Plan panel suffers from burden of the past

While there has been lot of talk about restructuring the country’s apex planning body, there are very few who believe in such radical change within the Planning Commission. The plan panel, which was reconstituted about seven months ago, began with a promise of change. But most of its members confess they have been unable to shed the burden of the past.

“When one talks about changing and evolving a body like the Planning Commission, it is not an easy task. The Planning Commission continues to be a monolithic organisation, which resists change at every level,” said Arun Maira, who is seen as the man heading the restructuring endeavour within the plan panel.

The Commission has been criticised often as being monolithic, stagnant and hierarchical with lack of expert domain knowledge. Innovation, efficiency and planning in India have rarely been suggested by experts in one breath. The Planning Commission was set up six decades ago, when the state controlled the economy and every other department of significance. Over the years, even as India’s society and economy evolved rapidly, planning has been stuck in a time warp. Such a sentiment has also been expressed by Planning Commission Deputy Chairman Montek Singh Ahluwalia who has acknowledged that planning is losing its relevance.

In his first tenure as deputy chairman during the 10th Plan Period, Ahluwalia had suggested the presence of Planning Commission members in Cabinet meetings so as to provide expert advice on issues. The proposal was never implemented.

The constitution of the new panel did fuel talk of restructuring of the Planning Commission in which it was envisaged as an expert think tank and advisory body to policy making. With the induction of Maira from Boston Consultancy Group, Saumitra Chaudhuri from research and rating agency Icra, K Kasturirangan from the Indian Space Research Organisation and Mihir Shah and Narendra Jadhav from the academic field, the panel was expected to acquire a new way of functioning.

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh shared his vision of an evolved Planning Commission in a full plan panel meet held last month. He asked the panel to be more involved with the process of implementation of government schemes rather than merely fixing allocations. Singh specifically asked the members to regularly brief cabinet ministers on sectors and be more involved with the state-level implementation of schemes.