Crack team of advisers to guide PM Modi

Prime Minister Narendra Modi would have a council of experts to help him take the right decisions instead of the slew of advisory groups his predecessors relied on.

Updated on: Jun 9, 2014, 01:17:11 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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Prime Minister Narendra Modi would have a council of experts to help him take the right decisions instead of the slew of advisory groups his predecessors relied on.

The equable and compact structure to be headed by Modi, with about 10 members, would be the final authority on policy and programme initiated by the ministries, a senior government functionary said.

The council fits into the PM’s mantra of “minimum government, maximum governance”, as it reduces the layers of decision-making in the administration. Last week, Modi scrapped all 35 ministerial committees – Empowered Groups of Ministers (EGoMs) and Groups of Ministers (GoMs) – accused of delaying decisions in the UPA regime.

The new council would virtually take over the job of the unwieldy Planning Commission of India – set up in the 1950s – to advise the Prime Minister’s Office on socio-economic policies. The plan panel will be extenuated into the government’s think tank, pushing the ministries to “look beyond the obvious”, in the new scheme of things.

The policies framed after the panel’s inputs would be examined by the new council after being vetted by the expert member in-charge of a sector, a government source claiming to have contributed to the new framework told HT.

He added that the PM was looking at having an expert each from various sectors – health, skill and education, economy, agriculture, etc – in the council.

“Each expert, having a permanent office, will deal with issues concerning his or her domain,” the source said, unable to give a timeframe by when the new council would be in place.

The new council will mean dismantling some age-old bodies under the aegis of the PMO, such as the Prime Minister’s Economic Advisory Council (PMEAC) –constituted during Jawaharlal Nehru’s tenure.

Of late, the PMEAC has come under criticism, with plan panel’s last deputy chairperson Montek Singh Ahluwalia suggesting it be scrapped. “The PMEAC reports are debated outside the government and it has no bearing on government functioning,” Ahluwalia said in a note written to the Prime Minister’s Office on May 16 – the day results of the 2014 Lok Sabha elections were announced.

Prime Minister Modi is said to be keen to wind up other sector-specific councils set up by his predecessor Manmohan Singh, who was himself heading as many as six of these bodies – including one each on skill development, industry, nutrition, wildlife and unique identification. Officials said that on an average these councils, except the one on industry, used to meet just once a year. The National Nutrition Council had met only twice in the 10 years of UPA, and the National Wildlife Board got together last in 2013 only when its non-official members threatened to resign.

“The new PM believes that the ministries perform, not the councils,” an official said.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Chetan Chauhan
Chetan Chauhan is the National Affairs Editor looking into all aspects of news and features from across India. A Chevening scholar with over three decades of experience in reporting and news management, Chetan has extensively covered all important aspects of the social sector, political economy, environment and climate change nationally and internationally. He did a journalism course at the Reuters Institute of Journalism in Oxford and Digital Media training at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. He started as a reporter with The Statesman in 1996 and joined the Hindustan Times in 2000 in the metro bureau covering environment, crime and Delhi politics. He covered hot local news, from the Jessica Lal murder case to the rebellion of Delhi Congress MLAs against then Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit, to the replacement of toxic vehicle fuel with cleaner compressed natural gas (CNG) in the national capital. Some of his stories on air pollution became part of the Supreme Court’s landmark MC Mehta versus Government of India case in the National Capital Region (NCR), forcing the government to take corrective measures. As part of the national political bureau since 2004, he covered important central sectors such as environment, education, social justice, labour, rural development, water resources, renewable energy, agriculture, broadcasting and the Planning Commission for more than a decade producing several exclusive and investigative breaking stories. His specialisation is the environment, having covered at least a dozen United Nations global conferences on climate change, biodiversity and wildlife including climate summits in Paris, Copenhagen and Bali. He also covered India’s two five-year plans ---11th and 12th and reported on drafting and execution of right based laws such as Right to Education, Right to Information and rural job guarantee law, MG-NREGA, now being introduced in new format as VG-RAM-G Act. He has in-depth knowledge of social sector issues. He was one of the first to report on tigers vanishing from Sariska and Panna wildlife reserves in 2004 and 2008, respectively, leading to the setting up of the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) and the introduction of stringent penal provisions for poaching. He has written extensively on the rising human-animal conflict in India and the degradation of India’s biodiversity hotspots because of mining and other activities. Since 2004, Chetan has covered Parliament comprehensively and participated in training on the nuanced coverage of Parliament proceedings. He has travelled extensively across India to cover national and provincial elections since 1998, especially in the Hindi heartland states, considered India’s road to power. He writes a regular column for Hindustan Times, Ecostani, on important national politics, economy, Himalayan ecology and environmental issues. His other responsibilities include providing inputs for edits and edit page articles for the publication, apart from managing news flow from across India.Read More

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