Vice President Mohammad Hamid Ansari said on Tuesday that federal practice has emerged as one of India’s most important vehicles for managing its enormous diversity, adding that the country has innovated and adapted the federal model to its unique needs. Ansari, who was delivering the Fifth Krishan Kant Memorial lecture at the Speakers Hall at the Constitution Club on Tuesday said, “The most important challenge is instituting means of conflict resolution among the various vertical and horizontal levels of the state.”The Constitution, according to him, provides under Article 263 for the setting up of an inter-state council. Its mandate though is primarily deliberative, advisory and recommendatory, and the experience of its functioning in arbitration and conflict resolution has not been encouraging. The judiciary has tended to refrain from intervening in inter-state and Centre-state disputes, leaving it to the polity to mediate and resolve such disputes. “This has become a very difficult, if not an impossible task, especially when different political formations are at the helm of the administrative units that are party to the dispute,” he stated.Indian federalism, Ansari added, is increasingly competitive at the economic and fiscal level. Allegations of political considerations influencing the quantum of financial transfers from the Centre to the state governments have been made, with some even questioning the constitutional division of the powers of taxation. International grants for aid and competitive seeking of investments by state governments have queered the pitch. Ansari further noted the pressing need to place fiscal transfers in a transparent and rule-based framework, further asserting that the nature of Central intervention in reducing the debt of state governments and correcting developmental imbalances also needs to be addressed. It is hoped that the 13th Finance Commission, constituted in November 2007, would suggest solutions to these concerns. Addressing the snags encountered at the village level, Ansari quoted Minister Mani Shankar Aiyar, saying that the devolution of functions, finances and functionaries to Panchayati Raj institutions has been “uneven, fitful and subject to reversal”. Fifteen years have passed since the 73rd and 74th Constitutional Amendments and the time has come for both the Central and state governments to deliver on their pledges of decentralisation and grassroots empowerment. He said B R Ambedkar had accurately described the nature of India’s political structure. “I can do no better than to recall his words,” said Ansari, quoting Ambedkar: “ ‘Though India was to be a federation’, he said, ‘the federation was not the result of an agreement by the states to join in a federation. Not being a result of an agreement, no state has the right to secede from it. Though the country and the people may be divided into different states for convenience of administration, the country is one integral whole’.”“It was for this reason, and with a view to overcome this deficiency, that the Constituent Assembly crafted a Constitution that avoided, as Ambedkar put it, ‘the tight mould of federation’ and was instead both unitary as well as federal according to the requirements of time and circumstances,” said Ansari.
