NITI Aayog takes steps to foster cooperative federalism

Away from the limelight, the NITI Aayog has taken some concrete steps in the past few months to foster the idea of cooperative federalism as envisaged by Prime Minister Narendra Modi and is trying to bring about qualitative change in governance in the states.

Officials said though the Aayog is in news for big reports and recommendations, it has quietly managed to get some fundamental changes done in the states.

In Rajasthan, the Aayog has managed to convince the state government to repeal 65 old and obsolete laws and statutes, which had outlived their utility. In the second stage, the Aayog plans to rationalise and harmonise the remaining laws and statues which ultimately would lead to lesser administrative burden and a lean and more efficient administration.

A similar exercise is underway in other states too. The Aayog has started working with the Jammu and Kashmir government to doing away with obsolete laws in the state.

Officials said the Aayog is facing some big challenges in J&K because of the peculiar nature of status given to the state under the Constitution.

"There are many local laws and statues which are specific to the state and tinkering with them will require a lot of expertise," said a senior official directly involved in the matter. He said the Aayog is looking to involve local expertise and experts to advise it on the subject. The Aayog is also closely working with the states to evolve a unified and mutually accepted poverty line and definition of poverty.

The basic idea, according to an official, is to encourage states to give their respective poverty lines which would then be reconciled to arrive at a national unified figure.

DECENTRALISING

• In Rajasthan, the NITI Aayog along has managed to convince the state government to repeal 65 old and obsolete laws and statutes
• The Aayog also plans to rationalise and harmonise the remaining laws and statues which would lead to lesser administrative burden and more efficient administration
• It has started working with Jammu and Kashmir government to do away with obsolete laws in the state
• It is also looking to involve local expertise and experts on the issue of obsolete laws
• The Aayog is also working with the states to evolve a unified and mutually accepted poverty line and definition of poverty

The Aayog decided to consult states following the publication of a discussion paper based on the recommendation of a high-powered task force constituted under Vice-Chairman Arvind Panagariya. It has, so far, held consultations with southern states, while discussions with others would be held shortly.

The task force favoured adopting a poverty line based on any of the recommendations, be it the Suresh Tendulkar committee, C Rangarajan panel or an entirely new methodology in six months. However, there was no unanimity within the task force on the methodology, they added.

"The task force on poverty elimination has prepared a discussion paper and will invite comments from stakeholders and states next week before firming up its recommendations," a source said.

Meanwhile, the task force suggested a number of steps. These include making anti-poverty programmes such as Public Distribution System (PDS), Mid-day Meal Scheme, Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS) and Housing for All more effective, the sources said.

It feels poverty could only be reduced if job-intensive economic growth accelerates on a sustained basis. The panel has decided there are four ways that could be considered for tracking the poor.

One could continue with the Tendulkar panel's poverty line, switch to the Rangarajan or other higher rural and urban poverty lines, track progress of the bottom 30 per cent of the population over time, or track progress along specific components of poverty, such as nutrition, housing, drinking water, sanitation, electricity and connectivity.

However, some senior officials said extensive consultation with the states on the issue of poverty line could throw up divergent views as no state would want to show that less number of people are outside the ambit of poverty as most central grants are linked to the same. "Unless states act in a completely non-partisan manner and decide to present a correct picture on the number of people who are actually poor it is difficult to rely on their prognosis," another official said.

He said a better option would have been to rely on the Socio-Economic Caste Census but only the urban part is available in the same.