NOTES january 14, 2012 vol xlvii no 2 EPW Economic & Political Weekly 70 Is India a Case of Asymmetrical Federalism? Rekha Saxena Rekha Saxena (rekhasaxenadu@gmail.com) is with the Department of Political Science at the University of Delhi, New Delhi....
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NOTES january 14, 2012 vol xlvii no 2 EPW Economic & Political Weekly 70 Is India a Case of Asymmetrical Federalism? Rekha Saxena Rekha Saxena (rekhasaxenadu@gmail.com) is with the Department of Political Science at the University of Delhi, New Delhi. The Indian case of federalism has “postmodern potential” in the manner in which it has de facto and de jure asymmetries in its construction. Normatively, some of the asymmetries have served it well against opinion that these could lead to secessionism. I n strict and simple terms, asymmetri- cal federalism means a flexible type of union that grants special status to some federative units in the Constitution. While the term is novel, the idea is not new as it has been implicit in constitutional texts and the literature on federalism since long (Burgess 2006: 209). More re- cently, the term has also come to be ap- plied to formulation of federal policies that allows the federal government to work out separate deals with different states
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