The Hindu Business Line : Caesar's wife

IT WAS frankly surprising to find a number of civil society organisations joining the National Advisory Council (NAC) constituted, with Ms Sonia Gandhi as the chairperson enjoying the status of a Union Cabinet Minister, to monitor the course and pace of implementation by the Government of the National Common Minimum Programme (NCMP) of the United Progressive Alliance (UPA).

They include the Mazdoor Kisan Shakti Sangathan (Aruna Roy); the Centre for Economic and Social Studies (C. H. Hanumantha Rao); Loksatta (Jayaprakash Narayan); the Delhi School of Economics (Jean Dreze); the Self Employed Women's Association (Mirai Chatterjee); PRATHAM (Madhav Chavan); and the Mahatma Gandhi National Institute of Research and Social Action (D. Swaminathan).

Besides, A. K. Shiv Kumar, Adviser, United Nations' Children's Fund (UNICEF), has also been drafted into the Council. Additionally, the Council has a number of Cabinet Ministers as Members. The UPA is a coalition of several political parties cobbled together by Ms Sonia Gandhi, as the President of the Congress(I). The NAC is apparently meant to be some sort of a quasi-political body advising the Government on measures to ensure effective implementation of the NCMP.

One can understand professional, expert bodies engaged in the academic study of issues relevant to the NCMP being invited, and agreeing to serve, as members of the NAC. But some of the NGOs serving on the Council have established themselves to fight for public causes and people's rights in various areas such as right to information, adherence of officialdom to citizens' charters, ridding politics, representative bodies and governments of criminalisation and corruption, and instilling accountability, transparency, probity and spirit of service in public life.

In short, their credibility and justification derive from their keeping a safe distance from any political party or alliance so as to avoid creating an impression of being hand-in-glove with it. Active involvement with bodies with a political colour may lead to a conflict of interest and a compromise with their principles, robbing them of functional independence and the will to call political patrons to account.

Often, their inclusion in such bodies is also precisely to blunt their edge and tar them with a political brush. Civil society should take care to be, like Caesar's wife, above suspicion.

B. S. Raghavan