Why NAC should be funded by Congress, not taxpayers

The proposed recent changes in the constitution of Sonia Gandhi’s National Advisory Council (NAC) – with two members coming in and four going out – give us another opportunity to take a relook at what is essentially a waste of taxpayers’ money. According to The Indian Express, the two new inductees are Mihir Shah of the Planning Commission and Ashis Mondal of a Bhopal-based NGO. They replace Ram Dayal Munda, who has passed away, and Jean Dreze, who resigned. Three others were not given an extension, and they include MS Swaminathan, Harsh Mander and Madhav Gadgil. [caption id=“attachment_362162” align=“alignleft” width=“380” caption=“AFP”] [/caption] The comings and goings of NAC’s members seem arbitrary. Why were the three shown the door, when the rest of the members retain their perch? UPA-1 set up NAC with a great flourish but the Council went into a shell after Sonia Gandhi got caught up in the Office-of-Profit controversy. UPA-2, which saw the Congress return to power with a larger number of seats, recreated NAC in 2010 as a kind of special cabinet position for the Congress chairperson. Between March 2008 and March 2010, NAC did not exist, but the country did not miss it. Nor did Sonia Gandhi’s powers ebb with its demise. So why did we need a NAC-2 after that? As the proverbial fifth wheel of government? The official purpose of setting up the NAC, according to the Council’s website, is to “provide inputs in the formulation of policy by the government and to provide support to the government in its legislative business.” The special focus area is “social policy and the rights of disadvantaged groups.” But why should a group that is unelected, and which is not accountable to the government, be giving “support to the government in its legislative business?” Why not get support for free from any civil society group? On the plus side, the NAC has done a fair amount of work in the pursuit of its objectives, and generated tonnes of draft reports ranging from the Food Security Bill to the Communal and Targeted Violence Bill and the Land Acquisition Bill, among many others (see here ). That none of them will see the light of day in the form the NAC suggested is another matter, but the question is this:  why does one need these reports to be created by people outside the government when all the resources of government and experts are available to ministries and think-tanks like the Planning Commission? Why could the same worthies in NAC not have been used on official panels in social sector projects? In fact, the movement, if any, seems to the other way round. One of the two members recently nominated to the NAC is Mihir Shah, who is a member of the Planning Commission. This is interesting, since NAC members have in the past targeted the Planning Commission Deputy Chairman, Montek Singh Ahluwalia, over the official poverty line of Rs 32 a day in urban areas, which suggests that the two think-tanks – the official government one and Sonia Gandhi’s – are sometimes in conflict. As we noted before, the problem with NAC is that it is not “national” in character, since its membership is picked solely by Sonia Gandhi. It does not have the diversity required to be called a National Advisory Council. It is a political construct intended to given Sonia Gandhi her own sense of influence and formal status over and above the informal power she wields over the entire government. The right place for the NAC is thus under the Congress party. It should be a private think-tank of the party, paid for from the party’s funds rather than the country’s taxpayers. That’s a Rs 4 crore annual saving. Only in India do we tolerate taxpayer funding of what is essentially a political party’s indulgence. The next time PM Manmohan Singh meets Sonia Gandhi, maybe he should suggest that the NAC be relocated to the Congress headquarters. There will be no lack of private businessmen willing to fund it.