ABSTRACT
Federal balances in the Indian foreign policy as a field of enquiry merits critical examination in an age witnessing the reversal of one-party dominance at the Centre, and its uneasy co-existence with the acute voices of assertion by the states on various issues ranging from illegal and forced migration to resource-sharing and economic development involving neighbouring countries. The present government avowedly declared the principle of ‘cooperative federalism’ in 2014 and the current Prime Minister Narendra Modi created a States’ Division within the Ministry of External Affairs, to involve states as ‘equal partners’ in foreign policy. However, a closer examination of contemporary realities reveals that the participation of constituent states or their opposition to the Centre-driven articulations in foreign policy remain a matter of political coincidence and a combination of factors ranging from the nature of the government in power at the Centre and Union–state political equations, to the imperatives across the borders between provinces and neighbouring countries. There is, thus, no straight causal lever available that helps explain how these factors might combine and behave from time to time. At the same time, the dynamics shaping federalism and foreign policy may not just involve the Centre and the states, but penetrate far down and effuse sideways as well.
The chapter surveys the Indian federal experiment to highlight changing tendencies in the Centre–state balance in post-colonial India with special attention to the last two decades. The constitutional and administrative linkages that govern federal principles in foreign policy on the one hand and the problems of their watertight compartmentalization during execution, on the other hand, are carefully laid bare. The involvement of states as essential stakeholders in foreign policy calculations by the Centre are critically examined with relevant case studies to argue that the federalization of foreign policy in India is complex, many layered and often deceptive.
