A K Bhattacharya: Where's the NAC?

RAISINA HILL

Sonia Gandhi's exit has confirmed critics' contention that the body was a front to involve her in governance.

The National Advisory Council (NAC), according to its official website, sent its last communication to the Union government on March 6, 2006. The NAC website is well-maintained and is updated fairly regularly. It correctly captures the latest status on who are its members. It has even posted the various meetings the Council had scheduled between April and December 2006. So, it would be fair to assume that indeed the NAC has not sent any communication to the government for the last ten months.

The NAC's communications are important because almost all of them highlight relevant issues concerning the existing or proposed policies of the UPA government and suggest measures to improve them. Between August 2004 and March 2006, the Council sent as many as 30 such communications on diverse issues including the Right To Information Act, the Rural Employment Guarantee Act, rehabilitation of poor displaced people, rural roads programme, education cess, the mid-day meal scheme, wasteland development, judicial reforms, integrated energy policy and even the disinvestment of government equity in public sector units.

Equally important is the date from which such communications stopped going to the government. Immediately after its constitution, the Union government had appointed Congress president, Sonia Gandhi, as the NAC's chairperson. But thanks to the controversy over whether an elected member of Parliament can hold an office of profit, Gandhi quit the chairmanship and her Lok Sabha seat in the last week of March 2006. She returned to the Lok Sabha after winning the bye-election that was conducted soon thereafter. But she chose not to resume her responsibilities as the NAC chairperson. Nor did the government appoint any other person to head the Council.

Since Gandhi left the NAC in March 2006, the pace of its activities has certainly slowed down. Of the 30 communications sent to the government, only four were sent between January and March 2006, while there were 10 communications in 2004 and 16 in 2005. Aruna Roy, a social activist and a member of the NAC, quit the Council in June 2006 and one of the points she made in her letter to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh was that the Council was no longer meeting as regularly as it was doing earlier. Dr Singh subsequently announced that the scope of the NAC would be enhanced. But over the last few months, the NAC's role has shrunk even further.

From the UPA government's perspective, the NAC was no doubt playing an important role as envisaged in the government order in May 2004. The NAC was expected to monitor the implementation of the national common minimum programme (NCMP) of the UPA government and to provide support to the government in its legislative business. The government order gave it a position of authority, as not only were the NAC's activities funded by the exchequer, but even its secretariat was run by the Prime Minister's Office. The financial outlay for running the PMO was suitably enhanced to meet the financial requirements of the NAC. Against an expenditure of Rs 11.72 crore for running the PMO in 2003-04, the revised estimate for expenditure on PMO in 2004-05 and in 2005-06 went up to Rs 14.59 crore and Rs 15.20 crore, respectively.

Critics, of course, pointed out that the NAC was created ostensibly to allow Sonia Gandhi to have a say in the way the government was to be run. The government has been consistently rejecting such suggestions and has justified the role of the NAC on the grounds that it is mandated to supervise the implementation of the NCMP, which is the ideological meeting ground for the parties that are partners of the UPA, including those who have lent it support.

Ironically, Sonia Gandhi's decision to quit the NAC in March 2006, her decision not to resume her NAC responsibilities subsequently, the government's failure to appoint a new chairperson of the Council and the perceptible slow-down in its activities since March are all proving the critics right. The force and spirit behind the NAC was Sonia Gandhi. And now that she is not there, the Council is no longer the force that it used to be. The government has also found no reason to appoint a new head because it does not see any political need to do so.

The financial outlay for PMO in 2006-07 was Rs 16 crore, which had budgeted also for the expenditure to be incurred on running the NAC at the same pace as was witnessed in the previous two years. Finance Minister P Chidambaram might save some money allocated under this head for the current year. But critics of NAC would feel vindicated.