Question

“K. Santhanam was in favour of giving greater powers to the provinces in the Constituent Assembly.” Examine the statement.

Answer 1

• K. Santhanam from Madras strongly supported giving more powers to the provinces during the Constituent Assembly discussions.
• He argued that placing all authority in the hands of the Centre would make it overloaded and ineffective.
• Santhanam felt that decentralisation would actually make the Centre stronger rather than weaken it.
• He was concerned that concentrating financial powers at the Centre would make provinces poor and dependent on it even for basic needs.
• Santhanam cautioned that if this imbalance continued, it could result in resistance or revolt by the provinces against the Centre.