Adv. Arathy A, LLM in Constitutional and Administrative Law, School of Law, CHRIST (Deemed to be University), Bangalore, India
“The federal government did not create the states, the states created the federal government – Ronald Reagan”
ABSTRACT
The governance of a nation can be in away through any form and it differs from one form of governance to another based on certain conditions such as the social, legal, political, economical and geographical factors. One such form of governance is the federalism. The federalism can simply be defined as the form of government in which there will be more than one level of government in the whole nation. There will be clear cut separation and distribution of powers with the various levels of the government which helps to make a checks and balance system upon the governance structure which will results in the misuse and abuse of power by the authorities as well as the concentration of power in particular hands only. India is considered to be a federal state who follows the principles of federalism but cannot be compared with the governance system of the United States of America who follows the pure federalism.1 That is why, most of the eminent jurists, legal philosophers and political thinkers coined India as a not pure federal state but only as a quasi-federal state where it follows the principles of federalism but will have a strong centralizing tendency from the union level of government. Thus, in order to have an integrity in the nation, the principles of federalism should need to be thoroughly followed and without a federal structure of governance, there will be a total tyranny in the governing scheme since one level of government will encroach the governing power of the other level of government.
Keywords: Federalism, Integrity of the nation, Separation of powers, Centralizing tendency, Central laws & State laws, Democracy
