7 articles on current events

Important articles appeared in Economic and Political Weekly

1.    The 10% Rule and the LoP: Can Conventions Circumvent Law?

2.    The “New” Planning Commission

3.    The Reformed ‘Planning Commission’

4.    Assam-Nagaland Border Violence

5.    Cleaning Ganga River

6.    Taking on ISIS

7.    The Scottish Path to Independence

The 10% Rule and the LoP: Can Conventions Circumvent Law?

The speaker has decided to follow conventions rather than jurisprudence in her decision not to accord the "leader of opposition" status to the leader of the Congress legislative party in the Lok Sabha. Conventions cannot supersede the law as various judgments point out. Comparisons to other legislatures elsewhere in the world also suggest the inapplicability of the 10% rule in appointing the LoP.

Akaant Mittal (mittalakaant@gmail.com) is a student at the National Law University, Delhi.

The results of the 16th Lok Sabha elections had brought up a legal conundrum apropos the office of the “leader of opposition” (LoP) in Parliament. The Congress Party, despite securing the second highest number of seats in the Lok Sabha (44 seats), has fallen short of what has been claimed as a minimum requirement of 10% of the overall seats in the Lower House, to get its parliamentary party leader to occupy the post of LoP. The office of the LoP is not a constitutional office in the sense that it has not been created by the Constitution and owes its existence to parliamentary convention which accords the leader of the largest opposition party to that post.¹

On 19 August this year, the speaker of the current Lok Sabha Sumitra Mahajan affirmed that the appointment to the post of LoP had to fulfil the 10% rule. The speaker is right in noting the precedents of the 1980 and 1984 Lok Sabha, which did not have an LoP. The second largest party in 1980 was the Lok Dal (Janata Secular) and in 1984 it was the Telugu Desam Party, both of whom secured 41 and 30 seats, respectively. But the question remains if the precedents were simply based on convention rather than the law. Conventions are non-legal rules regulating the way in which legal rules shall be applied. In Supreme Court AoR Association,² the Court explained that the scope of a convention (in context of the Constitution) was to fill up the gaps and to solve problems of interpretation since a great deal may be left unsaid. Therefore, conventions are to supplement legislation for convenience,³ and cannot supplant it, and holding the tradition of the 10% rule to be mandatory is tantamount to supplanting the express provision of having greatest numerical strength in Parliament in the law as we shall discuss later in the article.

The Role of the LoP

It is necessary to recall British academic Ivor Jennings’ words, “Democratic Government demands not only a parliamentary majority but also a parliamentary minority”.⁴ The Gauhati High Court has also stated that an LoP is the one who carries more responsibility than a cabinet minister when monitoring the function of the government,⁵ since the person occupying that post has to criticise, find fault and present alternative proposals/policies with no power to implement them.

The LoP is a part of the committees to recommend the appointment of members and/or chiefs to the official posts recognised in the statutes, for instance the Right to Information (RTI) Act, 2005, the National Human Rights Commission Act⁷ and the Central Vigilance Commission (CVC) Act.

Laws Pertaining to LoP

Until 1969, the practice followed in the Rajya Sabha was to call the leader of the party in opposition with the largest number of members as the LoP, without according her/him any formal recognition, status or privilege. Prior to the 1977 general elections to the Lok Sabha, except for a brief spell of one year (December 1969-December 1970), there had been no official opposition in the sense of the term that is used in the parliamentary system of government.

But since the enactment of Salary and Allowances of Leaders of Opposition in Parliament Act, 1977 (hereinafter “the 1977 Act”), the LoPs in the Rajya Sabha and the Lok Sabha are now accorded statutory recognition and given salary and certain other facilities and amenities.⁹ The 1977 Act defines the position as that member of the Lok Sabha or Rajya Sabha as the case may be, who is for the time being the leader in that House of the party in opposition to the central government having (a) the greatest numerical strength and (b) recognised as such by the speaker of the Lok Sabha or the chairman of the council of states as the case may be, which is similar to counterpart provisions in the Maharashtra,¹⁰ Punjab,¹¹ Arunachal Pradesh,¹² Mizoram,¹³ and Jharkhand¹⁴ state assemblies.

However, Tripura’s law mentions only about the numerical strength and does not say anything about recognition by the speaker. Haryana’s law only mentions about the recognition by the speaker, and Nagaland’s corresponding law mentions the requirement of a minimum number of members, i e, 10 in number. Interestingly, the law in Nagaland defines the LoP as a member of the state legislative assembly, who is for the time being the leader of the party in opposition to the ruling government having the largest and required numerical strength and recognised as such by the speaker of the assembly. Whereas the LoP Act uses the phrase “greatest numerical strength and recognised as such by the Speaker…”. Therefore, it could be said that the 1977 Act does not talk about any minimum threshold that is required to be satisfied in order for the numerically largest party in opposition to the government to choose their leader in the House as the LoP.

The CVC Act and RTI Act define a leader of opposition to be the one, when no such leader has been so recognised, to include the leader of the single largest group in opposition of the government in the Lok Sabha.

Constitutional Debates

During the Constituent Assembly debates, Z H Lari proposed an amendment to draft Article 86, which dealt with the allowances to the members of the legislatures after the commencement of the Constitution. It stipulated that the LoP should be entitled to get salary payable to a minister without cabinet rank.¹⁷ The speaker had highlighted the importance of the LoP, saying that the entity shall make the party government realise that they have to face public opinion whenever they take policy and administrative decisions and by contending opposing views. The speaker pointed out that the amendment moved must be crystallised in the Constitution to erode the impression that there is to be only one party rule.

No member who spoke for or against the amendment argued that there is no need for an opposition. In fact, the reasons why the amendment was not accepted were: (i) those opposed to the amendment felt that merely recognising the LoP does not mean that the post shall be able to organise a party on its own, (ii) there was not going to be any embargo on Parliament in the future from providing for the salary or recognising the LOP, if it deemed necessary.¹⁹

It is clear that objection (i) did not imagine a situation where the LoP is selected from a party in minority in the legislature body (which is the current practice). Rather it thought of the LoP being recognised firstly, then, that leader would organise a party in opposition. The contention (ii) is upheld by the enactment of the 1977 Act.

LoP in Foreign Jurisdictions

The UK parliamentary system recognises the LoP to be one who is usually the leader of the political party with the second-largest number of seats in the House of Commons. Whereas, in Australia the post is the leader of the party or coalition of parties which is the next largest after the ruling party in the House of Representatives, and which is made up of members who do not support the government.²¹ The Constitution of Barbados recognises the post to be the one who commands the support of a majority of those members who do not support the government, and if there is no such person, the member of that House who commands the support of the largest single group.²² The South African Constitution provides for the recognition of the leader of the largest opposition party in the assembly as LoP.²³

Judicial Cases

In the case of A K Subbaih vs Karnataka Legislature Secretariat, the Karnataka High Court held that the convention of having an LOP whose party has secured a minimum one-tenth of the effective strength of the House, is for the House to continue to adhere to or depart from it. And that the court will have no jurisdiction to entertain any petition regarding this issue.

In the case of the Kailash Nath Singh vs Speaker,²⁴ the Allahabad High Court opined that even in the absence of any guideline on how to accord recognition to a member as the LoP, it must be done as per the prevailing practice and convention. In this particular case, the petitioner was selected to be the LoP when his party secured 92 seats. But due to a split in the party, two groups were formed, with the one with more number of members voting for respondent number 2 to be selected as the LoP. The speaker recognised respondent number 2 (in the case) to be the new LoP. The court held that the principle adopted by the speaker that the party in opposition with the largest numerical strength can choose a LoP was consistently followed when recognising the petitioner and then respondent number 2 as the LoPs and hence the speaker had acted within his jurisdiction.

