Q.Give two reasons for the claim that our Constitution has a unitary bias. Does a strong centre make States weak / weaken the centre?

Although India is constitutionally a federation, it is widely recognised that the Constitution deliberately builds in a strong central government. The framers wanted a system that could accommodate India's enormous diversity, but they also wanted a centre powerful enough to hold together a country of continental scale, prevent it from breaking apart, and drive social and economic change. This concern was very real at the time: independent India had to absorb not just the provinces inherited from British rule but also over 500 princely states, which needed to be merged into existing States or formed into new ones — a task that needed real central authority to accomplish.

This pull toward the centre was described directly by T.T. Krishnamachari in the Constituent Assembly on 25 November 1949, when he observed that constitutions everywhere tend to "drift" toward greater centralisation, because States were transforming from mere "police states" (focused only on law and order) into welfare states — and since the centre ultimately bore responsibility for the country's overall economic well-being, power naturally gravitated there. Alongside this, the framers also believed that India's deep socio-economic problems — poverty, illiteracy, and inequality — required coordinated national planning, which further justified a strong centre working together with the States.

This design shows up in several concrete constitutional provisions. Parliament alone controls the existence and boundaries of the States — it can create new States, merge existing ones, or alter their names and boundaries (after consulting, though not necessarily following, the concerned State legislature's view). The Constitution's emergency provisions can convert the federal system into a fully centralised one whenever an emergency is declared, allowing Parliament to legislate even on State-List subjects. Even in normal times, the centre controls most major sources of revenue, leaving States dependent on central grants, and historically, centralised economic planning (through the Planning Commission) gave the union government considerable control over how States managed their resources — with claims that grants and loans were distributed unevenly, disadvantaging States ruled by opposition parties. …