62 SOCIAL SCIENTIST cither through his friends and well-wishers or through the party he belongs to. The Election Commission is presented as an impartial body. But the Chief Election Commissioner and other Election Commissioners are appointed by the President, that is, the Prime Minister and the Council of Ministers. The office of ihe Chief Election Commissioner is bestowed upon a person in whom the party m power reposes complete confidence. Centre-State Relations The constitution confers only normal autonomy to the states. They are utterly dependent on the centre which can keep the state governments under control through the mechanism of grants-in-aid and subsidies. The entire field of economic development, planning, currency and finance is under central purview. A state government cannot raise its own army, air force or navy because defence is exclusively administered by the centre. Thus the tremendous powers invested with the central government is aimed at curbing the growth of the revolutionary forces of the toiling masses and preventing any reduction of state power in the hands of the ruling classes. 1 L Grigoryan and Y Dolgopolov, Fundamentals of Soviet State Law, 1971. 2 Ibid., p 23. 3 Shibanikinkar, Constituent Assembly of India, 1973, p 106. ^ Ibid., p 109. 8 J V Stalin, Problems of Leninism, Moscow 1947, pp 543, 551. * Grigoryan and Dolgopolov, op. cit., 105-6. 7 Ibid., p 133.