The Patna High Court was presented with the issue as to whether there is a definite requirement of the 10% rule in order to name the LoP. Section 2 of the Bihar Legislature (Leaders of Opposition Salary and Allowances) Act, 1977 required that for a person to be the LoP needed to be the (i) leader of a party having the greatest numerical strength in the assembly, and (ii) be recognised as such by the speaker. The Patna High Court, on the other hand, held that the speaker had to follow practice and convention. It also held that there was no provision in the Act which enjoins the speaker to recognise the leader of a party with the greatest numerical strength, to be the LoP.²⁵

Conclusions

The LoP is effectively a “shadow” prime minister who has the preferential right to address the House. It is recognised that a democratic form of government would be reduced to a farce if there were no strong opposition.

 While the central law and state laws defining the LoP are specific with respect to who is to be accorded such status, the “10% minimum argument” is not substantiated by any such inference from these laws. The Leaders and Chief Whips of Recognised Parties and Groups in Parliament (Facilities) Act, 1998 does not explicitly mention any such 10% rule and the fixed minimum number required to accord the status of a “recognised party”, i e, 55 has nothing to do with the definition of the LoP in the 1977 Act. The Act crystallises what the framers of the Constitution contemplated about the provision of salaries which could be made whenever the need for opposition was recognised. The provision of recognition by the speaker is pertinent to be satisfied, but it is submitted that the satisfaction of the 10% rule is something that may be merely, and at most, a convention not binding on the speaker. In light of the necessity of opposition in legislatures, this convention need not be adhered to. The provisions for the declaration of the LoP in the UK, Australia, Barbados and South Africa also recognise the leader of the party in opposition to the government with the maximum numerical strength to be the LoP.

The decisions of the high court are also not helpful since in (i) the Subbaiah case there was no provision produced; (ii) the Kailash Nath case had provisions that provided only that the LoP meant to be the member of the legislative house (assembly) who is for the time being recognised as such by the speaker and did not provide for any other criteria of according such recognition,²⁷ and (iii) the Kapoori case, it was submitted that (a) if the speaker is allowed the power to recognise, then he/she cannot allow the LoP to be selected even if the largest minority has more than 10% of the overall seats and (b) allowing such power to the speaker undermined the qualification of being the “maximum minority”, so that even if the party is the largest minority it could still not be recognised.

In my view, the recognition of speaker is only to put an official authorisation to the selection of the LoP. This is evident in the debates to the Constituent Assembly, where no one objected to there being an LoP but preferred that the Parliament provided for salaries to them in the future. Hence, the Act of 1977 cannot be meant to only provide for salaries and to not recognise the requirement for a LoP.

It is the duty of the government of the day to form opinions to take actions and the only way it could know that the opinion is right is if the complete liberty of contradicting and disproving the opinion is given to others in Parliament. If there is any error on the part of government, it could be corrected only by discussion and debate, for the purposes of which the office of LoP assumes extreme importance.

The “New” Planning Commission

The body that is to replace the Planning Commission must build on the strengths of the existing one even as it addresses the many existing deficiencies.

Mihir Shah (mihir.shah@nic.in) was Member, Planning Commission from 2009 to 2014.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced the demise of the Planning Commission from the ramparts of the Red Fort on Independence Day. As the nation debates the form and content of the institution to replace the Planning Commission, it may be useful to reflect on the immediate context that precipitated the disbanding, as also to reiterate certain functions of the Planning Commission that will need to be performed by its replacement. I will draw mainly, but not only, upon my five years as Member, Planning Commission during 2009-14.

Classifying Institutions

One way of classifying institutions is in terms of the balance between their potential positive power (PPP) and potential negative power (PNP). Potential positive power may be broadly understood to mean the capacity and power to enforce or facilitate positive change that would hasten the achievement of national goals. Potential negative power, on the other hand, refers to the capacity or power to obstruct, delay or derail positive reform, in cases where such reform threatens entrenched vested interests, status quo or business as usual.[1] The exercise of PNP is often a ruse to foster corrupt practices, but it can also be an exercise of wanton power for its own sake, reflecting a perverse sense of power-induced pleasure.

The two institutions with perhaps the highest quotient of both PPP and PNP in the government of India have, especially in recent years, been the Planning Commission and the Ministry of Finance. In my five years in the Planning Commission, I saw many instances of PNP and how this became a source of great resentment against the Planning Commission, both among state governments and central ministries. Of course, at times, the Planning Commission acted with sagacity in checking profligacy of funds and schemes. But there were many cases where in-principle approvals, investment clearances, grants-in-aid and other decisions appeared to smack of bureaucratic red tape, more than an application of mind motivated by the broader national interest and effectiveness of functioning. There were also visible vestiges of the old Stalinist command and control, inspector raj mindset.[2]

The Expenditure Finance Committee (EFC) meetings held to approve expenditure on new schemes typically saw the Planning Commission representatives play an obstructionist role, at times raising completely specious objections that revealed not merely non-application of mind but also lack of due diligence and requisite homework on their part. This led to huge delays in the passage, through the corridors of power, of many an innovative idea for reform of government. States too were displeased with their chief ministers having to go through the annual ritual of obtaining approval of their Annual Plans at Yojana Bhavan. An empty ritual it was, for neither did the Planning Commission have much to add in finances to the state’s Plan, even the well-meaning advice of the Planning Commission generally tended to be ignored because of the overall context of the Annual Plan “approval” meeting in which the advice was being given. It is clear that reaction to this unrelenting exercise of negative power has finally reached a crescendo, with the institution itself suffering a demise.

To my mind, it is this negativity that is the chief cause for the Prime Minister’s action, more than the oft-repeated notion that the Planning Commission had to go because it was a “socialist” vestige, an anachronism in the capitalist economy that is India today. Indeed, the role of the Planning Commission in India in recent decades has had nothing to do with keeping the commanding heights of the economy with the public sector. If anything, quite to the contrary, it has been a great proponent of the private sector and Public-Private Partnerships (PPPs). So in understanding its demise and anticipating the roles of its replacement, this ideological lens is not of much use.

Such a view, that has been expressed, not only by the right but also surprisingly by the left, in any case, overlooks the work of Yale political scientist David Cameron (1978) and Princeton economist Dani Rodrik, which decisively show that even advanced capitalist economies, virtually without exception, are characterised by massive and increasing role of government. As Rodrik (2012) suggests, developing strong markets and open economies requires more government, not less: “With very few exceptions, the more developed an economy, the greater the share of its resources that is consumed by the public sector. Governments are bigger and stronger not in the world’s poorest but in its most advanced economies. The correlation between government size and per capita income is remarkable tight. Rich countries have better functioning markets and larger governments when compared to poor ones.”[3] If we take today’s advanced economies and track the share of government expenditure in their economies over time, Rodrik finds a steadily rising trend from 11% in 1870, 20% in1920, 28% in 1960, 40% in 1975 to around 35-60% today. And the higher shares are found in more open economies because their citizens demand that governments compensate them against the risk which international economic forces expose them to.

Our view, therefore, is that to get a more concrete idea of the what the new institution must do, it would be much more useful to focus on the many positive roles that the Planning Commission played and which, perhaps, no other institution in India is in a position to perform.

Seven Key Roles

The key arena where the new institution must play its part is in mediating centre-state relations and pushing for a more devolved economy and polity in India. Given the enormous diversity of India in social, cultural, agro-ecological and economic terms, it becomes imperative to focus on the principle of subsidiarity. Every effort needs to be made to find location-specific solutions to problems, closest to where the problems exist. States must enjoy maximum flexibility in this respect and there must be mechanisms that facilitate learning across states. Despite all the exercise of negative power that I alluded to earlier, the new institution is in a great position to draw upon the very rich experience of the Planning Commission in each of these respects.

