Earlier new body replaces plan panel the better
That a majority of the States should be in favour of replacing the Planning Commission is not surprising given that they are ruled by either the Bharatiya Janata Party or a coalition in which the party is a constituent. But it is not just this number which is the persuading reason for the panel to be disbanded in favour of a new structure; the need of the hour and the changed socio-economic situation are compelling enough.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi's meeting with the Chief Ministers on Sunday and the elaborate discussions he held with them on the subject was an important exercise in the direction of determining the aspirations of the States and how they see the proposed body meeting those aspirations. Having been a Chief Minister, Mr Modi is as qualified as any other to understand where the Planning Commission had gone wrong and what should be done to fix the problem.
After all, no one, not even the Congress Chief Ministers, disagree over the fact that the plan panel had fallen short of the States' needs and demands, and that the commission needed to be given a new shape; tinkering would not serve the purpose. Of course, driven by politics, the Congress Chief Ministers especially have opposed the scrapping of the Planning Commission on the pretext that it had served the country's planning needs admirably in the decades since independence.
Their opposition is understandable — though not justified — because the plan body was a relic of the socialist past which Jawaharlal Nehru was enamoured of. For the Congress to welcome the abolition of the panel on the ground that the latter had failed or at the very least outlived its purpose, would be tantamount to condemning an executive decision of the Nehru-led Government. There is no doubt that the Planning Commission had a justification five decades ago when centralised planning was adopted as the model of economic development.
That the model failed to a large extent to deliver is a subject of different debate. Today, the flavour is cooperative federalism, a term that the Modi-led Government has adopted in its push for “bottom-to-top” development approach. In other words, the Centre wants growth to be driven by the States rather than be imposed through one-template plans of the Union Government. This makes sense because States have often complained that the Planning Commission thrust its ideas on them and virtually forced them to adopt those ideas because it held the purse-strings.
The most important task the Planning Commission performed was the disbursement of plan funds to the States. Experts have been saying that the task can be handled by the Finance Commission which has constitutional status. The new structure should concentrate on issues of Centre-State relations, which the National Development Council has failed to effectively tackle. It remains to be seen whether the NDC will be merged in the new set-up. Now that the Prime Minister has received feedback from the States, and a good deal of background work had been done beforehand, the new organisation must come into being at the earliest. There is talk that it must have constitutional validity and be accountable to Parliament. It's an idea worth considering.