India is formally a parliamentary democracy modeled on the Westminster system, but the actual distribution of power between the prime minister, the cabinet, and Parliament has varied dramatically depending on the political context. Under leaders who command overwhelming party majorities — Jawaharlal Nehru, Indira Gandhi, Narendra Modi — the system has operated as a highly centralized prime ministerial government where the PM sets the agenda and the cabinet implements it. During the coalition era of 1989-2014, when no single party won a parliamentary majority, prime ministers were far more constrained by the demands of regional coalition partners, and policy emerged through laborious negotiation among parties with fundamentally different electorates and priorities.
Indian federalism is not a tidy division of powers but an ongoing negotiation between the center and twenty-eight states that vary enormously in population, wealth, language, and political culture. States control education, policing, land, and many welfare programs, while the central government controls defense, foreign affairs, and the fiscal architecture. The Goods and Services Tax Council, the Finance Commission, and the NITI Aayog are all institutional arenas where center-state bargaining takes place. Crucially, state elections often produce outcomes that contradict national trends — a party that dominates nationally may be irrelevant in Tamil Nadu or Kerala, and regional parties with no national presence can control states with populations larger than most European countries.
