With now four episodes in as many weeks, it is time now for a revisit of the constitutional provisions on the Centre-State relations as possibly never before. These events and episodes pertain not just to division of powers between the Union and the constituent States, but also to their respective responsibilities and relative obligations for enforcing those responsibilities and obligations, reflecting the letter, intent and spirit of the Constitution. 

First, there was a mass exodus of people from the North-East from their adopted south Indian homes and workplaces to back home, although because of an unfounded rumour. Then came a select rally of some sections of the Muslim community in Mumbai in the aftermath of the troubles in the North-East, unconnected to the south Indian exodus. The Mumbai rally was an unprovoked reaction to violence in the North-East that had, besides causing many deaths and destruction of property, had rendered 400,000 homeless. 

Independent of the Mumbai rally, but unsettling the national fabric nonetheless was Raj Thackeray's call for having checks on immigrants in Maharashtra. In the past, his uncle and political mentor had wanted all non-Maharashtrians (read: South Indians in particular) bundled out of Mumbai and other work-places in the west Indian State. Subsequently, the Shiv Sena wanted all Bangladeshi nationals sent out. It still may have a rationale, considering reports that most of them were in the country without valid travel documents and work permits. This in turn had made their own sustenance questionable at the hands of greedy and uncaring employers. 

If at the time of Shiv Sena's birth and early growth, the idea was to have the workforce from rest of India ordered out of any particular State in the country, then there were not many equally qualified Maharastrians in the hey days of Bal Thackeray. Today, there are not many Maharastrians wanting to take up the Class IV and Class V kind of hard labours that migrant labour from other regions of the country has no problem in undertaking. 

If Maharashtra, or any other relatively prosperous State in the country, is providing livelihood for migrant labour from elsewhere in the country, the latter too are contributing in no small measure to the growth and prosperity of their adopted States and communities. They have a legal and legitimate share to the prosperity, too. Yet, 'competitive Maratta politics' of the Bal-Raj Thackeray kind cannot leave out the 'outsider issue' to make a political point that has been rendered ineffectual and irrelevant, otherwise. 

Nowhere else is the change-over as visible as in southern Tamil Nadu. The State that had spearheaded a violent agitation against the imposition of Hindi as the national language in the Sixties, today has every village and town bustling with construction labour and corporate employees coming from all over the country, making Tamil Nadu their foster home. In tea-stalls and other trade and business establishments across the State, starting with interior villages, Hindi-speaking labour has become the accepted and acceptable norm, as north Indian techies have become in the posh, multi-storeyed office buildings, even in Tier-II cities, such as Coimbatore and Madurai. 

Contextualising 'Sri Lanka issue' 

It is in this context, one has to view the recent utterances and developments in Tamil Nadu, drawing upon and focussing on the 'ethnic issue' and developments in neighbouring Sri Lanka. The attacks on ageing Sinhala-Buddhist pilgrims wanting to offer worship at religious centres of prominence in northern India, and on Christian pilgrims heading for churches in the State, and school-boys' soccer teams from across the Palk Strait have constitutional consequences that have not been highlighted enough. 

Apart from these attacks, there have also been periodic attacks on the constitutional scheme, pertaining to division of powers between the Centre and the State. It is one thing for State Governments to express reservations to the Centre continuing to offer training to officials of the Sri Lankan armed forces, citing military excesses against Sri Lankan Tamil civilians at the height of the conclusive 'Eelam War-IV'. It is another for the State Government and the otherwise divided polity in Tamil Nadu, going as far as to imply contesting of the Centre's rights and responsibilities under the constitutional scheme. This is what they have been doing every time a Sri Lankan military delegation is in India for training or discussions with their counterparts on issues of larger concern and consequential common interests. 

First and foremost, the tendency if allowed to continue without check could lead to a situation in which another State of the Union could ask the Centre to keep of Australian officials and tourists out of the country for attacks on students from that State, Down Under. Likewise, States from where students are getting increasingly getting shot on US campuses could put up a similar demand. Linkages could be established to the host-States and State apparatuses, if one worked overtime. Families of victims of Somali piracy can ask New Delhi to snap diplomatic ties with the Somalias, north or South. 

