National Investment Board Re-surfaces as Cabinet Committee on Investment

The recently proposed and seemingly shelved National Investment Board – P.C.Chidambaram’s brainchild and pet solution for accelerated industrial development in India – has silently returned – this time as a fait accompli – in a new garb and a new name: Cabinet Committee on Investment.

Government sources said yesterday: “The proposal to set up the Cabinet Committee on Investment, headed by Prime Minister, to fast track mega projects of over Rs.1000 crore was cleared.”

Ministers in charge of the various infrastructure sectors will be the members of the committee.

Manish Tewari

Manish Tewari, Minister of State for Information & Broadcasting, said: The Cabinet Committee on Investment has been mandated and tasked with the responsibility of projects of investment over Rs.1000 crore and ensure expeditious approval if timelines are not adhered to. If there are difficulties in big projects in sticking to deadlines, CCI will look into them. And efforts will be made to expedite them.”

Tewari’s statement makes interesting reading. It talks about “expeditious approval” and not “expeditious disposal“, suggesting that the government is bent upon approving proposals irrespective of environmental and other issues that might be involved in the proposals. If all mega projects are going to be approved – just by virtue of being worth Rs.1000 crore or more, perhaps we don’t need any licencing mechanism at all! Freudian Slip?

That apart, since (it seems that) the CCI’s role begins only when clearances from other Ministries (like that of Environment) are delayed because the proposals do not meet environmental and other requirements, not all may be lost and we speculate whether the ministries in question may obviate CCI’s intervention by rejecting proposals outright where they do not meet the guidelines laid down for the various projects. Prompt rejection of defective proposals is also tantamount to timely disposal of the proposals, is n’t it? (But if the government wants approval rather than disposal, it is a different ball game altogether!)

The misgivings in various quarters when the proposal for NIB was mooted continue to haunt the country even now. The question has never been “Projects or not?” The questions have always been “Project at what cost (to the country)?” and “Projects at any cost (to the country)?” And the government seems to be as bent upon ignoring those questions now as it was when NIB was proposed.

Congress has moved a long way from Mahatma Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru, it does seem.

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