It just looks like that on paper. Practically, all the power remain in the hands of elected members. Mostly old/retired politician or other people with little to no influence (few exceptions) are made governor. In theory, all powerful. In reality, puppet of central govt.
That is exactly what I wanted to say.
In India it is the central govt which dictates the state govt and exercises its uncontested authority over the state governments through the appointed governors. As you know the Indian president himself is a puppet of the central govt.
Now what is a central govt in a federal democratic system?
Central govt in a federal democratic system stands for centralization of powers. This is just another kind of dictatorship under the guise of democracy. Here the dictator is the centralized power which enjoys its omnipresent authority which cannot be challenged over other subjugated powers which can be considered as peripheral powers.
In another thread, you said dictatorship is not good for India. I would say a publicly declared dictatorship is not possible in India. The more you try to centralize power in the hands of a few, the more conflicting spheres would be created between the center and the periphery. Moreover, India has a pluralized heterogeneous society where the people are divided by castes, religions, races, regions, cultures, classes and so on and forth. In such a society, who will dictate and whom?
Gandhi after 1947, proposed a distinct type of ruling system in India. He talked about decentralizing powers at local level and termed it as village autonomy. Remember, it was 1947 then. The Indian society was largely agricultural during those days. And it was Nehru who introduced heavy industry in India during his prime minister ship. Anyway, Gandhi realized that centralized system of government in a dictatorial manner would never work in Indian society. But unfortunately Gandhi was sidelined by Nehru who dismissed Gandhi's self depending village autonomy system and introduced a semi oligarchic and semi federal ruling system which would save India's face yet would serve most of the interests of dictatorial rule. The task was given to Ambedkar who then wrote the basic features of the Indian Constitution.
Now, the oligarchical ruling clique comes from the Brahman Raj as historically since the foundation of Magadhan Kingdom in Pataliputra Brahmins had been enjoying unchallenged spiritual and political powers over low caste shudras and dalits. In the Indian social psyche, spiritualism is inseparably linked with material powers and who ever has the authority over spiritual affairs would also have the authority over material affairs.
N D Tiwari, a Maithil (of Bihar) Brahman by caste, himself belongs to such ruling clique of India.