A high-level committee on Union-State relations appointed by the Government of Tamil Nadu has mapped the pattern of centralisation of power and the weakening of federal democracy in India over the decades, and suggested comprehensive corrective measures. The three-member Committee, chaired by a former Supreme Court judge, Justice Kurian Joseph, has drawn on scholarship across various disciplines, Constituent Assembly debates, and the findings of three other committees on Centre-State relations, while also critiquing recent governance trends that weaken the authority of States. It concludes that centralisation is increasing — which it notes is not healthy — and calls for urgent remedial measures. The report is an expansive critique of the dilapidation of federalism, threatening India’s progress, and calls for changes to reverse the dangerous course, stating that “Indian federalism now requires a structural reset comparable in ambition to the economic reforms of 1991”. India’s constitutional framework took shape against the backdrop of Partition, and the consolidation of princely States. The context encouraged the founders to tilt towards a centralising constitutional scheme; legislative, administrative, and judicial measures in the ensuing decades further reinforced this line of thinking. The report convincingly takes down the arguments for centralisation, and argues that federalised governance is essential for a country of India’s size and diversity, and that it would in fact be dangerous to overlook this imperative.