In my years at the Planning Commission, I saw innumerable instances of the exercise of this positive power. I believe there are at least seven broad areas in which the Planning Commission played an extremely positive role: one, pioneering an inclusive planning process; two, facilitating and mainstreaming reform; three, pushing decentralized planning forward by emphasising the principle of subsidiarity in recognition of the deep diversity of India; four, rationalizing the centrally sponsored schemes and introducing greater flexibility within them; five, being the spokesperson of the states at the centre; six, co-ordinating across, if not breaking down departmental silos within the Government of India as also arbitrating disputes by taking a more long-term and holistic view of issues; and seven, providing an independent evaluation and critique of government programmes and policies. Each of these roles will need to be taken over by the new institution replacing the Planning Commission.

Inclusive Planning

The Twelfth Plan process saw a completely unprecedented architecture of plan formulation. For the first time in the history of the Planning Commission, the 12 working groups on water, rural development and panchayati raj were chaired by eminent experts from outside government and included the best minds and practitioners from across central and state governments, academia, research institutions, industry, civil society, and panchayati raj institutions. It was clearly recognised that all wisdom does not reside within government and that the best plans, programmes and policies could be made only with the active involvement of those outside government. This was not mere tokenism in the name of participation. Final decisions were made by these inclusive working groups. For me, the true indicator of the success of this process was that even though none of the players involved were fully happy with the final outcome, something truly path-breaking was achieved. This only reflected the spirit of compromise that is a hallmark of good governance, as a hard-fought consensus was thrashed out among the members and the chair and co-chair, who was in each case the senior-most official of the concerned department. Each side was compelled to give up their own pet fundamentalisms in the interests of forging a consensus. The result was a series of landmark proposals that constitute a paradigm shift in water management in India, including the first-ever National Aquifer Management Programme, a new approach to incentivise de-bureaucratisation of large irrigation projects and irrigation management transfer to increase water use efficiency, a new integrated approach to rural drinking water and sanitation, a proposal to regularly audit the industrial water footprint and a new “room-for-the-river” approach to flood management.

Facilitating and Mainstreaming Reforms by States

Almost all the innovations listed above were drawn from best practices pioneered by state governments, who have led the reform process in our country in recent years. The specific role of the Planning Commission was to enable the mainstreaming, across the length and breadth of the country, of something that was initially attempted only in one state or even a part of the state. I was fortunate to have been able to build on many such initiatives. The National Aquifer Management Programme, for example, emerged from the extraordinary effort of a million farmers in Andhra Pradesh, who showed how sustainable management of groundwater was possible once farmers understood the nature of their aquifers. Despite the fact that India is the most groundwater dependent country in the world (leaving China way behind) with around 30 million groundwater structures (wells and tubewells), we have still not mapped our aquifers at a scale that enables their sustainable management by the primary stakeholders.

It was the Planning Commission that helped the Ministry of Water Resources develop a national programme that will enable aquifers all over India to be mapped for the first time ever at a scale that will make it possible for them to be sustainably managed. Another such initiative in which I was involved is the mainstreaming of Gujarat’s greatly successful Jyotigram (separation of power feeders) scheme that has already made a dramatic impact on the power situation in states like Madhya Pradesh.

Promoting Devolution

A key role played by the Planning Commission over the years has been to promote the cause of decentralized planning. In the Twelfth Plan period, this culminated in the creation of a new centrally sponsored scheme called the Rajiv Gandhi Panchayat Sashaktikaran Abhiyan (RGPSA). The RGPSA is based on the conviction that panchayati raj institutions (PRIs) in India have suffered in the absence of professional human resource support. This is perhaps the single most important change I was part of during the 12^th Plan, although few among economic and political commentators seem even remotely aware of it. Building upon an offer by the Ministry of Rural Development (MoRD), the Planning Commission was able to carve out a massive increase in the allocation for the Ministry of Panchayati Raj through a mere 1% reduction in the allocation of the MoRD, which saw great merit in strengthening PRIs for improving the quality of implementation of its own programmes.

Another blow in favour of devolution and strengthening PRIs, initiated by the Planning Commission, was the exercise to restructure the Backward Regions Grant Fund (BRGF), the most important development programme providing untied funds to PRIs. The exercise was about moving the BRGF to the sub-district level because it is no longer meaningful to understand backwardness in India at the district level, with many “advanced” districts enclosing pockets of intense backwardness within them and many “backward” districts, containing very advanced sub-districts. By focusing on sub-districts we would be able to zero in on the truly backward regions of India.[4]

Greater Flexibility in Schemes

A major complaint of states over the years has been the great inflexibility of centrally sponsored schemes (CSSs) and the rigid guidelines imposed upon them by central ministries. We must begin by stating that contrary to popular belief the Planning Commission hardly plays any discretionary function as far as fund flows to states are concerned. This flow mainly takes place through CSSs but these are controlled by the central ministries. We believe a certain number of CSSs are required for the achievement of basic national goals like health, education, sanitation, nutrition and drinking water. But there is a legitimate concern about the proliferation of CSSs.

The Planning Commission has played a stellar role in rationalizing the number of CSSs, most recently through the work of the BK Chaturvedi Committee. The work of the committee involved a process of widespread consultations with the concerned ministries, States and other relevant stakeholders. This led to a drastic reduction in the number of schemes, which many still regard as inadequate but they overlook the fact that the Planning Commission has always pushed hard for their reduction. The difficulty has been that finally it had to go by the consensus possible with the ministries very keen to retain their pet projects.

Even more significant has been the contribution of the Planning Commission in introducing significant flexibility in the guidelines of CSSs. Once again the process involved extensive consultations with the States, as also with the best civil society implementers in India. This has led to changes in the MGNREGA guidelines, accepting suggestions of states for activities suited to their conditions, as also works that enable synergy with agriculture in view of the widespread (even if false, in view of the Planning Commission) complaint about the adverse impact of MGNREGA on small and marginal farmers.

The guidelines for sanitation were also modified to allow States to use location-specific designs as per their ecological conditions. The guidelines for the drinking water programme were tweaked to promote devolution on the basis of a Management Devolution Index, which summarises the extent and quality of devolution in drinking water management systems across states. Over and above all these CSS specific changes, the Planning Commission introduced the concept of a “flexi-fund” that would enable states to undertake innovative projects across CSS silos.

Spokesperson for the States

The new institution set up to replace the Planning Commission must continue to play this kind of role in support of the states in their hard negotiations with central ministries. When the Chief Minister of Madhya Pradesh went on a fast, raising a series of legitimate grievances of the state with the centre, the Prime Minister asked me, as member-in-charge of Madhya Pradesh, to work with all concerned Central ministries to hammer out an amicable solution. This was done in record time, to the satisfaction of the aggrieved chief minister. Similarly, at the request of the Chief Minister of Punjab, I chaired a high-level expert group on waterlogging in Punjab. The group, consisting of the nation’s best experts on the subject, conducted a thorough investigation of the problem, in close partnership with the state government, and came out with a package of solutions, which was generously supported by the Government of India. Similar roles were played by other members in other contexts, which illustrate how the Planning Commission can be an effective mediator and problem-solver for States, rather than their tormentor.

