Which of the following statement/s are correct ?
(a) According to K.C. Wheare, Indian Federalism is 'quasi-federal'.
(b) According to Morris Jones, Indian Federalism is 'bargaining federalism'.
(c) Ac

Question

Which of the following statement/s are correct ?
(a) According to K.C. Wheare, Indian Federalism is 'quasi-federal'.
(b) According to Morris Jones, Indian Federalism is 'bargaining federalism'.
(c) According to C.F. Strong, Indian Federalism is 'less federalism'.
(d) According to Granville Austin, Indian Federalism is 'Cooperative federalism'.

UnlockIAS · Accepted Answer

Correct — option (4), '(a), (b), (c) and (d)'. This is a scholar-to-label question, and the safest way to attack it is not to decide all four statements but to find the ones you are certain about and let the option set do the rest. Statement (a) is the most famous label of the lot. K.C. Wheare, the Oxford scholar whose book Federal Government set the classical test of federalism, held that a truly federal constitution divides powers so that the general and the regional governments are each, within a sphere, co-ordinate and independent. Measuring India's Constitution against that test, he found so many centralising devices — Parliament's power under Article 3 to redraw a State's boundaries without its consent, the emergency provisions, the single integrated judiciary, the All-India Services, the Governor as a Union appointee — that he described the system as quasi-federal, a unitary State with subsidiary federal features rather than a federal State with subsidiary unitary features. Statement (a) is correct. Statement (b) is also standard. W.H. Morris-Jones, writing on Indian politics, described Centre–State relations as bargaining federalism — the point being that the real business of the federation is not settled by reading the Seventh Schedule but by continuous negotiation between New Delhi and the States over money, projects and political support. Statement (b) is correct. Statement (d) is equally standard. Granville Austin, the historian of the Constituent Assembly and author of The Indian Constitution: Cornerstone of a Nation, characterised what the framers built as cooperative federalism — a Union and States that are not rivals in watertight compartments but partners obliged to work the same machinery together. Statement (c), attributing the phrase 'less federalism' to C.F. Strong, is the one that most candidates will hesitate over: it is not one of the stock quotations that the standard texts reproduce alongside Wheare's, Morris-Jones's and Austin's. The Commission's final key treats it as correct, and that key is the authority here — but notice that you never have to adjudicate it. Statement (b) is certainly true, which kills option (1) 'Only (a) and (d)' and option (3) 'Only (a)'. Statement (d) is certainly true, which kills option (2) 'Only (a), (b) and (c)'. One option is left standing, and it is option (4). A well-set multiple-choice paper very often lets you route around the single statement you cannot verify; look for that route before you guess.

Why the other options are wrong — (a) This admits Wheare's 'quasi-federal' and Austin's 'cooperative federalism' but throws out statement (b). That cannot stand: 'bargaining federalism' is W.H. Morris-Jones's own description of how Indian Centre–State relations actually work, and it sits in every standard list of scholarly labels for Indian federalism beside Wheare's and Austin's. A candidate who picks this option has usually recognised only the two most famous names on the page and treated the third as an invention.  (b) This drops statement (d), Granville Austin's 'cooperative federalism'. Austin is the least deniable attribution in the whole question — his study of the Constituent Assembly is the source normally cited for the idea that the framers deliberately built a Union and States meant to work in partnership rather than in watertight compartments. Any option that rejects (d) is rejecting the best-established of the four claims.  (c) This treats Wheare's 'quasi-federal' as the sole genuine attribution and all three others as manufactured. It is the option for a candidate who knows exactly one fact and assumes the examiner built the rest as traps. But statements (b) and (d) are both textbook attributions, so the option fails twice over. It is also a warning about a common exam instinct: 'only the one I recognise is real' is a guess, not a deduction.

Concept: A federation, in the classical sense Wheare used, needs two things: a written constitution that divides legislative and executive power between a general government and regional governments, and a guarantee that neither can unilaterally destroy the other's sphere — usually a rigid amendment procedure plus an independent court to police the boundary. India has all of the standard federal furniture: a written and largely rigid Constitution, a three-fold distribution of powers in the Seventh Schedule (Union, State and Concurrent Lists), bicameralism, and a Supreme Court that adjudicates Union–State disputes. But it also carries an unusual load of centralising features — single citizenship, one integrated judiciary, All-India Services officered by the Union but serving the States, Union power to alter State boundaries, Governors appointed by the Centre, and emergency provisions under which the federal division can be suspended in substance. Scholars have therefore reached for qualifying adjectives rather than calling India federal or unitary flat out, and those adjectives are exactly what this question tests.

State PCS 2026 Q81 — Polity & Governance PYQ with Answer

State PCS 2026 Q81 — Polity & Governance PYQ with Answer