There are several solutions to this deadlock. These range from reforming the Rajya Sabha such that it can be a genuine site for representing states to expanding the size of the Lok Sabha such that no state is adversely affected, even as the more populous receive additional seats, to redrawing boundaries of the more populous states — UP and Bihar. However, for our polity to find a sustainable path out of this impasse, it has to first come to terms with the elephant in the room. The imperatives of economic growth and the growing socio-economic divergence between states have weakened the foundations of India’s current federal consensus. After the settlement of the language question with the State Reorganisation Act, this is the first potent political challenge to the federal consensus. A new institutional and political culture needs to evolve undergirded by a commitment to the principle of federalism. The delimitation impasse is an outcome of a refusal to address this reality.

Historically, India’s federal bargain has been remarkably comfortable with high levels of administrative and fiscal centralisation. Even in the peak coalition era, regional parties did little to challenge the status quo, choosing instead to draw on the centralised structure to extract bargains. The result was an instrumental commitment to the federal principle that cohered around self-interest rather than a much-needed deepening of federalism (strengthening the inter-state council; reducing fiscal control of the Centre, for instance) that India was ripe for. States often complained. Indeed, as chief minister (CM), Narendra Modi led the charge demanding that 50% of the divisible pool of taxes be devolved to states. But this remained in the arena of political grandstanding. The status quo suited the political culture of the day. In the bargain, states willingly accepted the equity principle (poorer states receiving a larger share of national taxes) and representational inequality that glued India’s federal architecture.

This is no longer tenable. Economic growth has placed new demands on India’s federal consensus. On the one hand, an integrated, modern economy requires degrees of centralisation. There is a sound economic rationale, for instance, in moving toward rationalised tax structures, regulated national markets, portable public services across state boundaries. But in doing so, states will lose degrees of autonomy and new distributional conflicts will emerge. The impetus thus falls on the Union to credibly navigate these conflicts.

The fallout from the move to the Goods and Service Tax illustrates this. Once the states gave up their sovereign right to tax, the stakes on monies received via tax devolution were raised. This brought the wide economic gulf between states into sharp relief and framed the context in which richer states in the economically dynamic South have begun to challenge the equity principle that undergirded the fiscal federal compact. This, they now argue, “penalises” them for their economic success. As the CM of Karnataka, Siddaramaiah pointed out to the 16th Finance Commission, “for every rupee that Karnataka contributes (in the current equity-based formulae) only 15 paise is returned to it.” Tamil Nadu has made the same argument. The concerns over delimitation are another side of the same coin.

The real question that India must ask is this: Is the equity principle sustainable in a polity where spatial divergence of growth has become a feature rather than a bug in the economy? And if not, are there a different set of federal instruments that the Union government can deploy, pooling centrally sponsored schemes to create a special purpose development fund, for example, while rebalancing the devolution formulae?

The representational dilemma will only be resolved when the consequences of persistent inequality are acknowledged, and new institutional arrangements debated in this context. But the burden to credibly signal a commitment to the federal principle and arrive at a new consensus is the Union’s. The BJP’s federal impatience makes this a difficult task. The consequence of New Delhi stripping autonomous state governments of their powers (Jammu & Kashmir and Delhi) and bringing them under central control to denying states of their rightful share of taxes via the imposition of cess and surcharges and encouraging an administrative culture that is in service of the Union, is that India does not have a credible federal mediator at this crucial juncture. In these conditions, the states have every incentive to up the political ante and strike uncompromising positions.

The delimitation conundrum exposes the limits to India’s present federal bargain. Amidst this impasse, I fear that the best outcome of the current deadlock may well be Tamil Nadu CM MK Stalin’s proposal of kicking the can down the road. In the bargain, India’s preciously negotiated federal settlement will only weaken.

Yamini Aiyar is a visiting senior fellow at Brown University. The views expressed are personal