States need to follow a non-partisan
approach for better governance
The Economic Times, July 30,
2012
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By Pradeep S Mehta
Not many know that the words
'central government' does not exist in our Constitution, but
we have 'union government' and states. Our founding fathers
had envisioned the idea of a true federal political
structure.
However, due to fears of fissiparous tendencies, which have
been a part of India's history, the practice has been that
all our laws define the federal government in New Delhi as
the central government and not union government.
Not only laws but several policies are drafted at and
reforms driven from the national capital, which do not
necessarily have the ownership of the states. It is
precisely because of this factor, the Rajya Sabha was
conceptualised. Alas, our polity has made a mockery of it.
It is time to turn this process on its head, so that we can
grow as a nation with a bottom-up approach. Much water has
flowed since we became a republic in 1950 a nd but for a few
murmurs in the early years, the country has emerged as a
united nation.
The unity is symbolised by the coalition calculus, which is
now a permanent feature in New Delhi and some states due to
shrinking national parties. Regional parties are now in
power in many states, and also sharing power at New Delhi.
This change has thrown up increasing demands for fiscal and
governance federalism.
For quite some time, we have been seeing demands for greater
devolution of powers and management of financial resources
by states.
The struggle continues as the ruling party at New Delhi
feels that enough is being done. There is also a discussion
about pruning centrally sponsored schemes, but the ruling
party claims that it is their largesse to the states, which
only adds fuel to the fire.
After all, provisioning of public goods and services are
best understood at the local level, rather than decided in
Lutyen's Delhi by babus who do not comprehend the contours
or priorities.
Many subjects, such as home, agriculture, education, health,
among others are either under the states' jurisdiction or in
the concurrent list under our Constitution and yet the union
government has big ministries handling huge budgets, and
distributing moneys to states with some arm twisting.
It does not matter if the state is ruled by the same party
or not. The recent posting of police officers in the BJP-ruled
Goa drew the same criticism by the Congress-ruled government
in Delhi. The only difference is that these small states'
constitutional powers are not on a par with other bigger
states.
Education is in the concurrent list but the Centre is hell
bent to destroy the role of states in providing quality
education. There is strong opposition to the Centre's moves.
Perhaps, the ruling party has forgotten that it is no longer
a strong force as it was earlier.
Many of our states are doing good work in running systems
which are otherwise difficult to run well. Many of the
schemes like the PDS or NAREGA are hijacked to serve as
political patronage for the grassroot polity, but some
states have been able to run them well, which is an
important factor for some of them to get re-elected.
For instance, Chhattisgarh, which has had the same party in
government since 2003, inter alia, has been able to reform
its PDS, which offers good example to other states.
Successful implementation of NAREGA in Tripura has lead
Assam to send a team there to gather hands-on experience.
Getting investment approvals swiftly has been attacked by
many states through reforming laws and creating
single-window services, but the experience varies.
The reason is not difficult to understand, because any
system is as good as the people who manage it, backed by
political will which comes from the CEO of the state. We had
seen it in Andhra Pradesh earlier, and currently in Gujarat.
There are numerous such examples where the states have
progressed well without any dependence on the union
government. But there is no single knowledge repository of
such good practices. In India, states do try and acquire
know-how and follow good practices but the system is not
structured.
Many federal countries, such as the US, Nigeria, among
others, have established state governors' forum to speak to
each other on a wide range of local issues.
For instance, the National Governors Association in the US
has successfully dealt with the higher education system,
which is the states' responsibility, through a structured
exercise of comparative learning and doing. Consequently,
states have been able to learn from each other, thus
achieving better systems.
The Nigerian Governors' Forum has been able to accelerate
eradication of polio through a bottom-up approach rather
than being engineered by the federal government.
And this is when these states are also ruled by different
parties at the federal and state levels, but in this body,
they follow a non-partisan approach. They also take up
state-centre issues where there is a common interest.
Considering the fact of coalition politics, the country
would do well to push for reforms from the bottom, and for
that to happen the chief ministers need to come together on
a non-partisan platform.
The author is secretary
general of CUTS International
This news can
also be viewed at: http://articles.economictimes.indiatimes.com/
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