Breaking Departmental Silos

Water is perhaps the sector that suffers the most from being broken down into departmental silos. The Twelfth Plan has described it as “hydro-schizophrenia”, where the left hand of drinking water does not know what the right hand of irrigation is doing. The Plan document diagnoses the emerging crisis of drinking water and so-called “slipped-back habitations” as emerging from the fact that the same source that was providing drinking water to the habitation was also being used for irrigation, a much larger guzzler of water. Again, the fact that drinking water and sanitation were being run as separate programmes meant that often there was no water in sanitary facilities and, in other instances, the drinking water suffered bacterial pollution. All of these kinds of issues were typically tackled by the Planning Commission by modifying programme guidelines and seeking to bring greater convergence in action.

Independent Critique and Evaluation

This has been one of the most well-established roles of the Planning Commission over the years. Given its unique position of being, in a sense, both inside and outside government, the evaluations and critiques the Planning Commission proffered of government programmes and policies, has had a more than academic value and has often led to positive reforms in implementation. The Planning Commission has drawn upon the best expertise available within academia to play this role. The quality of these exercises has, however, not always been up to the desired level and the new institution being set up must do better in this regard. A crucial element that needs change is the ability to hire the best available talent and being able to network with the best institutions, which would give this exercise real credibility. This also makes it essential for there to be such expertise available in-house so that it can draw in whatever resources required, both from among academics and practitioners.

Conclusions

The new institution that replaces the Planning Commission will need to play each one of these crucial roles. However, it is also important that the negative roles of the Planning Commission, such as approving the Annual Plans of the states, should be done away with. The so-called “regulatory” role of being able to veto EFC notes must also be eliminated. Each one of the positive functions we have described earlier implies a think-tank role. But these functions cannot be performed by just any other toothless think-tank. Their effective performance demands that the institution be empowered in a way that enables it to make a difference at the cutting edge of implementation. Otherwise the “new” Planning Commission, whatever it may be named, will be reduced to a shadow of its former self.

The Reformed ‘Planning Commission’

The Way Forward

The government must recognise that one source of China’s strategic economic growth is an institution with strategic planning capacities, the National Development and Reform Commission. The success of China with the NDRC tells us that fiscal decentralisation, accountability mechanisms, experimentation, learning, and openness to expertise form the core of any institution that seeks to provide vision and strategic economic planning. Further, strategic planning institutions in Asian economies, like India’s Planning Commission, have helped deal with various regional and global economic crises; a lesson we must keep in mind.

Santosh Mehrotra (santoshmeh@gmail.com) teaches at the Centre for Labour and Informal Sector Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi.

This article is a longer and revised version of an article published in The Hindu.

The National Democratic Alliance (NDA)-led government has decided to abolish the Planning Commission, and create a new institution in its place. This requires a redefinition of the functions of the old organisation. The following functions could be considered, in the light of concerns expressed by the government. First, it should function as the foremost government think tank. Second, it will need to continue to prepare five-year plans, or even perhaps slightly longer term perspective plans. Third, it needs to give a more effective voice to state governments. The erstwhile function of pre-appraising all projects from all ministries should be retired, except in areas where it has special expertise (as discussed later).

Think Tank Function

There is one role that the current Planning Commission has barely managed to perform – systematically collecting best practices in policy or programme design from states, and then replicating successful models across the country. India is a veritable laboratory for good practices within states in every sector. But so removed is the culture of learning from our administrative system that since independence we have not managed to institutionalise any method of learning across states. If learning across states is to be systematised, then the Planning Commission would be the appropriate body for this purpose. But that requires that it plays a much greater strategic role than it has played so far. Since a strategic role with actual power is what the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) has achieved in China, the Chinese experience is salutary for India.

One thing that the Chinese experience teaches us is that after the economic reforms began in 1979, the Chinese government, after the name of the State Planning Commission was changed to the NDRC (in 2003), the institution became more powerful than it was during the pre-reform era. It is possible in China to create a strategic, powerful role for NDRC as it has a strong planning function in several key areas (natural resources, guiding Chinese embassies on economic matters and promoting economic diplomacy).

It is essential to place the transition to the NDRC in context. First, the strategic planning function for the economy as a whole remained with the NDRC. Second, five-year plans continued to be prepared after 2003 just as they had been prepared before 1979. In other words, they did not move to a mere long-term perspective plan alone. The problem with a long-term perspective plan is that it has rather little practical value other than laying out a vision. It is not a usable document. Of course, the current five-year plans may also be criticised for not having practical value. However, that can be changed if the NDA government so decides, by making an annual strategic evaluation of programmes and projects a regular phenomenon to check if line ministries achieved targets. It would then become an important tool in the hands of the prime minister, as chair of the new Planning Commission, to monitor progress (well beyond the mere collection of data that is put on the Delivery Monitoring Unit created by the previous Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) in 2009) towards targets. This monitoring role cannot be left to the line ministry, since the line ministry is an interested party, and its leadership is bound to defend its performance. Since the prime minister (and consequently the PMO) can instruct the line ministry to either redesign the programmes that are not delivering or scrap it, this role for the new Planning Commission is consistent with the transfer of the financial allocation function away from the current Planning Commission to the Ministry of Finance.

Some make the argument that if the new Planning Commission does not have financial allocation powers, then its powers of persuasion will be accordingly restricted. This argument is considerably weakened as the new Planning Commission’s chairperson will still remain the prime minister, who could hold the line ministries to account. In any case, the powers of persuasion have not worked very well so far even with the current Planning Commission’s financial allocation powers (and the new government is not persuaded that the new Planning Commission should retain that power).

Fiscal Decentralisation

There is another lesson for India from the Chinese system. One of the most important differences between the Chinese and Indian fiscal arrangements between the centre and states is that China has become, since the 1979 economic reforms, considerably more decentralised fiscally (both in relation to its past and vis-à-vis India), and its economic growth is caused by this phenomenon. China is highly decentralised fiscally, despite having a fully unitary constitution, as well as a one-party government. However, India remains one of the most fiscally centralised federal systems in the world. The reason perhaps for this situation is that the Indian state inherited in 1947 over 600 principalities from British rule, which needed to be woven together into an Indian Union, and the founding fathers of the Constitution created a highly centralised state, at least fiscally. In fact, it has been normal to describe the Indian Constitution as being federal, but with strong unitary features.

Under the circumstances, the Planning Commission’s role reinforces fiscal centralisation in India, with its centrally-sponsored schemes (CSSs) (which even after the rationalisation following the B K Chaturvedi Committee report still number 67, and account for the main mechanism of transfer of programmatic resources to the states of India). The one-size-fits-all design of the CSSs, which has long been the source of much resentment for state governments, has only recently begun to be loosened up with the share of “untied funds” rising to 20% of total plan funds under each CSS. In fact, most of the allocations by the Planning Commission so far have been made under the CSSs. It is the CSSs that have been the source of the newly-elected central government’s problems with the Planning Commission, and intensified the demand for disbanding the Planning Commission. However, that would amount to throwing the baby out with the bathwater.

In China, the high level of fiscal decentralisation with retention of revenues generated by provinces and also township and county governments (the latter being the equivalent to India’s panchayati raj institutions/urban local bodies), combines effectively with the strategic planning role of the NDRC. Unfortunately, we have had the worst of all worlds, with a fiscally centralised centre on the one hand, and a Planning Commission that has historically promoted one-size-fits-all CSSs.

Experimentation and Learning

There is another big difference between China and India. What is notable is the tradition that the Chinese state established as part of planning strategic reform: the tradition of carrying out nationwide reforms only after experiments to pilot the reforms in different states. Thus, farmland had been collectivised in the late 1950s and individual plots were abolished. Economic reforms in China began in 1979 with agrarian reforms. Collective farms were experimentally broken up and leased to individual households for a 30-year period, but this programme never went to scale until it had been piloted in a number of communities in a few provinces. This model of experimentation was repeatedly followed for other reforms.

