Federal structure, still fragile

The Inter State Council (ISC) meeting held in the backdrop of severe embarrassment to the Centre over restoration of the Arunachal Pradesh government by the Supreme Court, served as a reminder that the federal structure in the country remains very fragile and lacking in trust. The decision on Arunachal had followed Uttarakhand earlier this year, where another Congress government had been restored thanks to the apex court’s intervention. The use or misuse of Article 356 by the Centre naturally figured prominently at the ISC meeting and Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar demanded that the post of the governor be abolished. Many others referred to the Punchchi Commission report, which was on the agenda of the meeting, recommending use of Articles 355 and 356 in “extreme and grave emergencies when all other options had been exhausted,” and sought framing of rules based on the S R Bommai verdict by the Supreme Court.

The NDA government needs to be lauded for restoring the Inter State Council meeting, which was last held in 2006. In fact, the previous UPA government had called ISC only twice in its decade-long rule. Prime Minister Narendra Modi also made sure that unlike in the past, the Union ministers and the chief ministers were seated at the same level, removing the artificial hierarchy that existed before. But, apart from such symbolism, nothing much seemed to change. The prime minister’s speech was followed by the home minister’s and the chief ministers’, which were on predictable lines.

If the ISC meetings were to become more purposeful and result-oriented, it needs to change the structure of its deliberations. The zonal council meetings could perhaps throw up important topics for deliberations at the ISC, which, in turn, could prioritise one or two issues to be taken up at a particular meeting. The recent ISC meeting, for instance, had listed among other issues, “improving the quality of school education with focus on improving the learning outcomes” for discussion, but it hardly received any attention from any of the participants. School education across the country, especially the status of government schools is in crisis, affecting millions of students that it deserved a day long deliberation. Or for that matter, the question of internal security challenges which has assumed great importance in view of the unprecedented terror attacks even in most advanced and security-conscious countries. The prime minister did touch upon it, stressing on better coordination between the Centre and the states, intelligence sharing among different agencies and modernisation of the police force. But as several chief ministers pointed out, the much-discussed National Intelligence Grid (Natgrid) still remains a pipe dream and it merely turned out a rhetorical exercise.