Dear friends
I just have some good news from Delhi.
There was a standing committee meeting in the morning, which was attended by Nandan Nilekani and Pronab Sen from the PC. After an initial intro, there was a flurry of questions from Moinul Hassan of the CPI (M). He was quite provocative and it appears Nandan and Pronab did not have answers for most of the questions. With Moinul Hassan leading, the BJP members also joined in with many critical questions and ultimately Nandan had to leave saying that he would come back better prepared.
The main points raised were this:
1) Why do you want a Bill for this? Why cant you function under the PC as a department?
2) Why do you want to come to us after starting the work? Are we to stamp it uncritically?
3) How can you make this UID number compulsory for social schemes? If we have universal rights over entitlements, how can we deny a right to someone, just because he/she does not have a UID number?
I heard that for the 3rd question, even Pronab Sen agreed with the members.
In sum the social sector part came in for huge criticism. "Why are you linking this number with all social sector schemes?" was a constant question.
So, much work ahead. We are not to get complacent with this.
I just have some good news from Delhi.
There was a standing committee meeting in the morning, which was attended by Nandan Nilekani and Pronab Sen from the PC. After an initial intro, there was a flurry of questions from Moinul Hassan of the CPI (M). He was quite provocative and it appears Nandan and Pronab did not have answers for most of the questions. With Moinul Hassan leading, the BJP members also joined in with many critical questions and ultimately Nandan had to leave saying that he would come back better prepared.
The main points raised were this:
1) Why do you want a Bill for this? Why cant you function under the PC as a department?
2) Why do you want to come to us after starting the work? Are we to stamp it uncritically?
3) How can you make this UID number compulsory for social schemes? If we have universal rights over entitlements, how can we deny a right to someone, just because he/she does not have a UID number?
I heard that for the 3rd question, even Pronab Sen agreed with the members.
In sum the social sector part came in for huge criticism. "Why are you linking this number with all social sector schemes?" was a constant question.
So, much work ahead. We are not to get complacent with this.
R. Ramakumar