Innovation has always been considered as the key to success in every field, be it art, science, politics, commerce or administration. The New Congress government under the leadership of Dr Manmohan Singh, and special ‘supervision’ of the Congress party president, Ms Sonia Gandhi, has taken a very positive and innovative step in the form of directly involving the nation’s top ranking social activists in the process of the governance. They have been roped in to closely monitor the administrative functioning and policy implementations. Those, who have the people’s cause close to their hearts and have spent a lifetime in serving people with commitment and dedication, can certainly be expected to provide right inputs to the government. The social activists like Aruna Roy, Jean Dreze and Jayaprakash Narayan are among the 12 members nominated to the national advisory council to implement the common minimum programme (CMP) of the government. Congress president Sonia Gandhi is the chairperson of the council and holds a cabinet rank.

In this high-level advisory council of the coalition government of the United Progressive Alliance (UPA), of which the Congress party is a major group, Mr Jairam Ramesh is the only exception of being a politician and a pro-market Congressman, in the council packed with people who have been associated with some mass movement or the other.

In his inaugural speech to the Conference of Chief Ministers, Dr Singh made his stand very clear and put his point effectively. Quoting world famous economist Late Mahbub-ul Haq he said: “Societies everywhere had begun challenging governments.” Modern governments, the PM says, should be constantly taken to task by a dynamic civil society. Certainly it is very appreciable statement made by a PM and shows not only his honest commitment to development of the country but also his full awareness of the pitfalls and roadblocks that lie in the path of policy implementations.

The majority of members on the national Advisory Panel are drawn from the non-governmental sector. Till now the advisors to governments have been generally elderly eminences drawn from Delhi’s elite circle and their presences were mainly of showpiece nature. In a great move the NGOs, which have been contributing a lot for a long time through their real social works, have now been embedded at the very top of the national administration. When one looks at the aims and structure of the council the controversy created by the opposition party on the issue of budgetary allocation of funds for such ‘extra-constitutional body’ seems to be uncalled for.

The winner of Magsaysay award for community leadership in 2000, Aruna Roy heads the Rajasthan-based Mazdoor Kisan Shakti Sangathan, which has fought an arduous battle for the right to information. Mr Jayaprakash Narayan, a physician by training, is well known for compiling data on the criminalisation of politics and campaigned extensively for transparency and accountability in the electoral process, through his NGO, Loksatta.

Mr Madhav Chavan is the brain behind primary education programmes through his voluntary agency, ‘Pratham’. Mr Jean Dreze of Delhi School of Economics is a well-known academic, who has done pioneering work on right to food resulting in the Supreme Court’s intervention in favour of the hungry.

Ms Mirai Chatterjee is co-ordinator social security for SEWA, that outstanding trade union of self-employed women. Similarly there are others like Mr A K Shiv Kumar Mr D Swaminathan, Mr V Krishnamurthy, Mr Sam Pitroda and Mr NC Saxena. They all are well-known public figures and great achievers in their respective fields.

The basic objective of the Advisory Council is to see if the Common Minimum Programme is being properly implemented or not. This has been done to fill the wide gulf between public and the government as for long it has been felt that the state and NGOs must be partners in development. This will also render more transparency in the administration .