W HAT IS F EDERALISM ? USSR was one of the world’s super powers, but after it simply broke up into several independent countries. One of the major reasons for its break up was the excessive centralisation and concentration of power, and the domination of Russia over other regions with independent languages and cultures of their own e.g. Uzbekistan.
Some other countries like Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia, and Pakistan also had to face a division of the country. Canada came very close to a break up between the English–speaking and the French-speaking regions of that country. Isn’t it a great achievement that India, which emerged as an independent nation-state in after a painful partition, has remained united over six decades of its independent existence? What accounts for this achievement?
Can we attribute it to the federal structure of governance that we in India adopted through our Constitution? All the countries mentioned above, were federations. Yet they could not remain united. Therefore, apart from adopting a federal constitution, the nature of that federal system and the practice of federalism must also be important factors.
Federalism in West Indies You may have heard about the cricket team of West Indies. But is there a country called West Indies? Like India, West Indies was also colonised by the British. In , the federation of West Indies came into being.
It had a weak central government and the economy of each unit was independent. These features and political competition among the units led to the formal dissolution of the federation in . Later, in by Treaty of Chiguaramas the independent islands established joint authorities in the form of a common legislature, supreme court, a common currency, and, to a degree, a common market known as the Caribbean Community. The Caribbean Community has even a common executive, and Heads of the governments of member countries are members of this executive.
Thus, the units could neither live together as one country, nor can they live separately!