NITI Aayog meeting shows disunity of Centre and states
The NITI Aayog’s 7th general council meeting has raised more questions than answers. Two chief ministers—K Chandrashekar Rao of Telangana and Nitish Kumar of Bihar—gave it a miss deliberately. The former did so ostensibly in protest against the Centre’s attitude and even called the Niti Aayog its Barmy Army. His real reason though is the BJP’s renewed push in Telangana to displace him. Nitish cited Covid but it is obvious he too is peeved with the BJP for seeking to topple him despite being an ally.
The other non-BJP CMs, however, attended the meeting, and raised a plethora of issues. Now, there are two aspects here. One is political and the other is governance. Niti Aayog, which replaced the socialist era’s Planning Commission, is in reality a think tank and an advisory body. Its role in building bridges between the Centre and states is minimal, going by what we have seen in the last seven years.
To expect it to resolve Centre-state disputes is asking for too much which begs the question as to what the states could do to get their genuine grievances addressed. For instance, Kerala’s Pinarayi Vijayan, West Bengal’s Mamata Banerjee, Chhattisgarh’s Bhupesh Baghel and several other CMs raised pressing matters as did KCR in his fiery presser in Hyderabad. The cash-strapped states need extension of GST compensation, relaxation on borrowing limits, flexibility in NEP implementation and execution of Centrally-sponsored schemes among many others.
Though the inter-state council was set up in 1990 on the recommendation of the Sarkaria Commission, over a period of time, its meetings have become a ritual. KCR hit the nail on the head when he said the Planning Commission had always held out hope. If the Centre’s claims of Team India are to carry weight, there needs to be an institutional mechanism to address the states’ problems. Odisha Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik suggested that the Niti Aayog play the role of an ombudsman. We need to have a debate on this. In the absence of any such mechanism, Rajneeti is taking precedence over Rashtra Neeti, the classic examples being Bihar and Telangana. The meeting brought to the fore the lack of unity. Neither the Centre and states nor the opposition parties are on the same page.