In India, on the other hand, experimentation of this kind is an exception, not the rule. The real problem is that our ability to judge whether a proposed programme design will actually deliver the expected results remains low. Ministries typically prepare programmes without explicitly exploring alternative programme designs to achieve the same results. Programmes are devised with “top down” designs, where the centre provides funds and the states implement. Decades of experience demonstrates that this method of planning or programme design does not work.

The implication is that the new, reformed Indian Planning Commission must be responsible for conducting programmes on a pilot basis using alternate design elements before they are rolled out on a national level.

A second function that the reformed Planning Commission must perform is to institutionalise the learning from different states about good policy and programme design. For example, the extension system in most of the country collapsed over the last quarter of a century, except in a minority of states. However, Gujarat managed to sustain the extension-worker model with impressive results. The Planning Commission was supposed to perform this learning function, but it is rare for state governments to repeatedly follow successful models that have been shown to work. The previous Planning Commission had recognised these problems, but was unable to implement reform. The new government can change things if the prime minister wishes to take this role seriously by imposing such solutions on the line ministries, and following up with incentive funds for the purpose.

It is highly likely that the Expenditure Reforms Commission will rationalise expenditures further, beyond the reduction in the number of CSSs that was done by the previous Planning Commission. It is also likely that the scope of cash transfers may well increase significantly, while the scope of project-based subsidies might decline correspondingly. The new Planning Commission should be responsible for conducting pilots of the new cash transfer schemes that will be conceived.

Giving States a Greater Voice

The existing Planning Commission had long played a role in an interaction with states. State governments have come every year to the Planning Commission in the last quarter of the financial year to discuss both their economic and social performance as well as annual plan allocations. However, this role of the Planning Commission has been a source of resentment between the centre and the states.

The National Development Council has been an appropriate forum for the voice of states, but has not met frequently enough – this is one problem. The second problem with regard to interactions between the Planning Commission and the states is that there is no systematic discussion forum for policy reform, in specific sectors, in consultation with the states. These discussions are often conducted by central line ministries, but only with regard to the CSSs that are implemented by the states. There is need for a central forum, institutionalised in the reformed Planning Commission, where the states discuss the new areas of concentration.

What could be the areas of sectoral expertise that the new Planning Commission should develop?

(i) The Twelfth Five-Year Plan has emphasised quite explicitly for the first time since the economic reforms began the need for an industrial policy. The new government has also emphasised the need for foreign direct investment to promote manufacturing, especially for export markets. One of the roles of the new Planning Commission should be to bring together relevant stakeholders for the 17 sectors identified in the manufacturing chapter of the Twelfth Plan on a systematic and regular basis so that industrial policy does not remain the preserve of the Department for Industrial Policy and Planning alone. This would be similar to the role NDRC plays in China.

(ii) The other areas should be: Education and skill development; health; nutrition (none of which are NDRC priorities in China); agriculture and rural development; water; energy policy; transport and logistics. ^{Sectoral Expertise}

One of the long-standing criticisms of the Planning Commission has been that it has lost its professional expertise because it is staffed by generalist Indian Administrative Service (IAS) and Indian Economic Service (IES) officers mostly at senior levels. Its ability to persuade states about good practices or become a knowledge hub based on research and professional experience is quite limited. Staff move in and out of the Planning Commission like in any other ministry. Therefore, it has always remained a question as to what its value added is over and above a sectoral ministry. By contrast, in China the staff of the NDRC spend their entire careers in it within a given division, and in this manner develop professional expertise.

Generalist officers must be responsive to outside expert opinion on the design of policies and programmes, which happens rarely in the Planning Commission (except in the run-up to plan preparation through working groups, but their opinions can get buried in the final plan draft). The real question remains – how will the new Planning Commission be staffed, so that specialised expertise dominates in the priority sector areas outlined? To start with, expertise could be sourced from within the government. However, lateral entrants must be encouraged on a greater scale than has been possible. So a widespread programme of lateral entry at different levels would have to be encouraged. However, the implication is that the remuneration and overall package to such lateral entries must match what they might be able to command in the market.

One last word. Latin American and African economies that used to have planning commissions or equivalents until the late 1970s and abolished them in the 1980s, have begun regretting their decisions. In contrast, most Asian economies still retain the equivalent of our Planning Commission. An important reason why Asian economies have emerged rapidly from the regional/global economic crises in 1997 and 2008 is because they retained their strategic planning capacity, and institutions that embody that capacity. The Government of India should note that bitter lesson, so that we do not live to regret the mistakes committed by most Latin American economies.

Assam-Nagaland Border Violence

Role of militants and the state

The violence that erupted in the Assam-Nagaland border a month back has been the fallout of poor governance by the respective state governments. Their complicity in the violence is linked to the interest of extremist elements who fuel insurgency by alienating people of both the states. 

Nazimuddin Siddiqui (nazim10dream@gmail.com) is a research scholar at the Department of Sociology, Gauhati University, Assam. 

Out of eight north-east states Assam has seen most violence in recent times, to the point that violence is now synonymous with Assam. “A number of Armed conflicts smoulder in this frontier region: the outside world is aware of a few of them, but only people living in remote war zones- and paying a price with their blood and tears know the others ” (Baruah 2005). The large scale brutality in Assam-Nagaland border in August 2014 came in only after a lull of few days since 57 Muslims were horrendously shot dead by Bodo militants in Baksa district of Assam. 

Beginning of the present conflict

The ferocity started in the Assam-Nagaland border region with a dispute of land between two individuals. Of the two, one was from the ex-tea tribe community of Assam and the other one was from the Naga community. The dispute was apparently settled but the situation flared up with an alleged abduction on 26 July 2014 of two children - Filson Kujur of Green Valley High School and Ajay Gad of Gholapani Little Flower High School who are studying in the tenth and ninth standard respectively.  The incident happened in the Assam Nagaland border under Dhanashiri subdivision of Golaghat district of Assam.

In the initial phase about 20,000 people from various organisations undertook democratic protests to put their demand for the release of the abducted students. The protestors went on to surround the 155 Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) camp which led to baton charge by the CRPF on the protestors. At that time NSCN (National Socialist Council of Nagaland) extremists who were hiding about 200 m away started firing indiscriminately with sophisticated weapons on the unarmed protestors.  In addition to firing, the Naga miscreants started torching houses which led to the evacuation of many villagers. The firing and torching of houses continued in the following days.  17 people were killed and there was a massive exodus has led to the internal displacement of more than 10,000 people.

Lack of police action

Presently the disrupted zone of Assam-Nagaland border areas are under the supervision of neutral central forces. But the forces could provide no security of life and property to the villagers of the conflict zone. Villagers claimed that while the NSCN  extremists were firing indiscriminately on the unarmed villagers the CRPF were mute spectators and didn’t take any preventive action.

In a specific instance Naga extremists allegedly shot bullets in the presence of none other than a Director General of Police (DGP) and the Superintendent of Police (SP) of Assam Police. Sanglasung, 2 no. Chainpur, Lachitgaon, Romanbasti, Jahajigaon, Kempur, Rojapukhuri, Komolpur, Majgaon etc. are a few villages along the border which were burned to the ground.  The situation is so frazzled that the Naga government had issued an advisory to the Naga people not to travel through Golaghat district which is the violence torn district.  Night curfew had been imposed for an indefinite period in the belt. Various student organisations of Assam had started economic blockade by blocking the crucial National highway 39 which connects Nagaland to Assam. This blockade will result a severe loss to the economy of Nagaland and Manipur. 

