Federalism

A second core achievement, alongside universal franchise, is the Constitution's particular brand of federalism.

By introducing Article 371, concerning the North-East, the Indian Constitution anticipates the important concept of asymmetric federalism. India's federal design does create a strong central government — a real unitary bias also studied elsewhere in this book — but despite that bias, there are important, constitutionally embedded differences in the legal status and prerogatives of different sub-units within the same federation. This makes Indian federalism quite different from the constitutional symmetry of, say, American federalism, where every state broadly enjoys the same status. To meet the specific needs and requirements of particular sub-units, it was part of the original design that some of them would have a unique relationship with the Union, or be granted a special status, rather than being treated identically to every other state. Article 371A, for example, accorded a privilege of special status to Nagaland: it not only confers validity on laws that existed in Nagaland before the Constitution came into force, but also protects local identity through restrictions on immigration into the state. Several other states enjoy comparable special provisions. According to the Indian Constitution, then, this kind of differential treatment between states is not seen as something objectionable — it is a deliberate and legitimate design choice. India, although the Constitution did not originally set out to make this so explicit, has become a genuinely multi-lingual federation, in which every major linguistic group is politically recognised and all are, i …