 | | PICTURE SPEAK | |  | | STATE OF STUPOR: The NAC is waiting for Sonia's return | | India's most exclusive think-tank is currently in a stupor. Sonia Gandhi's dramatic resignation both as a Lok Sabha MP and as chairperson of the National Advisory Council (NAC) has left the 11-member body headless. It is somewhat ironic that a group of former bureaucrats, intellectuals, social activists and academics who have spent the last two years summoning ministers and influencing policy is not able to draft a solution to its own existential problem and choose an alternative leader. Some Cabinet ministers privately thought that this could be a good excuse to scrap the organisation, known somewhat disparagingly in government circles as Sonia's jholawala crowd. "It has only added another layer of bureaucracy to decision-making," said one cabinet minister. Rural Development Minister Raghuvansh Prasad Singh said, "The NAC is useful only if Soniaji is heading it. Otherwise it has no meaning." Set up on May 31, 2004 to monitor the implementation of the Common Minimum Programme, it bestowed Cabinet rank on the chairperson. Even at that time some ministers had felt an incongruity in giving that post to Sonia, especially after the famous renunciation drama. "She can't refuse the prime ministership and then compromise with the rank of a Cabinet minister," said a UPA minister. However, the pro-NAC lobby led by Defence Minister Pranab Mukherjee gave a logical answer that unlike in the case of Sanjay Gandhi, who was criticised as an unconstitutional force within the government, Sonia's advisors wanted to legitimise her position. And though the Congress claims that this is essentially an advisory post and not an office of profit, the Opposition is making much of the fact that a Lutyen's Bungalow-2, Motilal Nehru Place-has been allotted to the Council, along with financial allocations in the General Budget. This year alone a sum of Rs 16.06 crore was set aside for the PMO and the NAC. | | CREW CHANGE | | | EMPLOYMENT GUARANTEE BILL: NAC says all its suggestions not included. | | RIGHT TO INFORMATION BILL: In August, 2004 NAC drafted the RTI Act.
| | MID-DAY MEAL SCHEME: Accepted, as also National Rural Health Mission. | | POSCO: NAC's concerns against the steel giant's Orissa plant rejected. | | JUDICIAL REFORMS: Put on the backburner by Sonia's resignation. | | There is a view within the party that even when the requisite amendments are made to the office of profit bill, Sonia should accept her old job but without its Cabinet perks. Mukherjee, though, is co-ordinating with various political parties, trying to seek a consensus on the various offices of profit that could be exempted from disqualification. This, incidentally, is not NAC's first tryst with controversy. Last year, one of its members, Belgian economist Jean Drèze had resigned in frustration complaining that his suggestions were not being taken seriously by the Government. Similarly, a note sent by the NAC in September, 2005 to the Union Ministry of Steel and Mines protesting against the Orissa Government's move to allow Korean steel giant Posco to set up a plant in the state had led to questions about Central interference in state autonomy. JNU's Professor Kamal Mitra Chenoy, who has been associated with the NAC on several issues, says, "These are teething problems. But I think it's a good thing that there is a social and academic input in the workings of the Government." Right now, however, the NAC seems to be caught in a crisis fraught with political rather than intellectual overtones. -By Priya Sahgal
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