When the Republican speaker of the House of Representatives in the U.S. Congress threatens to sue the Democrat president over his alleged abuse of power while enforcing healthcare reforms, as he did in July, it is time to examine the problems that American democracy is confronting.
Does the fault lie in the design of the American federation, or in the practice of necessarily confrontational two-party politics? Or is it located in the rapid socioeconomic changes wrought by globalisation? These questions can be asked of most democracies, including India, which shares several features with the American political system.
Although the levels of economic development and divisive issues are vastly different in each country, both India and the U.S. can learn from the experience of federalism of the other in taking their national agendas forward.
In his first address to the Lok Sabha on 11 June 2014, when Prime Minister Narendra Modi referred to cooperative federalism, as a former chief minister of Gujarat he probably had in mind the actualisation of the powers of the state. The central government has curtailed this by, for example, using its power to raise and control the bulk of tax revenue.
By adopting more consultative and consensual centre-states relations, India’s political architecture can move closer to the system introduced by u.s. President Franklin Roosevelt during the Great Depression in the 1930s. In this system, the federal, state, and local governments operated cooperatively and not in their own silos.
The political system of a country is a combined outcome of its geography, history, and interactions with neighbours. The American federation evolved through the country’s war of independence, the civil war, and the civil rights movement. The Indian union was formed after Independence from British rule in 1947. The constituent states began to seek and obtain greater powers only after the weakening of the Indian National Congress, which had led the Independence movement.
America was born out of Europeans—initially Britons—fleeing religious persecution, and a shortage of jobs and food. Thirteen separate colonies were established as the Confederate States of America; they selected George Washington to lead them in a war of independence against the British Empire. But this was a weak union that almost fell apart after the subsequent victory, amid squabbles over settling debts incurred during the war, and over power-sharing among the 13 erstwhile colonies.
The Indian union, conversely, was designed with a strong centre. This was considered necessary to preserve the new and fragile country in the face of myriad problems set in motion by Independence and by Partition on religious grounds into India and Pakistan. The centre has also had to overcome powerful fissiparous regional tendencies.
The U.S. became a federation only after the end of the civil war in 1865. The war has been romanticised as a war for the abolition of slavery, but it was actually waged to preserve the union. It did abolish slavery, but it also ensured that states could not exercise their (technical) right to secede. This is quite different from the Indian union of states, which the Constitution mandates is indissoluble in perpetuity.
The separation of powers in the U.S. at the federal level, and in India at the central level, operates through three branches: the executive (the president and administration in the U.S.; the prime minister and the Cabinet in India); the legislative (the House of Representatives and the Senate in the U.S., the Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha in India); and the judicial (the Supreme Courts in both countries). Each is replicated in the states in both countries.
Policy areas are separated into central, state and concurrent lists. Defence, foreign relations and the issuing of currency stays with the centre, while policing and land use devolves to the states. In the American structure, the president has the power to agree or veto bills, and appoint his Cabinet, ambassadors and senior officials only after obtaining the approval of a Senate that has two representatives from each state. The Congress is vested with the power of the purse and the power to declare war.
This arrangement sought to limit the powers of the federal government. But it has become the cause of the ongoing dysfunction of the Congress because of the hostility of the Republican party towards Democrat President Barack Obama.
A similar absence of working relations between the two main national parties in India, the Bharatiya Janata Party and the Congress, has meant that Parliament is often unable to conduct legislative business because of near-daily interruptions by the opposition parties of the day.
The U.S. Supreme Court has performed a significant role in the exercise of civil rights in the evolution of the American federation. Although the end of the civil war also meant the end of slavery, it took the Civil Rights Act of 1964, enacted during Lyndon Johnson’s presidency, and the parallel civil rights movement led by Martin Luther King Jr., to steer the U.S. towards a progressive breakdown of racism.
In contrast, the Constitution of India guaranteed equal rights to everyone regardless of caste, creed, and gender from the moment it was adopted in January 1952. The actual implementation of these rights for religious minorities, women, and the scheduled castes in India remains a work-in-progress.
After the period of struggle over civil rights in the American federation, the main tussles between the centre and the states are over social issues such as gender rights and abortion, gay rights, welfare programmes like Medicare, and gun control laws. Issues of law and order—such as border protection in Texas—are also discussed. In most instances, the divergent lines are the ideological polarisation between Democrats and Republicans. This makes compromise increasingly difficult.
In India, revenue-sharing and the implementation of centrally-mandated welfare programmes such as MNREGA are major points of departure between the centre and state. The two national parties also confront each other over accommodating the aspirations of different religious and caste groups even as economic growth challenges traditional social structures.
In both democracies, the degree to which their version of federalism is effective depends on the extent of compatibility between the country’s political actors. In the U.S., polarisation is on the rise, possibly because the institutions of democracy created centuries ago are no longer adequate to address current issues.
In India, the political machinery must address the continuing challenges of secessionist movements and unresolved problems with neighbouring countries. The demands of a growing middle class and a better educated, digitally-connected youthful demography in a slowing economy plagued by corruption are also becoming louder.
These, and other challenges, can be addressed only if the central and state governments work together more harmoniously than in the past to craft policy frameworks and administrative structures that are suited to the complex economic space India inhabits in the globalised world today.
Neelam Deo is Co-founder and Director, Gateway House: Indian Council on Global Relations; She has been the Indian Ambassador to Denmark and Ivory Coast; and former Consul General in New York.
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