Revive Inter-State Council

Institution can give substance to slogan of co-operative federalism

Last week, the prime minister chaired the fifth meeting of the Governing Council of the NITI Aayog, where many issues of national importance, involving coordination between the Centre and the state governments, were discussed. However, not all chief ministers attended the meeting — three were absent. One of those chief ministers, Mamata Banerjee of West Bengal, wrote to the prime minister, saying that attending the NITI Aayog meeting was “fruitless” because the body had no powers to support state plans, as distinct from the now defunct Planning Commission. While Ms Banerjee’s refusal may have a great deal to do with politics — the Trinamool Congress is fighting off the expansion of the Bharatiya Janata Party in West Bengal — there is also something in what she says that should be taken seriously. Her letter suggested that the Inter-State Council should be revived as the “nodal” location for discussing matters that involve both the Centre and the states. This suggestion was also made in his speech to the NITI Aayog Governing Council by Kerala Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan.

This is a possibility worth considering. The Inter-State Council is indeed the appropriate location for many major issues of national scope to be discussed. For example, the question of simultaneous elections to the Centre and the states, which has been a pet subject of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, should ideally be discussed at an Inter-State Council. Coordination between states on counter-extremist and counter-terror operations is another such issue. Past attempts to knit together separate efforts, such as against the Naxalites, did not necessarily do well and foundered on various questions to do with federalism and states’ power to control law and order. Even Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar, whose Janata Dal (United) is an ally of the BJP, has spoken of how centrally sponsored scheme drain state resources unduly without giving state leaders even leeway. This is another question that could and should be discussed fruitfully within the context of the Inter-State Council, given that other chief ministers also agreed with Mr Kumar. Many also asked for the backlog of the Mahatma Gandhi Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme payments to be released. Karnataka Chief Minister H D Kumaraswamy complained that revenues from the GST were proving to be disappointing and thus asked that the compensation to the states be extended beyond 2022.

 
The speeches of chief ministers at the NITI Aayog Governing Council revealed that there are many such issues that go beyond the five-point agenda set out by the Centre for the meeting. The co-operative nature of the GST Council, in which the Centre and the states meet to determine the outlines of the GST, has shown that there is considerable scope for such institutions that give substance to the prime minister’s promise of “co-operative federalism”. It is time therefore to revive those institutions that could serve to arrive at a consensus on such issues. Certainly, the Inter-State Council is one such.