Root of the Conflict and Politics

Conflicts between Nagas and Assamese in the Assam-Nagaland border areas are in no way a new experience. The first Naga assailment came in on 29 December 1959 on government property at Uriamghat, Assam. That day which may, on record, be cited as the first incidence of atrocities was perpetrated by a section of Naga militants on Assam, one forest office was looted and then set ablaze. These series of conflict has been enduring since the last 50 years or so and since then not less than 300 people killed in these conflicts. The central issue of present conflict in sector B and sector D of Assam Nagaland border area is claims and counter claims over land. Land of hill areas is not suitable for cultivation and therefore a section of Naga miscreants are parsimoniously looking upon the plains which are mostly inhabited by an ethnic group known as ex-tea tribes.

Continuing the tradition of massacre, invariably even this time the victims of violence are “…innocent people who had been struggling hard for survival like most other victims of politically-oriented violence” (Hussain 1995). “….in an official statement in the Assam Assembly provided the following statistics: over 86,886.12 hectares of land of Assam have been encroached upon. Nagaland alone has been accused of encroaching 59,159.77 hectares” (Economic Times 2014).  A case is already pending in the Supreme Court regarding the dispute of boundaries between Assam and Nagaland. Supreme Court appointed a mediator team to prepare a report and the same also was submitted to the apex court. The damaging encumbrance came to the mediating process when the apex court asked for feedback from the parties, i.e. Assam and Nagaland. The feedback is yet to be submitted to the court by both the parties and the process has thus stranded in deadlock.

The administration in denial

Violence in the border areas are occurring repeatedly due to poor governance by the respective state governments. “Governance today encompasses much more than mere rule or administration, it represents a commitment to democratic institutions, processes and values in order to ensure economic, political and social security”(Hussain 2003).

After the violence, both the governments have been playing blame game on the issue. The Assam government alleged that much of its territorial land has been encroached by some Nagas. In addition to that, the Naga government has legitimised the process by building offices, hospitals, educational institutions etc. on the encroached land. There have been instances where the respective state governments carried out dialogues to resolve the issue. But these superficial initiatives remained largely inconclusive.

Role of Naga militants

It is alleged that the last incident of violence was spurred by the NSCN militant groups of Nagaland. As Baruah (2005) argued, “The Naga conflict began with India’s independence in 1947: Naga leaders rejected the idea that their land, which was under a special dispensation during colonial rule, could simply pass on to Indian hands at the end of British colonial rule”. In the 1950s it turned in to an armed conflict.

However a separate state Nagaland came in to being in 1963 but the conflict continued over the decades. One of the important objectives of NSCN-IM (National Socialist Council of Nagaland-Isak-Muivah) is to establish a “Greater Nagalim” engulfing all Naga inhabited areas in neighboring states i.e. Assam, Manipur, and Arunachal Pradesh in addition to Nagaland. They even want to include some portions of Myanmar which are inhabited by Nagas into the“Greater Nagalim”. “The proposed Nagalim spreads over approximately 1, 20,000 sq km  in contrast to the present state of Nagaland that has an area of 16,527 sq km”. With a vision of Nagalim this militant group is in a constant endeavor to push the boundaries of Nagaland towards the plains of Assam. Even the state government of Nagaland is allegedly in collaboration with the militant groups. 

In 1985 a full fledge gun battle between Assam police and Naga police took place in the border areas and it is alleged that Naga police were accompanied by the NSCN militants in the gun battle. Killings, looting, kidnappings, threatening, etc. are some common phenomena in the Assam-Nagaland border areas.  The Naga insurgency still persists due to lack of political will on the part of Nagaland government. “Mainstream Naga politicians do not want the insurgency to end because once that happens militia leaders would compete with them for elected office” (Misra 2000). Civil societies had been in constant endeavor for a long lasting peace in the region but governments of both the states are busy playing the blame game.  

Northeast has been a safe haven for the terrorists as well as for the security agencies to carry out atrocities without any accountability in different forms. In larger parts of the northeast the draconian Armed Forces Special Powers Act is in operation.  Security of life and property, ‘….civil liberties, due process, justice, and fairness….’ is a distant cry for the people of Northeast in general and Assam in particular  (Baruah 1999).    

Way forward

Though no immediate solution is in sight, the state governments of Assam and Nagaland are should initiate chief minister level dialogues on the border dispute between the two states. These talks must be backed by utmost sincerity and dedication in order to bring a sustainable solution to the protracted conflict. It has been found that timely and prompt action by the neutral forces could have stopped the ongoing violence. Time has come on the part of state governments to accept responsibilities in a positive manner and to cooperate with the Supreme Court mandated team to bring peace in the region.

Cleaning the Ganga River

What Needs To Be Done Differently

The central government has made cleaning of River Ganga one of its foremost priorities. A former administrator involved with the Ganga Action Plan suggests that a bottoms-up approach of involving local communities and stakeholders in the regeneration of the river would be the only possible way in which the new initiative will avoid the failures of the past.

Vijay Jagannathan (Vjagannathan@wri.org) is a senior fellow at the World Resources Institute, Washington DC.

Past efforts at cleaning the Ganga River had invariably received political support at the highest level in the central government, but the results were meagre compared to the funds and administrative time invested. The author was responsible for managing the West Bengal part of the Ganga Action Plan (GAP) in the late 1980s, and so these observations reflect the benefit of 20/20 hindsight, as well as having been engaged in different aspects of water management in several parts of the world.

The key lesson learned from the past and ongoing World Bank financed effort is quite stark: systemic factors, perpetuated by two centuries of state public works departments’ (PWD) practices of “projectising” civil engineering solutions cannot be reconciled with the desired outcome of a clean and well maintained, mixed land use riverfront development which turbocharges local urban economies by galvanising civic action to clean the river.

Mind the GAP

The GAP was conceived during Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi’s term in office with three components of central government funds to Uttar Pradesh, Bihar and West Bengal. The largest and most capital-intensive allocation ended up supporting investments in sewer lines, drains and in rehabilitating sewage treatment plants (STPs) along the river. The second component was to build crematoria in the large urban centres, so that the ancient practices of cremating bodies using firewood (but often in practice dumped half burned into the river) could be replaced with more sanitary and respectful disposal of the dead. The third component was to beautify riverfronts or “ghats”, many of which had great historic and cultural significance, but had over the centuries been reduced to unsanitary bathing and washing spots for pilgrims and the urban poor alike.

Although the second and third components of the GAP were of more direct local community interest, the anxiety to disburse central funds quickly in the three states (none of which were known for administrative efficiency) led the central government to focus on the “hardware” part. This included how to monitor investments in civil works schemes (for example, laying of sewer lines, interceptor drains and refitting derelict STPs with new electrical and mechanical equipment).

These civil engineer driven efforts ignored the communities that potentially stood to benefit, and there was even less interest in engaging urban planners, architects and social activists who could have contributed their knowledge of the existing urban form, explained the heritage potentials and helped us understand the multiple layers of rights and interests of the various stakeholders. The latter ranged from temple mahants, owners of local industries and shopkeepers to the Doms, rickshaw pullers and tourist guides who earned a livelihood by the river.

Furthermore, while an expert committee was set up to evaluate the performance of STPs throughout India, the lessons learned (notably that the STPs invariably failed to perform after a couple of years of operation in all parts of India) were not considered during the rush to disburse funds and report back to the Prime Minister’s Office.

The second component – the electric crematoriums – were designed and constructed for operation by the municipalities, although the business model in other parts of the world, where cremation is a common form of disposal, has invol-ved public-private partnerships (PPPs). Bereaved families in India will vouch that cremations are a harrowing experience, although experience from Japan and Korea suggest that well-designed PPP contracts not only enable cities to get access to the latest energy efficient technologies, but a more professional approach of consoling the bereaved family members rather than be subject to extortion at the time of their grief.

