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SAI INTERNATIONAL SCHOOL

SESSION 2020-21

CLASS-X

POLITICAL SCIENCE-CH-2-FEDERALISM

Lesson Notes

SUB-TOPIC-3

Sub-Topic Notes
How is The real success of federalism in India is attributed to its nature of
Federalism democratic politics. Have a look at some of the major ways in which
Practised? federalism is practised in India.
1. Linguistic States: After independence, in 1950, the boundaries
pg-19,20 of several old states were changed in order to create new
states. This was done to ensure that the people who spoke the
same language, share common culture, ethnicity or geography
could live in the same state.
(ii) Language Policy: The Indian Constitution did not give the
status of national language to any one of the languages. Though
Hindi was identified as the optional language, but the central
government has not imposed Hindi on states where people
speak a different language. Besides Hindi, there are 22 other
languages recognised as Scheduled Languages by the Indian
Constitution.
(iii) Centre-State relations: Improving the Centre-State
relations is one more way in which federalism has been
strengthened in practice. Though Indian Constitution has
demarcated the powers of the Union and the state governments
but still the Union government can have influence over the state
in many ways.
In the past, the Central government has often misused the
Constitution to dismiss the state governments that were
controlled by rival parties. This undermined the spirit of
federalism, and that of democracy.
The judiciary has played a major role in improving the autonomy
of the state governments because many a time, it has rescued
state governments which were dismissed in an arbitrary
manner.