Unlike in the case of the Tamil Nadu protests and public statements of politicians, starting with Chief Minister Jayalalithaa, the victims in those cases would have been Indian nationals. The focus of Tamil Nadu protests are not Indian nationals in comparison. Any furthering of these protests could thus have unintended consequences, and would not be acknowledged by the 'victim community' for known and specific reasons. For instance, the Tamils in Sri Lanka, most of them represented electorally by the Tamil National Alliance (TNA), has clearly stated their intent and desire to remain Sri Lankans and negotiate with the Sri Lankan State, a fair deal on power-devolution and other political issues. 

One-sided discourse? 

National discourses in the past on Centre-State relations have often been tilted towards the latter. Various commissions appointed by the Centre and committees of Parliament have often dwelt more on expanding the power-base of the State, without seriously going into the inherent responsibilities and obligations of the Centre, in context. So have judicial pronouncements after a point. 

None has really dealt with the emerging and envisioned drift in the working of the Constitution, in terms of Centre-State relations, where again the Union was getting increasingly weakened. The States have been seeking and obtaining more powers over the past decades. They have been doing so rightfully in the changed circumstances of post-Independence India. However, they have seldom been called upon to discharge their constitutional obligations, likewise. Where responsibilities and obligations occur, they are often transferred to the Centre. 

India, which was seen as a 'quasi-federal State' at the commencement of the Constitution has been increasingly acknowledged as a 'federal State', with greater powers coming to rest on the States than the Union that they comprise at and since inception. In this, the Indian federation is unlike the American structure, where the States 'formed' the federation. Past discourses thus have often not underlined this fact of political and constitutional history. 

The emergence of coalition politics at the national-level is often cited as among the reasons for the increasing role of States in the national decision-making apparatus. The fact however remains that no 'coalition Government' at the Centre has ever consulted the States in any serious way on issues where their views need to be obtained as mandated under the Constitution. Acceptance is often taken for granted, or are contested when the Centre announces a unilateral decision. The aborted anti-terror law, initiated by the Union Home Ministry, is a pointer in recent times. 

Weakening State systems and States with weakened systems 

The panic caused by the large-scale exodus of people from the North-East exposed two aspects of contemporary Indian governmental apparatus. One was the weakening State systems, the other, States with weakened systems. Likewise, the Maharashtra Government has been seen as being unwilling to initiate legitimate legal action against those wanting non-Mahrashtrians, particularly Biharis, to exit the State. The Centre, too, looked askance, law and order being a State subject under the Constitution. It may also have to do with the same party ruling the Centre and in the State. 

Yet, there is no denying the nationality and citizenship rights of all Indians. The Constitution specifically and court verdicts any number of times have reiterated every citizen's right to movement and to jobs in any part of the country. In historic and cultural terms, this is also what stitches together individual communities into nations and nation-States. In the Indian context, it is also provisions such as these, in turn encompassing 'affirmative action' of different kinds and strata that have made a 'cultural nation' into a 'constitutional nation'. The tenets of 'constitutional nationalism' have to be preserved and helped to prosper if the cultural element too has to thrive and grow, simultaneously. The alternative would be a return to the past, which is both disastrous and self-destructive. 

Different, but serious 

The Tamil Nadu case is slightly different, but more serious. Over the past years, political parties and Governments in the State have asked the Centre to send back Sri Lankan military personnel being trained, first in the institutions of the Defence Ministry within Tamil Nadu, and later anywhere else in the country. It can be argued that the presence of Sri Lankan military officers could create a Law and Order situation. Yet, the fact also remains that the Constitution has obligated upon the States the maintenance and enforcement of Law and Order, no excuses for non-enforcement. 

The Constitution has delineated Law and Order under the 'State List'. Yet, the Centre has acquired supervisory and constitutionally interventionist powers in effect, both under the law and in practice. No such comparable provision exists in terms of certain specific powers of the Centre, for States to intervene. The powers of the Immigration authorities are vested exclusively in the Union. So does the Customs Department, which was hosting friendly soccer matches with a visiting team of Sri Lankan school children. 

