ABSTRACT
Over the last decade or so, in an atmosphere of growing economic freedom, the wooing by the Indian states of direct foreign investment, their support to private capital and implementation of various structural adjustment programmes has attracted considerable popular attention. This chapter offers a contribution to the study of federalism in India generally and of the Indian state-based politics in particular. Globalisation, a multi-dimensional worldwide process, has profoundly challenged existing social, economic, political and cultural arrangements, both globally and locally. The subject of states' rights, or the rights of the constituent units of a federation, is of central importance in any federation. This is defined as an association of states in the maintenance of the compound polity that a federation is. The issue of states' rights remains central to federalism, although it has various constitutional expressions across federations. The relation between globalisation and the Indian states is complex.
