is Bharat, shall be a Union of States. The States and the territories thereof shall be as specified in the First Schedule." Calling India a "Union of States" rather than a "federation" reflects the framers' intention to present India as one indivisible nation whose parts cannot claim to have voluntarily joined together (and therefore cannot claim a right to separate), rather than as an association of previously independent units.