Power-sharing: Class 10 Civics · Chapter 1

Who holds the power in a cricket match? The selectors chose the squad before the toss. The captain sets the field and the batting order. The umpires rule on every appeal, and the third umpire can overturn an on-field call. Nobody controls the whole game, and that is exactly why both teams accept the result.

In Class 9 you saw that a democracy does not hand all its power to one organ of government. This chapter takes that idea further. We begin with two countries, Belgium and Sri Lanka, that faced the same question: how should power be shared between communities that speak different languages? They gave opposite answers. Their stories show why democracies practise power-sharing (सत्ता की साझेदारी) and lead us to the main forms it takes. Chapter 2, Federalism, then studies one of those forms closely.

1.1 Belgium and Sri Lanka

Belgium lies in western Europe, and it is small: its area, about 30,700 km², is smaller than Haryana's 44,212 km². Its neighbours are the Netherlands to the north, Germany to the east, Luxembourg to the south-east and France to the south and west. On 1 January 2024 it had about 1.18 crore people (Statbel, Belgium's statistics office); the textbook rounds this to a little over one crore.

Belgium's size is ordinary; its make-up is not. Three language communities live there, and each is an ethnic group with its own sense of shared culture. Most Dutch speakers live in Flanders, the northern region. Most French speakers live in Wallonia, the southern region. A small German-speaking community lives near the eastern border. The capital, Brussels, forms a region of its own in which both French and Dutch are official.

Numbers alone hide a twist. For a long time the French-speaking minority was the richer and more powerful group. French was the language of business, government and universities, and industry grew first in the south. Flanders caught up only after the Second World War, and many Dutch speakers felt they had been treated as second-class citizens in their own country. In the 1950s and 1960s this grievance produced sharp tension between the two communities.

The tension was sharpest in Brussels. Across the country, Dutch speakers were the majority; inside the capital they were a small minority. So both sides could feel threatened at once: French speakers by the national majority, Dutch speakers by the majority in the capital (Fig. 1.1).

Now cross to South Asia. Sri Lanka, an island nation, is separated from Tamil Nadu only by the narrow Palk Strait. Its 2012 census counted about 2 crore people, and its 2024 census about 2.2 crore. Its two largest groups are Sinhala speakers and Tamil speakers. The Tamils themselves form two groups. Sri Lankan Tamils belong to communities that have lived on the island for centuries, mainly in its north and east. Indian Tamils descend from workers who were brought from India to the tea and coffee plantations during British rule.

Religion overlaps with language, but not neatly. Most Sinhala speakers are Buddhists, while the Tamils are mostly Hindu or Muslim. Christians, about 7 per cent of the population (7.4 per cent in the 2012 census), are found among both Sinhala and Tamil speakers.

Imagine you led either country. In Belgium, the Dutch-speaking majority could have used its numbers to override everyone else. Resentment would have grown, and a break-up might have followed. Such a split would have been bitter, because Brussels lies inside Flanders but mostly speaks French, so neither side would give it up. In Sri Lanka the Sinhala majority was larger still, so it could dominate the whole island with ease. What each country actually did is the subject of the next two sections.

1.2 Majoritarianism in Sri Lanka

Sri Lanka, then called Ceylon, became independent from Britain in 1948. Within a few years the Sinhala community's leaders had turned their numbers into control of the state. A party could win power on Sinhala votes alone, so governments came under pressure to put the Sinhala language, religion and community first. This approach has a name: majoritarianism (बहुसंख्यकवाद).

• Language (1956): an Act of Parliament made Sinhala the only official language. Tamil was left out.
• Colleges and jobs: government policies gave Sinhala applicants an edge in university admissions and government jobs.
• Religion (1972): a new constitution gave Buddhism the foremost place and made it the state's duty to protect and foster it.

Each step alone might have looked small. Added together, they sent Sri Lankan Tamils a message: the new state was not equally theirs. A Tamil-speaking graduate now faced a government that worked in a language not her own, and a harder path to college and public jobs. Tamil leaders complained that no major party, all of them led by Sinhala Buddhists, took their community's concerns seriously. Trust between the two communities wore away.

Tamil parties campaigned for three things: Tamil as an official language, more autonomy for the provinces where Tamils lived, and an equal chance in education and jobs. The call for provincial autonomy was turned down again and again. Over time some groups stopped asking for a share of power and began demanding a country of their own, Tamil Eelam, in the north and east.

