CENTRE-STATE RELATIONS A Good Lead Peripheralist THE attitude of different authorities and elements to the increasingly growing debate on Centre-state relations is very much related to their assumptions about the causes of the present malaise in the Indian situation and their perspective about the manner in which an attempt at a retrieval, and healthy development, can be made. While some effort had been made, especially by the CPI(M) government in West Bengal since 1977, to raise this question, it came into sharp focus only after the state level elections in Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka. The Akali agitation in the Punjab with its emphasis on a redefinition of Centre- state relations, almost along the lines of the Cabinet Mission scheme of 1946, provided a sharp edge to the nature of the debate. It appears obvious that it was only because of this last that Indira Gandhi decided to take notice of the debate, even while criticising the opposition for raising the question in a manner which, according to her, would weaken the Centre. Even though she announced the appointment of the Sar- karia Commission, that she was not very serious about the whole issue was clear from |the procrastination in appointing the other Members of the Commission and providing them the necessary facilities to commence their work. On the other hand, as had already happened once in 1967, the parties which came into power in the states showed keen interset in developing this theme as a matter of public debate, strengthening the suspicion that they were doing this merely as one of the instruments of political propaganda against the party in power at the Centre.