The third component of beautifying the ghats was at odds with the global experiences in successful waterfront development (in cities as diverse as Singapore, Foshan, Baltimore and Bangkok). The common link in these successful efforts was the generation of economic value from the redeveloped shore areas, which was shared transparently with city residents who had housing, customary and informal rights in those areas. All these efforts were preceded by careful and systematic planning aimed at generating land value increases through mixed use development while intensively engaging the communities that stood to benefit.

The failures of GAP have been widely accepted, and since 2011, the World Bank has been supporting the Ministry of Environment and Forests in a second effort for cleaning the Ganga through the $1.5 billion National Ganga River Basin project. While the project document asserts that the design has learnt its lessons from the failures of the GAP, its twin foci are on building capacity in the entire river basin, while allocating core investments for civil engineering solutions implemented through the very same state civil engineering agencies that failed to deliver on the GAP promise. It is, therefore, not surprising in the least that the latest project supervision (February 2014) report has concluded that implementation performance has been unsatisfactory at a time when this flagship programme is well into the third year of its implementation!

Successful cleaning of the Ganga requires a different vision and leadership than what can be expected from the “silo-ed” sectoral agencies in these relatively poor performing state administrations.

I would argue that actions are required on three fronts. These are:

·         To ensure that the incentives among project implementation agencies are consistent with the prime minister’s vision of a “Swachcha Bharat”.

·         To start with institutional innovations that first secure community acceptance of a mixed use urban plan that generates economic value along important cities on the Ganga’s riverbanks.

·         The leverage of technology and financing opportunities linked to demand-driven urban development that helps create incomes and employment, along with a better physical quality of life.

To achieve this, I would suggest a four-step process in which the appropriate sequencing of actions is critically important.

The first step would be to have community engagement in assessing the situation, and utilising the expertise of urban planners and architects to develop a vision on protecting the river, as well as the cultural heritage along its banks. The most important asset in a city is the waterfront land that residents and the municipality own or have rights to. Any programme to clean the river has to begin by exploring how best this asset can be leveraged to not only reduce the outflow of liquid and solid wastes to the river, but also generate economic value to local stakeholders.

An illustration will be in order here. In ancient cities like Varanasi, there are multiple layers of rights to land, which often lead to resistance when the government seeks to acquire land. However, the same communities respond well when future plans incorporate their economic interests. For example, riverfront development has the potential of generating significant increases in land values, and community support is robust when these increases are captured and/or shared with them in a transparent manner.

Similarly, areas of historic and cultural heritage have significantly higher long-term economic benefits when they are protected from redevelopment, provided innovative solutions such as selling of air rights to other parts of the city safeguard these property owner interests. In this context, the Gujarat and Maharashtra land pooling and readjustment mechanism (as opposed to the land acquisition model followed in Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Jharkhand and West Bengal) provides a more practical institutional mechanism to secure community engagement.

Importance of the Locality

The next step is to reach agreements with communities, city and state administrations and national governments on who will bear what costs in this process of urban regeneration that accompanies cleaning the river. This step will involve finding common ground and agreement (often as a consequence of “tough” negotiations) on how responsibilities and economic benefits will be shared between them and other stakeholders.

In cities across the world that have successfully implemented such programmes, the primary beneficiaries have been households, businesses and industries in neighbourhoods that benefit from the urban renaissance. For example, Varanasi, Allahabad, Patna and Kolkata are already major destinations for tourists, and an improvement in the physical environment of the waterfront will greatly enhance their attractiveness to tourists and investors alike. The key is for residents of the city wards being able to share the economic benefits of land value increases in an equitable and transparent manner.

There are several planning tools available to ensure that this happens. These include innovations in planning regulations, investigating options to preserve cultural and built heritage while enhancing land value capture, utilising information and communications technologies to plan, execute and sustain the development of the waterfronts, along with tax (or betterment levy) implications, to name a few. The widespread familiarity with social media makes deep community engagement much more cost effective compared to what was possible even five years ago.

The third step is to delegate implementation responsibilities to organisations best suited to deliver the desired outcomes. In other words, one should apply the “subsidiarity principle” of managing change at the lowest appropriate level. It is necessary to start with the mohallas and wards, and assign implementa-tion responsibilities to neighbourhood institutions. The works should begin with separation of solid wastes, move on to explore options for improving sanitation and hygiene, and finally work out neighbourhood plans that communities endorse fully.

For example, in low-income communities of Brazil, the idea that these residents need to manage their respective “horizontal condominiums” (just as rich people maintain common areas in high rise or vertical condominiums viewed in TV soap operas) has been a useful way of securing community engagement in improving their neighbourhood physical environment.

Beyond neighbourhoods, planners and policymakers need to assess which type of institution is best suited to manage urban services. For example, funeral infrastructure in countries where cremation is prevalent is best managed through professional private sector entities, regulated by municipalities. Other increasingly attractive technologies, such as conversion of waste to energy or rooftop solar distributed generation need to leverage financing and technology through PPPs. Mixed land use that safeguards the housing rights of the urban poor has led to significant increases in land values in Bangkok city without social conflicts.

Finally, the Funds

The fourth step is to release Government of India funds for engineering design only as a last step, after the responsibilities, rights and contracting arrangements have been worked out. The success of the programme will depend on the extent to which the institutional and incentive structures are aligned to the desired goal of cleaning the Ganga.

The sequencing of the policy formulation and planning process will be the key factor in achieving good results. Today, with the benefit of social media and the availability of a lot of expertise both within India and in other Asian countries that have undertaken similar programmes, the visioning and institutional restructuring could be undertaken fairly quickly. The good news is that the initial phases of agreeing on the urban plans, securing a common vision, negotiating and finalising the work programme are time intensive, but not resource intensive. However, once there is an agreement to move forward, funds can be allocated and disbursed much faster, but linked to achieving the outcomes specified in the work programme. These may involve leveraging smart subsidies and viability gap funding for PPPs rather than channelling central government resources to these relatively inefficient state agencies

 

Taking on ISIS

There is just no easy and clear way to defeat the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria.

Actions by the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) have contributed to a deterioration of the already catastrophic Syrian civil war and the possible disintegration of Iraq. There is no question that this radical Islamist group, which thrives on medieval methods, primeval ideologies and brutality, has to be militarily defeated. How it is to be done is a difficult issue. The outcome of any event, even if it leads to the defeat of the ISIS, seems to be one that is going to be bloody, chaotic and one of further despair for the long-suffering people of Iraq and Syria.

The rise of the ISIS has been facilitated by a number of forces and circumstances, each having its own set of consequences. The US invasion of Iraq and the post-occupation policy of dismantling the secular state apparatus in the country in the hope that a dependent nation could be created allowed the seeds of Al Qaida to be sowed on the back of Sunni anger against the new establishment. The sectarian attitude of the Shia-dominated governments led by Nouri al-Maliki as prime minister fanned the rising waves of Sunni resistance so much so that former Ba’athist forces sought an alliance with the battle-hardened ISIS which had made significant advances in the Syrian civil war.

The Syrian civil war had provided ISIS the opportunity to utilise the “great game” played by various proxy forces intending to destabilise the Ba’athist regime of Bashar al-Assad. Suffused with finances and weaponry supplied to the Syrian opposition by various groups – financiers from the Gulf Cooperation Council countries such as Saudi Arabia and Qatar – and helped by Turkish indulgence in allowing foreign recruits to the ISIS cause to get free passes through the Turkish-Syrian border, the group over-ran resistance from the Syrian regime and took control over a large area in northern Syria. The US also played its role in funding the rebellion against the Syrian regime, only to see the ISIS and other allied forces reap most of the largesse.

