Decentralisation: An Idea missing from the Indian political discourse

The modern Indian nation-state was born under very precarious circumstances. It had to deal with the bloody partition, deal with Pakistan's invasion in Kashmir, and also hold political negotiations with the then princely states and stitch together the political map of India that we see today. The Indian Constitution was written with the shadow of such unprecedented uncertainty and chaos. As a result of this, the framers of the constitution created a structure with centralisation of executive power. But even after 77 years of independence, when India seems to be stronger than ever before across different metrics of state capacity, we have not been able to rectify the skewed power sharing. It is the primary reason for the state of apathy of our public infrastructure and dysfunctional cities. The symptoms of lack of Decentralisation are all around us but our political class still thinks it is an idea whose time has not come.

According to a 2023-24 report by RBI, 24.9 percent of the revenue receipts (the second largest head of revenue) for Urban Local Bodies (ULBs) is grants and subsidies. It shows that the ULBs are not self sustaining financially and as a result their degree of autonomy gets restricted. Along with limited avenues for raising money, most of the expenditure happens at the state government level. Across the globe the situation is completely opposite for every economy that has graduated to a developed category or the middle income group. For example if we look at China which is a Communist Party state, the local government accounts for around 80 - 85 percent of the public expenditure. This lack of autonomy runs contradictory to the degree of responsibility that ULBs on paper shoulder and results in poor accountability. Empowering the local politicians will also help make politics a genuine profession rather than it being a muscle and money sport. Currently our political arms of executive exist in silos, only a very small percentage of political leaders having local governance body experience graduate to becoming a Member of Parliament or Member of Legislative Assembly. With empowered local bodies this will become a continuum instead.

With the census being announced the BJP led NDA government has ticked the box of the prequisite for the delimitation exercise. The southern regional political parties which see the reconstituion of the total strength of parliament based on the new population count as a loss in their political capital. Their argument is that the northern states representation is bound to increase even further giving them an undue political heft at the cost of southern states in national politics. Given we live in a hyperpolarised and broken political times where language chauvinists and state supremacist are making headlines daily, delimitation will only strengthen the North Vs South political debate. Decentralisation here can help calm the apprehension of the southern states, with more power devolved to states their political power will not feel threatened.

The irony is that everyone wants decentralisation and devolution but they don't want their share of power to be diluted. The states want more power devolved to them, but those same states do not want their share of power and revenues to be devolved to the local government. If we are to realise the Viksit Bharat objective by 2047 the political class has to realise that "To win power is astute politics but to devolve it is true leadership".