The NCTC standoff: Why the 'F' word will keep surfacing

Is federalism the new bogeyman in Indian politics? On the face of it, it appears so. In December 2011, political parties used the federalism argument to stymie the Lokayukta clause in the Lokpal Bill. A few days ago, several non-Congress chief ministers used federalism as an argument to delay or spike the National Counter-Terrorism Centre (NCTC). Both the Lokpal and the NCTC are important national initiatives to deal with the nation’s twin enemies – corruption and terrorism. And yet, the states seem to be saying it does not matter. What gives? [caption id=“attachment_220327” align=“alignright” width=“380” caption=“PTI”]  [/caption] The truth is the ‘F’ word (federalism) is increasingly going to be used in Indian politics to justify all kinds of positions. The BJP, once the tiger on terrorism, would not mind using it to scuttle an anti-terror measure. All parties claim to be against corruption, but they will use the ‘F’ factor to delay or abandon the first serious anti-corruption measure in Indian history – the Lokpal and Lokayukta. However, while the ‘F’ word is potent, it would be a mistake to believe that it is only going to be used for partisan politics. It has a reality of its own. A nation of 1.2 billion people – the most diverse in the world – cannot be run in a unitary fashion . The more we try to centralise power, the more the damage we will do to India. In fact, one reason why India is becoming ungovernable is this explicit lack of federalism – where economic power is too concentrated at the centre, while political power has shifted to the states. The NCTC, which is supposed to come under the administrative ambit of the Intelligence Bureau (IB), makes for a good case study on federalism. As B Raman noted in this column in Firstpost: “The IB is a secret intelligence organisation. It has no accountability to Parliament in respect of its work. We do not have a system of parliamentary intelligence oversight committees. We depend on the executive without any checks and balances to ensure that the IB functions according to the law of the land.” It is an open secret that the IB is used for political spying by the centre. This is why several retired IB chief end up as state governors whenever there is a Congress regime at the centre. Putting the NCTC under the IB is thus the worst way to allay state fears of an intrusion into their legitimate domain. In fact, this is exactly what Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar believes. In a letter to the PM, he wrote that having the NCTC “under Intelligence Bureau with no accountability to Parliament was flawed”. The Indian Express reports that Kumar asked the PM to “reconsider NCTC and take along states to work out an effective counter-terrorism mechanism, keeping in mind the fine balance of power between the centre and states.” Orissa CM Naveen Patnaik, in a parallel letter, asked Manmohan Singh to start consultations with states for necessary changes in the proposed body and claimed he had “no intention to politicise the campaign against terror, as has been stated by some of your ministers and senior officers to the media”. However, this claim needs to be taken with a pinch of salt. When several non-Congress CMs jointly take up an issue with a Congress-led administration, there is nothing apolitical about it. A Biju Janata Dal MP, Bhartruhari Mahtab, made the objectives of the non-BJP parties very clear. “Our objective is to create a platform where regional parties can form a force to withstand Central pressure. It is evolving into a potential group,” he told the Express. The near-exclusion of the BJP from the regional revolt against the NCTC is significant. The regional parties could have done this for two reasons: one is fear of losing the minority vote in case they are seen to be working in cahoots with the BJP, and the other is the fear that the BJP is not really a regional party. In other words, the BJP could – if it comes to power in the future – be as big a threat to federalism as the Congress. After all, between Congress and BJP, it is the latter that likes to wrap itself in the flag of nationalism. To keep India united and take the tensions out of centre-state relations, India’s constitution needs some rewriting so that the states have adequate economic power to manage their own future. This means the needless overlaps of the concurrent list should be eliminated – by rendering to the centre the powers that are the centre’s and to the states the bulk of the remaining powers. It is the centre’s job to maintain the unity and integrity of India, run the macroeconomics, and defend it from external threats. It is the states’ job to lift their citizens out of poverty. They need to control the levers of economic power for this. When this is clear, centre-state tensions will be minimised. The brouhaha over the NCTC is merely a symptom. The real issue is that the states do not want to be patronised by the centre or be left to its mercies. Till this issue is sorted out constitutionally, the ‘F’ word will keep surfacing in Indian politics.