Constitution

The Indian Constitution: Conversations with Power https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=di3tSPmmktg Center for the Advanced Study of India (CASI) Sep 17, 2022
Indian Constitution is a terrain of contestation between different—and often conflicting—visions of power. As a document that creates, shapes, and constrains power, the Constitution is not exhausted by its text; it is in ambiguities and silences, where the work of interpretation takes place, that this contest plays out. The talk will highlight some of these axes of power and then take one specific example—federalism—to argue that over time, the Constitution has been subjected to a "centralizing drift," i.e., interpretation (especially by the Supreme Court) that shifts power to the central executive, at the expense of other power holders. This "centralizing drift" was not inevitable but is the product of active judicial and interpretive choices and, therefore, can be potentially reversed in the future.