Tags:
Journalism of Courage
Some heartening news for the prime minister. Occasionally, purely regional interests make more smoothly possible the task of the Centre. This year alarm was sounded for a national highways project when Kerala8217;s Left Front government refused to permit collection of tolls on stretches of the highway in the state. Now, the Kerala government has indicated that within a few days it is likely to sign the state support agreement. As reported in this newspaper, the shift in the state government8217;s stance has come after the effort of the DMK8217;s T.R. Baalu, Union minister for shipping, road transport and highways. The DMK and the Left parties also happen to be electoral allies in Tamil Nadu.
The Left Front government8217;s objection to the collection of toll may have been obstinately ideological. But it was also indicative of a sense of disquiet states express in dealing with the Centre, even sometimes when both the state and Centre are governed by the same political party. It is, in essence, a conversation between states and Centre that has been going on since India adopted its Constitution in 1950. At the heart of the conversation is this question: should decision-making flow from the Centre to the federal constituents, or should it be more organic? In an unevenly paced re-equilibrium, the state of play has been moving since 1950 from the first option towards the second. The movement has been helped along by deepening federalism and the inclusion of a greater number of regional parties in governing coalitions at the Centre.
