Letters: A temple of policymaking

I was touched to read the obituary (?) of the Planning Commission written by Nitin Desai in his article "RIP Planning Commission" (August 21). Just like him, I was also attached to Yojana Bhavan, not as a planner but as a student of economics and statistics at the Indian Statistical Institute (ISI), which was housed in the same building. Bagicha Singh Minhas was the head of ISI in New Delhi. P C Mahalanobis selected me and six other students to spend eight months at Yojana Bhavan in our second year of our Masters in Statistics, and then go back to Calcutta (now Kolkata) to complete our studies. We lived in a small guest house in Hauz Khas, which seemed quite far away in those days to travel by bus. The studies in Yojana Bhavan were amazing since we were taught by not only Minhas, Kirit Parikh and Mrinal Datta Chaudhuri, but also by Stephen Marglin from Harvard, Thomas Weisskopf and, now Nobel economist, George Akerlof.

The studies were so rigorous that two out of the six of us failed in the second year, and we had to repeat our second year in Calcutta, where also we were taught by eminent economists such as Pranab Bardhan, Asim Dasgupta (who later became the finance minister of West Bengal), Nikhilesh Bhattacharya and so on. After that repeat year, all of us did well in our studies and final examinations, and were actually grateful because we got one more year of learning from excellent teachers. The study at Yojana Bhavan as well as in Calcutta was recognised internationally since I got a fully-financed admission for a Ph D in Cornell University. Thus, the Planning Commission was not a temple of lazy economists but of economists and policymakers who were as passionate to do something for India as Narendra Modi has been elected to do.

So what is the hurry to abolish a temple of policymaking that has made India a modern economy because of sophisticated thinkers? In Narendra Modi's Independence Day speech, I saw only some kind of not-so-thoughtful cynicism against that era. But I am hopeful that when the Congress will come back to power someday, they will reinstate the Planning Commission and declare this obituary as a null and void write-up. I am also glad that Mamata Banerjee's party has expressed its displeasure with the scrapping of the Planning Commission.

Chandrashekhar G Ranade Washington D C

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