Modi-fying Indian federalism? Centre-State Relations under Modi's tenure as Prime Minister

Abstract

For the first time since 1984, the 2014 general elections handed a majority in the Lok Sabha to a single party. This article provides a critical assessment of what the victory of the Bharatiya Janata Party has meant for the dynamics of center-state relations in India. In doing so, the article first engages with the concept of "competitive-cooperative federalism" and more widely with a framework that allows us to locate shifts in center–state relations across three dimensions: the political, the fiscal, and the administrative. Overall, we argue that despite the BJP's promise to put "center-state relations on an even keel" these relations have become more centralized under the Prime Ministership of Narendra Modi. At the same time, this process of centralization has not been uniform across the three identified dimensions: centralization is strongest in the political domain, but weakest in fiscal matters, where the central government felt bound by the recommendations of the XIV Finance Commission and by long standing intergovernmental discussions on overhauling India's complex indirect taxation system with a polity-wide Goods and Services Tax, the management of which relies on center-state consent.