NDC - monologues prevail

By S. Swaminathan

The National Development Council (NDC), although lacking a constitutional status, is conceptually the supreme decision- making body, in our federal polity. The lamentable reality, however, is that successive governments, at the Centre, have treated the NDC as an avoidable irritation mainly because the ``once in the blue-moon" meetings of the NDC, in the past, have invariably turned out to be exercises in unilateral affirmation of wisdom by the Centre qualified only by dogmatic protests by opposition-ruled states against the perceived niggardliness of Central funding support.

Contrary to a consensual mode of interaction at frequent intervals which is vitally needed to impart cohesion and continuity to governance, benefiting the people at large, the NDC meetings have come to be regarded as largely ritualistic gatherings where the Centre articulates its perceptions of ``action needed but not happening" while the disgruntled State governments air their own eternal grievances in the fiscal domain, without anything materialising in the form of a credible national agenda.

Rubber-stamping the Tenth Plan

Last week's meeting of the NDC, the 49th in its long history, was no departure from the encrusted mindset excepting for the fact that the agenda was dominated by the formality of endorsement of the Approach Paper on the Tenth Plan. That nearly 30 months had lapsed after the last meeting of the NDC in February 1999 is enough to show how apathetic the Centre had remained to the need to convene NDC meetings earlier to orchestrate developmental schemes throughout the country, from time to time so that ridiculous failure of governance of the type which has manifested itself recently in Orissa, in starvation deaths in a country which has hoarded foodgrain stocks of the magnitude of 60 million tonnes, no longer maligns a democratic order.

Belated as it was, the NDC meeting appears to have followed the beaten track, with the Prime Minister delivering an ex parte expatiation on practically every area of decision-making where, over the past two years, vacillation, equivocation and sloppiness of governance, have done duty for energetic policy response and implementation. Although the sources at the Planning Commission claim that the Tenth Plan Approach Paper was approved unanimously by the State governments represented at the NDC meeting, there is little evidence that the major thrust areas identified by the Planning Commission in the Approach Paper, as being crucial for an 8 per cent GDP growth during 1992-97, had been critically scrutinised by the Chief Ministers at all, barring the wholesale criticism of the Chief Minister of West Bengal of the entire approach to economic reforms.

Leave alone the collective expertise of the Planning Commission where ``dreaming'' is a professional preoccupation, the immensity of the task of raising the growth rate to an average annual level of 8 per cent, is much too daunting for a group of Chief Ministers to chant tadasthu (May it so be!). The whole gamut of reforms which the Tenth Plan document has suggested, including rationalisation of user charges, in power, education and water use, and those proposed for mitigating the vast wastages involved in the multiplicity of Centrally-sponsored schemes, need to be seriously reflected upon by policymakers, both at the Centre and in the States.

A gimmick of an instant endorsement of the Approach Paper on the Tenth Plan is scarcely the pattern of responsible behaviour on the part of the Chief Ministers even if the Centre's bull-dozing attitude calls for condemnation. It remains a puzzle whether the Tenth Plan Approach Paper was at all examined with a semblance of seriousness at the NDC meeting.

Mantra of hard decisions

Media reports of the NDC meeting indicate that the Prime Minister, Mr. Atal Behari Vajpayee, unveiled what some scribes have chosen to call a ``14-point Programme.'' Vibrations of similar pompous proclamations in past decades, seem difficult to resist! How often has the nation, during the last two years, heard the NDA Government spokespersons, harangue on ``hard decisions'' without evidence of cohesive team-work within the Government?

The reforms agenda set out by Mr. Vajpayee now is, for all practical purposes, a catch-all collection of ``failures'' of government during the last two years to translate its own commitments and averments. That, to a large extent, these failures stemmed from ``coalitional compromises'' cannot be overlooked. Yet, the extent to which the Centre was paralysed from addressing these concerns because of ``failure of constructive dialogue'' with State governments, on a continuing basis, needs to be gauged. After all, when the Prime Minister talks about rejuvenating the power sector, reorienting the strategy to raise food production (and not merely to raise food mountains which beg the question of access for the poor to foodgrains), or for giving reforms a pro-poor focus, almost all the action required would have to be undertaken by the State governments.

While a few States seem to have adapted their modes of governance to the dictates of market-oriented economies, most of them are in a pathetic condition of mismanagement where the requirements of equity and social justice are concerned, not to speak of efficient deployment of public funds or attracting investments in the regional economy.

It is indeed a sad comment that Centre-State equations have become so skewed that many State governments have simply degenerated as financial dependents on the Centre for day-to-day survival instead of leveraging the opportunities for socio- economic development opened up by the process of decentralisation of decision-making. Even if the NDC is to remain a ceremonial make-believe of consultation, it cannot be too strongly argued that for viable development to benefit the poor, Centre-State coordination and synergy ought to become integral elements in governance.

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