Five-year Plans out, 15-year vision soon

Government decides to terminate 12th Plan in FY17

The National Democratic Alliance government at the Centre, led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, has decided to get rid of the Nehruvian five-year plans, and replace them with 15-year vision documents.

These will be framed keeping in mind the country's social goals and the sustainable development agenda. According to a senior official, the issue was discussed at length and a decision was taken at the highest level.

The NITI Aayog has been directed to prepare a vision document at the earliest.

The current 12th Five-Year Plan will be terminated in the current financial year, 2016-17.

The first 15-year vision document will start from 2017-18, along with a seven-year National Development Agenda which will lay down the schemes, programmes and strategies to achieve the long-term vision.

Since the Narendra Modi government took over, there has been speculation over the fate of the planning process, more so after the Planning Commission was replaced with the NITI Aayog.

The mid-term appraisal of the 12th Plan was also not done, though it was due after the completion of two-and-a- half years.

Officials said the National Development Agenda will be reviewed after a gap of every three years to ensure that it was aligned with financial needs and requirements.

For the first Development Agenda, the review would be done in 2019-20, in line with the termination year of the 14th Finance Commission.

"The National Development Agenda will also deal with issues related to internal security, defence and external affairs," the official said.

The Planning Commission of India seldom dealt directly with issues related to defence and internal security.

In addition to all the three documents, officials said the PMO has also instructed NITI Aayog to undertake outcome-based monitoring of all government programmes and ministries on a yearly basis, which would help in keeping a tab on the progress made and work done.

The Five-Year Plans first started in 1951 under the country's first prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru.

In July 1951, the Planning Commission presented a draft outline of a plan of development for the period of five years, starting from April 1951.

Since then, India regularly had Five-Year Plans till the 12th one, which ends this year, except 1966-69, when the five-year Plans were replaced with annual Plans. Thereafter, there were no Five-Year Plans in 1979-80 and 1990 to 1992.

Nehru was the first chairman of the Planning Commission, while Gulzarilal Nanda was the minister for planning. The commission had been graced by people like former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and President of India Pranab Mukherjee as deputy chairmen.

"This shows that we are back to a plan. The approach paper to a five-year Plan was like a vision statement which gave a broad outline, while the five-year Plans were more detailed about the schemes and programmes to achieve that objective, which was then reviewed through a mid-term appraisal done after completion of two-and-a-half years of a plan," Pronab Sen, the country director of International Growth Centre's India Central Programme and former chief statistician of India, told Business Standard.

Sen said that instead of having a 15-5-2.5 years perspective, the new document tries to do it in 15-7-3 years perspective.

"But, nonetheless, I am happy that the government is at least thinking of a plan document as without that states are not able to align their priorities with the larger national goals," he added.