When Prime Minister Narendra Modi spoke of jettisoning the Planning Commission in his Independence Day speech, it became evident that the plan body created by Jawaharlal Nehru would soon be history. Through this single announcement, the country’s new leader made a declaration of faith — that the ancien regime piloted by the Congress was to be buried and forgotten.
But what would take its place still seems unclear though the Prime Minister held a conference with CMs on Sunday to discuss the matter. New reports suggest that most of those present endorsed the Modi agenda of knocking out the Planning Commission. Expressions like “cooperative federalism”, which seems a favourite of the PM, making the plan exercise “bottom up” instead of “top down”, and getting rid of “one-size-fit-all” planning were bandied about without any concrete underpinning to them.
Four months after Mr Modi gave us an inkling that he has no love lost for the Planning Commission, we still heard banalities on Sunday. In these four months, the government has encouraged no public debate and discussion — unlike the case with the Swachch Bharat campaign, for instance — on the subject. Does the government itself have a clear mind on the matter? Even that is not known. All that seems clear is that the PM sees the PC as part of the Nehruvian legacy, and hence deems it fit to be thrown out.
Nehru began with the premise that the market could not be relied upon to allocate resources efficiently in a poor, post-colonial, economy if the aim was to address the question of intensive poverty and uneven development. The Indian capitalist class was not strong enough even to take baby steps, and hence had no quarrel with the state playing a significant role in the economic sector at the time.
A lot has changed since then for the better, but poverty still remains the lot of 40 per cent of our population. Should the state play a minimalist role now and let the market decide how resources will be allocated? Should states now direct the planning process (can Maharashtra have a clear thought on Orissa’s potentials and needs and vice versa, for instance)?
Much was said at the Sunday conference about states being represented in the planning process. It is not clear what this means, for states were always closely aligned with the working of the plan body. In fact, much of what transpired seemed like hot air. Nothing concrete was spelled out. It was not even said that the entity that supplants the PC in Mr Modi’s vision will simply be a mundane think tank.
