Census, Delimitation & MNREGA Pushback | South Central Episode 55

In this year-ender episode of South Central, hosts Dhanya Rajendran and Pooja Prasanna discuss federalism and how it has fared in India.

Published on:

19 Dec 2025, 2:37 pm

In this year-ender episode of South Central, hosts Dhanya Rajendran and Pooja Prasanna discuss federalism and how it has fared in India. They are joined by economist and scholar Rathin Roy, and TNM’s Associate Editor Nandini Chandrasekhar.

Rathin Roy begins the discussion by stating that, post-COVID, there has been no census, leaving only speculation about the gender ratio, occupational and age-wise break-ups. “The second problem is that nothing definitive has been agreed upon or announced with respect to a promised delimitation,” she says.

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Dhanya points out that another point of debate and criticism pertains to the MNREGA Bill, which is being called a hit on federalism.

“It is not a hit, but now states have to pay 40% instead of 20%, and states can choose not to implement it. Prosperous states with high per capita income can opt out of MNREGA since it is a Union government scheme. So rather than federalism, this reflects on the situation of many states where people are desperate for work. So the Union will say if they need it, they have to pay more,” Rathin says. He also adds that the states cannot decide the criteria of such a programme, but if they have disagreements, they must make that heard.

Pooja points out that the operative part here is the criteria for such Union government schemes being transparent.

“When a state says they do not want a scheme, they would not get the money, which they need. This is also money from taxes, which the states have also contributed to. So these states not getting back money for their needs on account of an arbitrary scheme is also the political catch of the problem,” she says.

Rathin says that states must negotiate in that case, which has not happened in the MNREGA’s case. “It is one thing to say that CESS tax by Union from states is unfair. But it is another thing to say that any Union government scheme should involve greater consultation with states because they pay this tax,” he adds.

Pooja and Dhanya also add how no two states in the country are the same, and a one-size-fits-all formula devised by the Union government is not fair to such needs of the states.

Nandini says that language is also another aspect, a regular trigger when it comes to the federalism debate. “Imposition of Hindi, for example, has today become a tool to bulldoze cultural federalism,” she adds.

Pooja points out that in terms of linguistic federalism, most forms in union banks are in Hindi or English. “Why can’t there be more integration in such aspects?” she asks.Dhanya adds that there is considerable anger among common citizens on how everyday activities like language and access become tense owing to the domination of one over the other.

All this and more.

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Audio Timecodes

00:00:00- Introduction

00:02:01 - Headlines

00:15:53 - Federalism

01:17:29- Recommendations

References

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