Over the years mistrust hardened into armed conflict and finally into a civil war (गृहयुद्ध) (Fig. 1.2). The cost was enormous. Deaths ran into many thousands on both sides of the divide. People fled their homes, some to camps inside the country and others abroad, including to Tamil Nadu. In the war zones, farming, fishing and trade collapsed, and schools and hospitals were wrecked. The fighting ended in May 2009.

1.3 Accommodation in Belgium

Belgium faced the same danger and made the opposite choice. Its leaders, Dutch- and French-speaking alike, accepted that no community could be made to give up its language or its voice. Over about twenty years they rebuilt the state through four rounds of constitutional change, in 1970, 1980, 1988–89 and 1993. By 1993 Belgium had turned from a unitary state into a federal one, with a home-grown design. This approach of making room for every community is called accommodation.

1. Central government: the constitution requires equal numbers of Dutch- and French-speaking ministers (the Prime Minister may be the exception). Certain special laws pass only if most members of each language group in Parliament vote for them, so neither community can decide alone.
2. Regional governments: many powers moved from the centre to the regions. Regional governments are not junior to the central government: in their own fields, they have the final say.11Belgium has three regions: Flanders, Wallonia and Brussels-Capital. The textbook's “two regions” means Flanders and Wallonia; Brussels is treated separately.
3. Brussels: the capital has its own government in which Dutch and French speakers have equal representation. This was a trade: Dutch speakers gave up their majority advantage at the centre, and in return French speakers gave up theirs in the capital.
4. Community governments: each language community, Dutch, French and German-speaking, chooses its own government, whichever part of Belgium its members live in. These governments look after language, culture and schooling.

Is the Belgian model tidy? Not at all. A country smaller than Haryana runs about half a dozen governments, and even Belgians find the system hard to explain. Yet judged by its purpose, it has worked. The language quarrel of the 1950s and 1960s has been fought out in parliaments and elections rather than with weapons. The country has stayed in one piece instead of splitting along language lines. Brussels even went on to host the main offices of the European Union.

1.4 What the two stories teach

Put the two stories side by side and a pattern appears. Both countries held elections; both had a large majority and an anxious minority. Belgium's leaders treated the minority's fears as a problem the whole country had to solve, and every group gave up something to reach a deal. Sri Lanka's governments treated the majority's numbers as a licence to decide alone. The result was not a stronger state but a divided, war-torn one (Fig. 1.4). The lesson: in a diverse country, refusing to share power is the surest way to lose unity.

1.5 Why power-sharing is desirable

Sharing power can sound like a recipe for weakness: more people to consult, more voices to satisfy. But think of a housing society. If one resident fixes the maintenance charges alone, others refuse to pay and the matter ends up in court. If an elected committee with a member from every building decides, people may grumble, but they pay, because they had a say. Power that is shared is often obeyed more willingly. There are two kinds of reasons for sharing power (Fig. 1.5).

Prudential reasons (युक्तिपरक) are about results. They ask a practical question: which arrangement gives a calmer, safer, steadier country? Groups that hold a share of power have less reason to fight, so riots, rebellions and toppled governments become less likely; power-sharing keeps the political order stable. Simply outvoting a minority is quicker in the short run, but each defeat adds to its anger, and over the years the nation's unity wears thin. The 'tyranny of the majority' also rebounds on the majority: Sri Lanka's war cost the Sinhala community dearly in lives, money and security too.

Moral reasons do not count costs and benefits at all. They hold that sharing power is simply the right way to govern, because in a democracy power belongs to the people in the first place. A decision about a village's well, a city's buses or a nation's language affects real people, and those people deserve a voice in it. Being consulted is their right, not a favour. A government in which citizens take part, by voting, debating and serving on councils, gives everyone a stake in the system, and that is what makes it legitimate. In this sense, sharing power is the very spirit of democracy.

In short, prudential reasons value power-sharing for the better outcomes it brings, while moral reasons value the act of sharing itself. Now return to the worry at the start of the chapter: does sharing power weaken a country?

The Taif Agreement itself names the end of religion-based posts as a long-term national goal, while keeping the shares until then. That is itself a kind of middle path.

