79

This article examines how economic reforms in India over the past three decades are redefining the spatial dimension of state action and thus changing the economic geographies and internal geopolitics of federal governance. While tensions between New Delhi and the States are by no means recent, this relationship must now deal with two major parameters : strong but highly uneven economic growth across regions and fragmentation of the political system at all levels, accelerated by ever more intense electoral competition. While one of the most significant developments is the greater autonomy of sub-national political arenas from the central government due to their progressive territorialisation, New Delhi is not retreating from the policy front The current BJP government is fuelling tensions by trying to strengthen its control and impose its vision for national development, at a time when the States are not particularly united due to their divergent economic and political trajectories.