The Hindu : Opinion / Editorials : REVIVING GOOD PRACTICE

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Tuesday, Jul 20, 2004

Opinion

Opinion - Editorials

REVIVING GOOD PRACTICE

PRIME MINISTER MANMOHAN Singh — a cerebral leader who takes the challenges and burdens of governance seriously — must be commended for reviving an excellent tradition: Jawaharlal Nehru's regular letters to Chief Ministers, known as `fortnightlies', which were followed keenly by a much wider circle of readers than those to whom they were addressed. Those letters from a great communicator, written in an informal style, ranged over "issues and problems confronting the government and people of India ... and are invaluable ... for the insight they provide into the evolution both of Nehru's thought and of official policies" (to quote from the Editorial Note in the first in the five volume series, Letters to Chief Ministers, 1947-1964 edited by G. Parthasarathy). Read today, they stand out as a model of transparency and thoughtfulness in governance. One wishes they could also be held up as models of fealty to `cooperative federalism', because that was one area where the practice of India's first and greatest Prime Minister fell conspicuously short of what a federal polity really required. Given the hegemony of the Congress during the Nehru era and its intolerance of any other party ruling anywhere, the Central Government could get away with `cooperative federalism' under Central tutelage. Today, of course, the situation is radically different: even if constitutional federalism in India is still far from perfect, especially in the field of Centre-State fiscal relations, the realities and compulsions of coalition politics have brought into existence a kind of political federalism.

Following the Nehru approach, Prime Minister Singh's inaugural letter to Chief Ministers addresses an ensemble of issues and problems but seems to focus on the imperative of reforming and revitalising public systems and institutional relations — and on forging a vibrant partnership, with a clear division of responsibility, between the Centre and the States to ensure that development programmes are well conceived and reach those they are intended to benefit. Reportedly shaken by the mass distress and deprivation he recently glimpsed first hand in Andhra Pradesh, Dr. Singh is looking for fresh and possibly radical answers to the problem of the breakdown of delivery systems and the poverty of anti-poverty recipes and programmes across the country. He also seems troubled over the `non-inclusiveness' of the process of economic development in India, notably post-1991, and over the phenomenon of "uneven development, between regions and between people." This Prime Minister is too honest and too modest a man to suggest that he has all the answers and his first letter to his peers at the State level, representing a good part of the Indian political spectrum, is an exploratory attempt to establish a congenial wavelength for Centre-State communication on all issues and problems that matter. There can be no question that this revival of a good practice, which no Prime Minister after Nehru had the vision and the intellectual energy to keep alive, is admirable.

What is not is the signal sent out by an institutional misstep that occurred in Kumbakonam on Sunday: Congress president Sonia Gandhi's announcement of the sanctioning by the Central Government of a sum of Rs. 1 crore to provide relief to the bereaved parents of the school children who died in Friday's fire accident. Ms. Gandhi's awkward announcement that "on behalf of the Prime Minister" she was "required" to communicate the Centre's decision reflected the institutional inappropriateness of what she was doing, or made to go through. It speaks to a political culture that needs reform as much as anything else. Ms. Gandhi is the president of the largest party in the country, the one with the most seats in the Lok Sabha. Her visit to Kumbakonam to express solidarity with the bereaved and the suffering will be widely appreciated. But there was no need at all to do anything that suggested an overlapping of functions between her and the office of Prime Minister.

Printer friendly page
Send this article to Friends by E-Mail

Opinion

News Update

Stories in this Section

REVIVING GOOD PRACTICE

BUDGET & FINANCIAL SECTOR REFORM

Revitalising Panchsheel

Slave labour in Brazil