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NAC differences sharpen as plans spiked
Some members of the National Advisory Council , or NAC, are of the view that a small group in the council is driving its agenda to an extreme, making its recommendations vulnerable to government's rejection on the grounds of fiscal prudence.

This not only ends wasting everyone's time, but also does a disservice to the poor and disadvantaged the council seeks to help, by indefinitely delaying progressive legislation, goes the view. "NAC is loaded with people with little experience in public management. So we are getting a lot of ideas that are not practical," a NAC member said on condition of anonymity. "It's a small group of influential members that are driving the agenda. Everyone agrees about the outcomes, but by insisting on a certain way of achieving the outcome, they are delaying the process," the person added.

The government has recently rejected a number of proposals by the Sonia Gandhi-headed NAC, including its recommendations on the landmark Food Security Act. NAC is an advisory body to the government and the PM on policy issues. The first NAC, formed in June 2004, and ran the course of the first term of the UPA government, is credited as the fountainhead of three key social legislation - the Right to Information Act, the National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme and the Forest Rights Act.

The second NAC, formed after the UPA government came to power in 2009, has been meeting with persistent roadblocks. So far, various arms of the government and NAC, which has been called the 'planning commission for the social agenda,' have disagreed on several issues and many NAC members have gone public with their frustration.

The government had refused to link NREGS wages to a national minimum wage as proposed by NAC. The Ministry of Tribal Affairs rejected all proposals made by a NAC working group and the Ministry of Personnel rejected NAC's objections to the proposed amendments to the RTI Act. The Rangarajan panel appointed by the Prime Minister's Office to study the recommendations made by NAC on the food security bill, rejected them and made highly diluted recommendations on the grounds of grain unavailability and fiscal prudence.

"There is a problem with consensus forming within NAC," the person said, suggesting that all members were not in agreement with the level of legal entitlement of grain recommended for BPL population as well as a part of the 'above poverty line' population. "Many members express disagreements. But at the end of the day we are all very polite people, we smile and nod to what the others are saying but then changes don't get incorporated into the draft," the person said.

Harsh Mander, a former bureaucrat and NAC member who headed the working group on food security, refutes this line. He said some members who favour "market-oriented growth" are too concerned about government's acceptance. "NAC's job is not to anticipate what the government wants," he said.

Mander says when NREGS was first proposed, it was also dismissed as impractical. "Today it is counted among the most socially-progressive piece of legislation in the world," he said.

Eventually, a much diluted version of NREGS was made law, he said. NAC draft had demanded employment guarantee for each individual, not every household. The draft also envisaged guaranteeing as many days of employment as sought by a person, not a limited number of days. "The government might have an independent perspective and that is entirely legitimate. NAC's job is to push the social agenda and we should stick to it," Mander said.