It is thus one thing for the Tamil Nadu Government to suspend an official who had granted permission for the soccer matches to be held in a Chennai stadium. It is entirely another thing for the State Government to thus interfere with the decision of the Centre, for the Customs Department to organise a friendly soccer match with a foreign team. It involves both power-sharing and the prestige of the nation, which States are bound to respect and the Centre is duty-bound to protect. 

Going by media reports, Chief Minister Jayalalithaa had ordered out the soccer team from the country. The reports remain unchallenged and undisputed. The Constitution and the laws made under the same provide for the Immigration authorities of the Centre alone to issue visas and cancel the same - but after citing the circumstances and reasons for such expulsion/deportation. Media reports at least have not mentioned either a consultative process or a decision made by the Immigration authorities in this regard. 

In promising security to all Sri Lankans visiting all parts of India, a statement from the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) implied the constitutional provision that Law & Order was a 'State Subject' under the Indian scheme. It thus made it clear that the Tamil Nadu Government had a constitutional responsibility to ensure the safety and security of the visitors, and that the Centre had a duty to ensure that constitutional authorities discharged their constitutional functions - neither more, nor less. It would still be unclear how a State Government, not being the visa-issuing authority under the Indian scheme, could direct foreigners visiting the country, to go back. 

This however is much different from the MEA's reference to Sri Lankan VIPs visiting India (read: Tamil Nadu, for most parts) without prior intimation. Independent of the reasons involved, Sri Lankan VIPs, including UNP Opposition Leader and former Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe and President Mahinda Rajapaksa's Tamil-speaking kin, Thirukumaran Nadesan, have been targeted in Tamil Nadu, the latter, more than once. Sections of the language media too had run speculative and unsubstantiated reports, bordering on outright imagination, about the pujas that he had organised in Hindu temples (kovils) and temple-towns in southern Tamil Nadu in particular. 

It is unclear as yet if Chief Minister Jayalalithaa's earlier letter to the Centre for visiting VIPs from Sri Lanka to keep the State Government informed about their movements has acquired the status of an Executive order of the Union. Otherwise, it was only proper that the Tamil Nadu Government needed to caution the Centre, and through the latter the Sri Lankan counterpart, about the need for the VIPs to inform the State authorities about their visits and travel plans, for them to be provided adequate security and to ensure that they stay away from trouble's way of every count. 

Political drift, parliamentary impasse 

It is sad that when the nation is facing minor episodes of monumental consequences on matters of constitutional propriety and responsibility, Parliament has been looking elsewhere. It cannot be anybody's case that the political class in general and Parliament in particular should not be agitated about corruption and other issues of governance. Yet, after refocusing their energies back to other issues of equal relevance, seldom has the political class and parliamentary processes revisited constitutional consequences of grave concern. 

There may be politics in it as there may be elsewhere, too. In the era of coalition politics, where the coordination committee of partners in Government is either non-existent or managed by the alliance leader, no one wants to hurt anyone, lest it should interfere with existing or future electoral arrangements. It is sad but true. This political drift should stop, if the basic fabric of the Indian Union and the basic structure of the Indian State have to remain the way envisioned by the Founding Fathers. The 'basic structure' of the Constitution is another arena where judicial intervention could be sought at times, to put the perspective back in place. 

If the Prime Minister of India has to meet up with the visiting President of Sri Lanka, or any other Head of State or Government from any other part of the world, it is his business. No section of polity functioning under the law of the land with anticipation of discharging constitutional duties subsequently can be allowed to have it both ways. It is more so in the case of constitutionally-constrained State Governments, which have greater responsibilities to the Constitution than under the Constitution. The Centre too has such responsibilities and obligations to ensure and enforce that other constitutional authorities discharged their constitutional functions, and did not infringe upon one another's territory. The law in this case has not changed, but has only been sharpened, over the past decades.