Opinion The right pressure
Opposition parties have displayed greater maturity than government on Trai amendment
One of the Modi government’s first actions in power was to choose a principal secretary to the prime minister. In the eagerness to appoint Nripendra Misra, however, it overlooked the fact that as a former chairman of the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India, Misra was ineligible to join government. Its immediate and troubling reflex was to issue an ordinance changing the act.
Opposition parties rightly criticised the use of an executive order, a blunt power given to the government to meet emergent situations, merely to appoint one civil servant. There was some uncertainty about its passing and the possibility of a joint session of Parliament, because despite the BJP’s overwhelming majority in the Lok Sabha, it needs to cobble support in the Rajya Sabha. But many of these parties have now decided not to contest the bill which will ratify that ordinance. The bill was passed by Lok Sabha on Monday and will in all likelihood not face hurdles in Rajya Sabha either.
The NCP and Left have allowed the bill to pass, and even the TMC, which resolutely opposed the government’s move, did not press its protest. This is a sensible decision, given that the Trai’s strictures on post-retirement employment in the government, intended to guard regulatory independence, may indeed be too harsh. This caution does not apply to other regulators set up later, like Sebi and the Competition Commission. There is a reasonable case for the amendment, and what’s more, opposition parties gain little by resisting every move of the Modi government. It may be more pragmatic, and indeed more productive for the opposition to choose its battles carefully. Given the balance of power in Parliament, they will need to save their energies for the issues that matter, be artful and make sure that obstruction does not overwhelm legislative business.
The government, on the other hand, has not displayed its better instincts. It used brute force at the earliest opportunity, when a parliamentary discussion was only a few weeks away and would have been easily won. Ordinances are emergency instruments, used in situations of crisis and gridlock. Their use peaked in the mid-1990s, under unstable coalition governments. For a government with a single-party majority to use an ordinance, for a matter as small as a single bureaucratic appointment, suggests that it still has to learn where to apply force, and to what extent.
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