Presently, the ISIS has control over one-third of Iraq and a significant number of towns, cities, and oil refineries in Syria, and has established a “de facto” state. The ISIS sought to expand its territory into the northern and oil-rich areas controlled by the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) beginning with the capture of Iraq’s second-largest city, Mosul. In doing so, it subjected Iraqi minorities – for example, the Yazidis – to brutality. The Yazidis were driven into refuge in the Sinjar Mountains, as the Kurdish peshmerga (armed militia of the KRG) withdrew protection when it could not take on the better-armed ISIS. It was left to the Kurdish militias from Syria and Turkey – the People’s Protection Units (YPG) and the socialist Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) – to rescue a large number of Yazidis, even as the US finally swung into action to protect its KRG allies and assets. The pluralist and feminist YPG, an offshoot of the PKK’s Syrian affiliates, has remained the most effective force against the ISIS advance in Syria.

Despite ideological differences, the Kurdish peshmerga has now formed a tentative alliance with the PKK and the YPG – even as the US has sought to help the alliance to take on the ISIS in northern Iraq. It is an uncomfortable position for the US; it has proscribed and categorised the PKK as a “terrorist” organisation. The PKK, which seeks a loose transborder confederation of Kurdish areas, persists with insurgency in Turkey, a North Atlantic Treaty Organisation member, although the two are also engaged in a tortuous peace process.

The US seems to have a Janus-faced policy towards the ISIS. In Syria, the US prefers the heat to remain on the Assad government and is reluctant to recognise the threat the ISIS (and other Islamist forces such as the Al Qaida-affiliated Jabhat al-Nusra) poses to Syrian unity. This has meant that the ISIS has used its territorial acquisitions as buffers. With its financial resources and US-sourced weaponry captured from the Iraqi army, it is a formidable opponent to the Syrian government.

Iraq and Syria are in shambles. The inability of the Iraqi government to stem the advance of the ISIS has emboldened the KRG to assert its autonomy even more and has increased the prospects of Kurdish irredentism. The radical Sunni character of the ISIS coupled with its attacks on the Shia community has worsened the already poor relations between the two communities in Iraq. The Iraqi citizenry has no desire for further US involvement, which should rule out US unilateralism. Besides, it is the unstated policy of the US to eventually balkanise Iraq and Syria (Iran’s ally) that has resulted in the rise of the ISIS in the first place, even as this was not intended. The US antipathy towards Syria and differences in the UN Security Council do not guarantee any agreement resulting in a reasonable resolution on intervention. The Gulf monarchies realise the threat that the ISIS poses to their own retrograde monarchies but are unable to look beyond their antipathy towards their geopolitical enemy, Iran. Yet it is clear that the only way ISIS can be militarily defeated is if the Syrian regime, the Iraqi government, the Kurds and Iran (which too sees the rise of ISIS as a threat) are empowered and unitedly take on the new caliphate.

The Scottish Path to Independence

The outcome of the Scottish referendum vote on 18 September notwithstanding, the major legacy of the vote would be the transparent and democratic nature of the process leading to the vote. 

Pritam Singh (psingh@brookes.ac.uk) teaches at the Department of Accounting, Finance and Economics, Faculty of Business, Oxford Brookes University, Oxford.      

The outcome of the referendum on Scottish independence from Britain is certainly of huge significance for Britain, Europe and even beyond but what has been missed in the debate on Scottish independence is the significance of the process leading to the outcome. The process of arriving at the outcome determines the legitimacy and the quality of the outcome. In the Scottish case, the process has been so democratic, open, and transparent that it is close to being exemplary. The decision to have a referendum has been arrived at after a long period of debate and negotiations. That Scotland, which became a part of the United Kingdom in 1707, has a distinctive identity is very well recognised by all sides on the debate. This recognition of distinctive identity was given further boost during Tony Blair’s prime ministership when the long standing demand of Scottish people to have their own parliament was accepted and the Scottish Parliament with devolved powers started functioning in 1999. This devolved power was partly aimed to weaken the demand for full independence which was at that time a minority political tendency.  The decision to create the Scottish Parliament by the Blair government was not seen as a party partisan initiative but was arrived at in a consensual manner by all sides of the Westminster-based political establishment. The three mainstream British political parties - the Conservative, Labour and the Liberal Democrats - all agreed on the need for a Scottish Parliament with devolved powers.

The role of the Scottish National Party

The Scottish National Party (SNP), formed in 1934, has been the main champion of complete independence although subsequently the demand for independence has been supported by the Scottish Socialist Party and the Scottish Green Party.  SNP remained a minor political current in Scottish politics which for a long time has been dominated by the Labour party. Even the establishment of the Scottish Parliament in 1999 did not enable the SNP to become the largest, ruling political party although it emerged as the second largest party and the main opposition party.

However, in 2007 the party emerged as the single largest party in the Scottish parliament and formed a minority government with support from the Green Party. In 2011, it gained an absolute majority in the Scottish Parliament but still did not claim that its electoral victory should be seen as an evidence of Scottish people’s support for complete independence. It put forward a case for Scottish independence with a demand for referendum on the issue. On the opposite side, the UK government did not ignore the electoral victory of the SNP and gradually came to accept the need for referendum to determine Scottish people’s choice regarding independence. This eventually resulted in the UK government and the Scottish government agreeing in 2013 on the arrangements for the referendum. 18 September, 2014 date was agreed for the referendum vote and the question on the vote agreed was: Should Scotland be an independent country? It was also agreed that there would be only two choices for the voters: Yes or No. Although the SNP wanted a third choice of greater devolution of powers to Scotland short of complete independence, it eventually agreed to the UK government’s insistence on making a clear choice between Yes and No.

Secession – Military suppression or political solution?

There are not many examples of such agreed way of resolving the demands for secession. The closest one before this has been the Quebec referendum to secede from Canada in which the secessionists lost the vote. Most demands for secession get resolved either by military suppression of the secessionist movement or by the secessionists winning the military battle and achieving independence. In both cases, the legitimacy of the outcome remains a contested issue. The most well-known example of peaceful secession (“the velvet divorce”) is the separation of Czech Republic and Slovakia but here the elites of the two regions agreed to separate; the democratic choice of the people of the seceding region Slovakia was not ascertained.  

In the case of Baltic States of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, these states got independence through peaceful means of massive mass mobilisation but no vote was allowed. Russia, the dominant region of the crumbling Soviet empire, that had economic and political interests in keeping control over the Baltic states, was not in a fit state-militarily and politically- to suppress the independence moves of these states but now it constantly resents in different ways, as seen most starkly in the recent Ukrainian case, that these former Soviet republics managed to become independent.  The disputed outcome is significantly due to the lack of perceived legitimacy of the process of achieving independence in the case of some of the former Soviet republics.

The most recent case of secession (South Sudan) is also interesting from the view point of the process of achieving secession. Although there have been violent conflicts due to personal political rivalries, the legitimacy of the secession has not been doubted due to the referendum vote that had led to secession.

Conclusion

In the Scottish case, almost every aspect regarding the case for and against independence has been debated and most significantly in the form of nationally televised debates between Alex Salmod, the First Minister of Scotland, arguing the case for independence and Alistair Darling, a Labour leader, arguing the case against independence on behalf of all the three mainstream British parties. Whatever the outcome of the referendum vote on 18 September might be, the major legacy of the vote would be the transparent and democratic nature of the process leading to the vote. It would not be an exaggeration to say that Scottish example might become the template for resolving secessionist disputes in the process. The very high intensity of interest shown by Catalonia, the region with a demand for secession from Spain, in the Scottish referendum debate and vote is a pointer in this direction.