In 2014, when the Planning Commission was disbanded, a commentator observed that the defunct body was like “those old men who are no longer harmful but are reviled because they once were.” It was one of the vestiges of centralised planning that India adopted in the early years of the republic, in part inspired by the Soviet model, which it began to shed by the 90s.
The NITI Aayog, which replaced it, was formed with a limited role of a consulting body but with the daunting aim of working towards cooperative federalism. That, however, seems to be a distant goal, as reflected in how the body’s governing council meeting unfolded last week. As of now, the political challenge of combative partisanship and party politics has deflected the focus from the developmental agenda.
In the July 27 meeting, the executive heads of 10 states and union territories were conspicuous by their absence. It is anybody’s guess whether it was purely an act of political opposition or some other factors. The meet was skipped by the chief ministers of Telangana, Karnataka, Himachal Pradesh, Punjab, Kerala, Tamil Nadu, and Jharkhand – the states governed by the Congress, AAP, CPIM, and regional forces including DMK and JMM. They hinted that their decision was a response to the union budget, accusing the central government of giving short shrift to their states in allocations. The walkout by the West Bengal CM Mamata Banerjee set off another round of political theatrics and controversy.
The fact that such voices of protest were limited to the states governed by the opposition INDIA alliance can’t be missed, as that gives a clear political context to what could otherwise be a national think tank’s deliberative process.
In fact, as an advisory body without real powers of allocating finance or distributing resources, the NITI Aayog’s avowed mandate of “cooperative federalism” has been pitched as one of replacing vertical decision-making in centre-state relations with a more open exchange of ideas between the two. The call for doing away with the top-down approach could be seen in how many states critiqued the Planning Commission in the 60s and the 70s, echoes of which could also be heard in the Sarkaria Commission report of 1988.
So what has contributed to the fact that some states have been either cold-shouldering the consultative body or making it a site to showcase their political contest? One can’t lose sight of a few obvious factors.
First, in its short journey of almost a decade, that objective has been beset with numerous challenges, as expected in the highly-polarised polity of the last few years. The abrasive politics of rival alliances has cast a shadow over the consultative processes between the centre and the state. The political prism of looking at the political map of the country as divided between the NDA-governed states and the non-NDA-governed states has meant that the states that are not under the former have either been reluctant participants or have been non-cooperative in the NITI Aayog’s consultative processes.
Second, the fact that the deliberative work in NITI Aayog doesn’t have sway over the allocation process has also made some state governments less inclined towards more involved forms of engagement with the body. Its predecessor Planning Commission’s consultative process with the states extended to talks about allocation and grants too, even though the union finance ministry made the final call earlier as well. Now, that isn’t one of the processes that the new body is tasked with. The consultations about grants and allocation are now only within the finance ministry. That might have also played its part in weaning away the states’ interest in the deliberations of the NITI Aayog. Instead, the new body has been keenly involved in assessing the performance of states on developmental and financial parameters and, in the process, formulating indices to measure. That has led many observers, including an editorial comment in The Hindu, to such assessments as promotion of “competitive federalism.”
Third, the BJP’s electoral strategy of pitching the appeal of “double engine” government in the assembly polls has also sowed the seeds of discontent about preferential treatment of the NDA-governed states in allocation of grants and projects. To add to that, the BJP’s coalition compulsions of meeting the demands of its NDA allies, like the TDP and JDU, seen in the recent budgetary allocations have reinforced such perceptions.
Fourth, in political terms, the opposition parties or alliance parties in charge of some state governments also seek to derive leverage by moves of boycotting the new body’s meetings or using it for combative politics against the centre. There is little to dissuade them from such behaviour. Most of them assess that their core political constituency is insulated from the governance outcomes of their moves. In any case, they can always turn it into the victim card of the state's neglect by the centre and galvanise their core voter base against the party at the helm of affairs.
In the contested terrain of increasingly combative politics, NITI Aayog will have to navigate its core mandate of cooperative federalism with the consultative processes led by the centre playing the anchor. In tandem with a constitutional body like the Finance Commission, an executive creation like the NITI Aayog should be aiming at correcting regional imbalances in growth and lopsided development within the national economy. In doing so, it would stand the national think tank in good stead if political acrimonies of rival alliances and parties don’t come in its way.
If you’re reading this story, you’re not seeing a single advertisement. That’s because Newslaundry powers ad-free journalism that’s truly in public interest. Support our work and subscribe today.
Newslaundry is a reader-supported, ad-free, independent news outlet based out of New Delhi. Support their journalism, here.