1.6 Forms of power-sharing

For centuries, rulers and thinkers assumed that a state needs a single centre of command. A Mughal emperor or a French king made the laws, ran the administration and heard the final appeals. Spreading power out, they feared, would mean endless argument and orders that nobody obeyed. Power-sharing grew up as a challenge to this idea of undivided power.

Democracy starts from the opposite end. If power comes from the people in the first place, it makes little sense to lock it up in one office. Citizens run their own affairs through elected bodies, from Parliament down to the gram sabha. A healthy democracy listens to its many communities and opinions and lets ordinary people shape public decisions. So the democratic instinct is to spread power across as many hands as possible.

Modern democracies share power in many ways. Four arrangements are the most common.

1.6.1 Among organs of government

Picture the three organs of government, the legislature, the executive and the judiciary, standing in a row at the same level. Each holds a different kind of power: making laws, carrying them out, and deciding disputes about them. Because this sharing runs sideways, across one level, it is called the horizontal distribution of power (सत्ता का क्षैतिज वितरण). Splitting power this way means no organ can do whatever it likes, because the other two are watching (Fig. 1.6).

You saw examples in Class 9. Ministers run the government, but they must answer to Parliament or the state assembly. Members question them, and the Lok Sabha can remove a government by passing a motion of no confidence. Judges are formally appointed by the President, the head of the executive, yet the courts can strike down a government order or a law that breaks the Constitution. This web of mutual control is called checks and balances (नियंत्रण और संतुलन).

1.6.2 Among governments at different levels

The second form shares power between governments at different levels: one government for the whole country and others for its provinces or regions. The government for the whole country is usually called the federal government (संघीय सरकार); in India we call it the Union or Central Government. Regional governments have different names in different countries: states in India and the USA, provinces in Canada, Länder in Germany.

Some countries, especially small ones such as Singapore, have no provincial governments at all. Where there are several levels, the constitution itself decides which level handles which subjects. In India, for example, defence and currency belong to the Union, while police and agriculture belong to the states. Dividing power by constitution in this way is the federal division of power. Belgium chose it; Sri Lanka's governments turned it down when Tamil parties asked for it.

The same logic reaches below the states, to municipalities in towns and panchayats in villages. Any sharing between higher and lower levels of government is called the vertical division of power (सत्ता का ऊर्ध्वाधर वितरण) (Fig. 1.7). Chapter 2 is devoted to it.

1.6.3 Among social groups

A third kind of sharing is between social groups: communities defined by religion, language, caste or gender. Belgium's community governments do this for language groups. India does it mainly through reservation. You met reserved constituencies (आरक्षित निर्वाचन क्षेत्र) in Class 9: in the Lok Sabha, 84 seats are reserved for Scheduled Castes and 47 for Scheduled Tribes. Only candidates from those groups may contest them, though every voter in the constituency votes (Fig. 1.8).

In every panchayat and municipality, at least one-third of the seats are reserved for women, under the 73rd and 74th Amendments of 1992. In 2023 Parliament passed the Constitution (106th Amendment) Act to reserve one-third of the seats in the Lok Sabha and state assemblies for women. It will take effect after the next census and the redrawing of constituencies that follows it.

Why reserve seats at all? A community that has been kept out of decision-making for generations may come to see the government as someone else's. Guaranteed seats give such groups a voice from the inside and give minorities a fair share of power instead of none. Chapter 3, Gender, Religion and Caste, looks at how democracies accommodate such differences.

1.6.4 Among parties, pressure groups and movements

The last form is less formal. It works through political parties, pressure groups and movements, which compete for power or press upon whoever holds it. In an election, voters choose among rival parties, and today's losers may win the next time. Over a series of elections, power changes hands among parties that speak for different ideas and different social groups, so no party can treat it as permanent property.

Sometimes the sharing is direct. Two or more parties may fight an election as an alliance. If they win, they form a coalition government (गठबंधन सरकार) in which they divide the ministries between them (Fig. 1.9). India's Union government has often been a coalition since 1989, and so have many state governments.

Power is also shared with organised interests. Farmers' unions, trade unions, chambers of commerce and industry, and traders' associations try to shape decisions by sitting on government committees, meeting ministers and running public campaigns. Such pressure groups (दबाव समूह) do not contest elections, yet they influence those who govern. Movements can push governments in the same way: the campaign for the right to information, for example, helped bring about the Right to Information Act of 2005. Chapter 4, Political Parties, looks at parties in detail.