Nilu, in response to my post saying that going for a parliamentary system was a mistake, says that a presidential system will hurt the smaller states. I don’t understand his argument, and I don’t think that the presidential system will hurt federalism (or smaller states in particular) in any way. But before even I get to that, I must say that Nilu is missing the point. If you want true federalism, the way to go is to give power to the states, not worry about how much influence the states have at the centre.
I mean, take Maharashtra and Bihar. Maharashtra has Mumbai, which contributes most of the Union’s taxes. But Mumbai doesn’t get anything in return. It has to beg the Centre for money to build its railway lines and roads. Naturally, Mumbai thinks that the Centre discriminates against it On the other hand, Bihar is considered by everyone else to be a drain on the country’s resources. But the Bihari has a complaint too. He thinks that the Central Government is taking his state’s coal without paying it any royalty.
Well, who is right? We don’t know and it doesn’t matter. What matters is that this system ensures that all the governments can blame each other. The Central government is too remote to do the things it is supposed to do. It also has an incentive to show favouritism towards some states depending on which party is in power. The states can get away with blaming the Centre for not providing enough funds, whether the complaint is legitimate or not. This is a recipe for everyone hating everyone else, not national unity. In fact, anyone who thinks that centralising powers leads to national integration is either nuts or has never seen a joint family where the patriarch controls the purse strings in action.
So if we want federalism in India, the way to do it is to let states keep a substantial portion of the revenue that they collect and spend it themselves – as Nilu wants to do. Actually, I’d go a step further – let cities do the same. (I’d go even further; let individuals do the same, but then I digress.)
The wrong approach to take is to give states power to decide policies at the Centre. In the Vajpayee government, when chief ministers got disproportionate power, it was called a victory for federalism. Seriously, what advantage is obtained just because Chief Minister Chandra Babu Naidu gets to decide that revenue generated from Maharashtra is to be diverted to his state, just because he happens to have influence over the Centre? The same thing was happening earlier too, just in a different form. In either case, it is power without responsibility.
Of course, we need to worry about restraining the centre, and for that we may need a setup where smaller states’ votes are given higher weight to balance out their lower population (As the US does, and India doesn’t)
But I think that this is a much less important consideration than the one about balancing financial power and responsibility – governments are most likely to do the right thing when they are close to bankruptcy.
My argument hasbeen “quoted out of context”.
The reason I said Presidential system would be a bad idea has nothing to do with the state’s powers but the weight of an individual’s voice in one such state.
Fair enough, but even here the same counterargument applies. The best way to empower a voter of a small state like Goa is to delegate power and responsibility to the Goa Government. Worrying about balancing his vote against that of a Maharashtra voter is much less important, if not actually futile.
Secondly, I still don’t understand your argument. If “state’s powers” are not the issue, then we wouldn’t have to worry about the value of a Goa voter vs. that of a Maharashtra voter at all. Without tweaking the system, they would be exactly equal. The reason why you must think that the system is unfair is that you think that both the Maharashtra and the Goa voters vote in the interest of their states, and because Goa is much smaller than Maharashtra, Goa is at a disadvantage.
Ravi,
Let’s get this straight first – I am absolutely in favor of the delegation of power to the individual. In fact I think, the City, State and Centre are created by a bunch of faggots.
But given your assumption that Central Govt should exist(from the fact that you had called for a Presidential election), I was just voicing my concern about the possibility of my voice not being heard enough in the assumed context.
Your logic If “state’s powers†are not the issue, then we wouldn’t have to worry about the value of a Goa voter vs. that of a Maharashtra voter at all. Without tweaking the system, they would be exactly equal
assumes some ammount of power at the centre. I want every last ounce of that to be my way(assuming it’s also my state’s…….hypothetically). I guess that is a fair expectation.
Of course, I know that you agree with me on the principle of subsidiarity, i.e. that we should delegate to the lowest level possible. So it remains for me to explain why I think the presidential system is better overall. I’ll do that soon.