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LATEST NEWS UPDATES | Executive Decision: How NDA is tweaking social sector laws -Nitin Sethi

Executive Decision: How NDA is tweaking social sector laws -Nitin Sethi

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published Published on Nov 4, 2014   modified Modified on Nov 4, 2014
-The Business Standard

The NDA is using the discretionary powers allocated by the UPA government to either chip away at or metastasize social sector programmes

The NDA government has found two ways to deal with the social sector programmes and policies it has got from UPA as legacy. Some of these the NDA wants shrunk or diminished and it's doing so through executive fiat, often in stealth mode. Then there are others the government is busy re-branding through hyper-marketing.

There is a good reason why Congress will find it difficult to defend many of its programmes, ideas and laws robustly as the main opposition party. Assuming, of course, that it will wake up at some point to become the opposition.

Programmes such as MNREGA, food security act, tribal rights act and environmental regulations at large fall in the first category. Many people who wanted the government to make wholesale and upfront changes in these - chuck this dole-giving MNREGA, shut down that leaky PDS, and do away with this tribal rights business etc - have been disappointed at the incremental changes. The ones that were fearing NDA would bring in sweeping changes to the rights-based schemes and programmes of the previous UPA government are as upset with the quiet and steady stream of changes that one gets to know more by reading between the lines than reading the executive orders.

Then there are a handful of social schemes and ideas that the NDA government is re-branding to its taste, such as the financial inclusion programme, the clean Ganga programme, and even Aadhaar. At the moment, there is not much new to these programmes. One is opening more bank accounts with greater hurry, the second is opening fresh contracts for more sewage treatment plants, while the third is racing to distribute Identity numbers at unmanageable speed. It's more of the same. In high-speed hyper-marketing mode.

There are many outside the government baying for a cleaner closure to some of these UPA legacy ideas. Pitched against this lot are critics of the government also outside the political class clobbering together to become the opposition, filling the vacuum that a rudderless Congress has left.

There is a good reason why Congress could anyway find it difficult to defend its legacy. It is complicit in embedding a regime of discretion in many of these laws, schemes and programmes. Be it environmental management, food security act, the rural employment guarantee scheme or the forest rights act, the UPA government spent much of its second tenure tinkering and toying with these through executive whims and fancies rather than implement them well or give it a more solid legal frame.

The food bill was delayed to the point of fatigue by internal opposition and eventually became a mash-up of ideas. The clock was turned back partially on MNREGA with greater centralisation and tinkering of norms, with the silly MNREGA 2.0 tag leaving the door open for NDA to do a MNREGA 0.5. Implementing the most powerful bits of Forest Rights Act was turned into rare act of magnanimity that the Congress scion chose to bestow upon communities. NDA wants to bestow it upon even fewer. When the discretion of a minister sitting on environmental decision-making was not enough, a Cabinet Committee on Investment legitimised decisions in wholesale based on everything but green considerations. With an all-powerful PMO now, the need for, and garb of, such a committee has been dispensed with.

The UPA created a regime of discretion that the NDA is now exploiting to fit its own agenda. Which is why the logic and spirit of many of these laws can be easily be morphed through executive fiat - office memorandums, notifications, legal re-interpretations and guidelines.

These are NDA Social Sector Reform 1.0. The government is bound to exploit these discretionary powers to the hilt before it resorts to legislative amendments. It's got these powers on a platter from UPA.


The Business Standard, 4 November, 2014, http://www.business-standard.com/article/opinion/executive-decision-how-nda-is-tweaking-social-sector-laws-114110400187_1.html


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