Hold your horses, this is false equivalence. India is no where near China or Russia, Turkey may be closest thing but that is also kind of false. State governments in India are powerful and that complicates many things.
State governments in India are not powerful, and they never have been! The constitution of India grants much more power to the Central Government than it does to the State Governments. The BJP government has pushed the boundary of federalism again and again. Here are some concrete examples:
1. Denial of statehood to Jammu and Kashmir.
2. Using the Centre-appointed governor to take down the Govt. of Maharashtra.
3. Constant pushback on policies and appointments made by the Govt. of Delhi.
Time to time center was able to disrupt state governments but the states have enormous latitude on taxation, duties and policies. For much of India's existence each state is its own parallel system. The whole GST is trying to harmonize the taxing in India across States and that came what 75 years after Independence.
2. BJP has in past offered plum post retirement positions to judges after they delivered some controversial decisions in favour of BJP.
3. BJP has full control on Election commission, and the electronic voting machines. Despite multiple reposts of voting machines found in cars of BJP candidates, or videos of faulty machines showing votes in favour of BJP, and despite calls for letting opposition parties inspect machines, Election commission has never let them inspect the machines.
4. A large number of bigots are in various positions in various administrative services and in recent years they have started showing their hate in open.