Rather than fighting over who gets a greater say in Parliament, we should expand states' powers so that it matters no more how LS constituencies are rearranged
The data on population growth, or the divergence in that growth, in the last half century tells a story of the Indian Union’s intractable problem.
The states in the Indo-Gangetic plains, with notable exceptions like Punjab and West Bengal, have, over the 40 year period between 1971 and 2011, proved Rev Malthus – possibly the most famous demographer – right. They have roughly doubled their population every 25-30 years.
States in peninsular India, meanwhile, have converged with western societies and have stabilised their populations. Each of these states, one must also remember, are as large as mid-sized countries.
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An extreme jolt
In a democracy, we allocate power and resources on the basis of population. We also make decisions that govern people based on that allocated power. All of which follow from and complement the basic maxim: one person, one vote.
What happens when the fuel for that power – people – grows at a divergent rate? And what happens when this power equilibrium is frozen for half a century and suddenly explodes, making an already difficult bargain seem extreme, given the sudden jump that the unfreezing will warrant?
That is the question that delimitation poses to the Indian Union. The representation of various states in the Lok Sabha was frozen in 1976 and that freeze is set to expire in 2026. Will the Indian Union survive this extreme jolt?
Also read: Call for delimitation freeze is fair, but here is what South should realise
Situation in US, China
Consider the United States, another large federal union. The states of California, New York and Texas have grown in population in the past 50 years at a rate much faster than their peers.
As a consequence, the delimitation process in that country – they call it redistricting – has apportioned a greater number of seats in the House of Representatives to these states. But what is crucial to note here is: these states grew in population largely because of internal migration; that is, people from other parts of the United States have migrated to these states because they happen to be economic powerhouses.
As a result, the economically more prosperous parts of that country are also the more populous ones.
Conversely, the parts from where the people moved out – states in Middle America and Appalachia – have long experienced a decline in population. Their redistricting process, in such a scenario, makes sense.
This scenario plays out to be true in most other large countries; even in non-democratic societies like China, internal migration from the rural hinterland into coastal cities where jobs are plentiful is why divergence in population growth happens.
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Behind the migration
India, unlike other large countries, is unique in this regard. The cause of population growth in the states across the northern and central plains isn’t internal migration but higher fertility rate.
The states where population growth has been extreme aren’t the rich ones but the poorest ones. Whereas, the peninsular part of the country, which is the richer part with more jobs, is actually growing slower in terms of population.
So, we have a situation where migration isn’t changing the power equilibrium but higher fertility rate in some states is. And this higher fertility rate is correlated to lower enrollment of girls in school which is a result of poor governance.
The argument that southern states therefore justifiably make is: why are we being punished for sending our girls to school? And why are the states in the Indo-Gangetic plains being rewarded for their inability to do so? After all, gender parity in enrollment was achieved in southern states through innovation in policy, such as the mid-day meal scheme. Why is good governance being punished thus?
Watch | Why is delimitation a federal flashpoint? | DiscussionDemocratic discontentment
Further, it’s not as if the richer states were always rich. Some of the southern states weren’t that different in terms of their prosperity compared to their northern counterparts 50 years ago; yet they sacrificed their public spending elsewhere to improve access to education to girls which yielded results.
They are therefore doubly annoyed that their success in policymaking is being met with possible punishment and their sacrifices to achieve that success may amount to zilch.
This is a recipe for democratic discontentment, which is what fuels revolutions.
India's conundrum
The basic problem of India’s electoral democracy therefore can be summed up as: southern states implemented population control and enjoy greater per capita parliamentary representation for their people as a result.
And, people in northern states will look at that greater representation and cry foul, saying it’s not true democracy if all citizens don’t have equal representation in Parliament.
Either the southern states now have to give up power for having implemented a policy of the Union – namely population control – or people in northern India have to accept their status as lesser citizens in terms of political power. Neither seems like a good deal to a neutral observer.
Some workarounds
Some scholars have suggested workarounds: such as increasing the size of Parliament, increasing the power of the Rajya Sabha, using metrics beyond population to arrive at the final apportionment in the delimitation process etc.
Also read | Stalin's delimitation push presents a quintessential DMK strategy
Each of them has some merit. But none of them address the core problem: we cannot solve a zero-sum game by carefully picking winners because that by definition picks losers as well. And power sharing is a zero-sum game.
So, the question of delimitation really is an implicit question on the viability of the Indian Union. It could be paraphrased as: can a Union of 1.4 billion people with extreme divergence in every metric imaginable be governed as a single centralised union? The question of who should enjoy more power in such a centralised union is a second-order concern.
Limiting the desirability
The only real answer to the basic question, short of disbanding the entire union, in such a situation, is to limit the desirability or importance of what’s the subject of power sharing. After all, no one wants to compete hard for a prize if that prize is not all that enticing in the first place.
And that points to extreme decentralisation.
Also read: Delimitation: By rallying Southern states, Stalin is reviving proud legacy of TN parties
After all, a basic feature of India – from policy outcomes to population growth – has been one of divergence. When an extremely divergent system is unable to fairly determine a single axis through which all decisions are made, it’s only fair to make that axis decide as little as possible while still retaining the axis for other reasons.
Vertical devolution
An example of such decentralisation will be the Union Budget.
The Union government spends <5 per cent of the GDP on its core functions of defence, internal security and interest payments put together. Whereas, it spends around 12 per cent of the GDP on revenue expenditures that are largely either explicit State subjects or happen to be on the Concurrent List.
One solution is to limit the powers of the Union government to its core functions strictly and leave all aspects of actual governance that directly affect the lives of people to the states and their legitimately elected regional governments.
A crude but effective way to achieve this will be to make the vertical devolution such that the revenues raised by the Union – across all forms, including cess and surcharge – are sent back to the states for the large part under the current ratios of horizontal devolution, even if we have disagreements with that formula.
More money for states
For example, let’s say we take the average expenditure in the core functions of the Union government over the past five years as a factor and allow the Union to retain 1.5 times that going forward. We could even be generous and start this at two times the agreed factor and gradually decrease it to 1.5 over two decades.
This would mean the states will now have the requisite money to govern and therefore the right to enact proper policy that their citizenry demands.
After all, the Union government was usurping the powers of the states simply because it had access to the more buoyant sources of revenue. Placing a cap on its ability to use that pot of money will restrict the Union government under such a system from interfering with everyday governance.
It will become distant from the daily lives of people, ceding that space to state governments, but will retain its powers in maintaining the territorial integrity and viability of the Union itself.
Also read: Capital Beat | Does delimitation really pose a threat to Indian federalism?
Localised policy making
In a country where the divergence in health outcomes between one state and another is as vast as the one between the US and Afghanistan, this arrangement would not merely result in better power-sharing equilibria but also achieve better policy-making that is localised and well-suited.
The Office of the Prime Minister, under such a system, will be a lot less powerful than it is today. And that will be a good thing. After all, we know, power corrupts.
The decade or two that we’d need to implement such an idea on decentralisation could be seen as the time we need to build a more perfect Union. And it’d be wise to delay delimitation until the time taken to achieve this, as a compromise.
That way, we’d not merely kick the can down the road but kick it purposefully to defuse the ticking time bomb.
(The Federal seeks to present views and opinions from all sides of the spectrum. The information, ideas or opinions in the articles are of the author and do not reflect the views of The Federal.)
