In all the brouhaha over winding up the Planning Commission, the key unanswered question remains: what are they going to provide in its place?
Narendra Modi is not the first to reflect on the relevance of planning to the economic life of the nation. Indeed, my first crossing of swords with Dr Manmohan Singh on the subject occurred at the Pachmarhi chintan shivir in 1998. I was required to draft the principal conclusions of the shivir for the consideration of the Congress Working Committee. While the CWC luminaries foregathered on the verandah of a bungalow on the other side of the road, on this side I was provided a computer to hammer out the draft. As each page was finished, it was sent off to the Big Bosses. The first page contained a cliché from previous Congress communiqués about “planned development”. Doctor sahib had scored out “planned” and written “balanced” in the margin. I rewrote the phrase to read “planned and balanced development”, and sent it back for final approval.
After finishing the draft, I went across the road to receive the congratulations that were invariably showered on me for writing a few paragraphs of recycled trite. I was, however, faced with an incensed Dr Singh, who demanded to know how I had dared retain “planned” after he had crossed it out. I began protesting when he thundered that if I did not remove it, he would take it up in the formal meeting of the CWC, and if there, too, it were retained he would have to consider resigning. At this point, I felt my kurta being tugged from behind. I turned. It was Natwar [Singh]. He whispered, “Chhodo, yaar.” In some heat, I whispered back, “But, sir, planning has been the Congress credo since the Karachi Congress of 1931.” “I know,” he said. “But what difference does that make?” “If it makes no difference to you,” I muttered, “why should it to me?” and stormed off to delete the offending word.
Illustration: Bhaskaran
So, through the two UPA governments, the Planning Commission was run by people who did not believe in planning. No wonder, Montek Ahluwalia’s last act reportedly was to write a long note suggesting drastic reform, or even winding up, of the Planning Commission.
But before we move in haste, a word of caution. Of course, the economy has changed so significantly since 1931, or even 1947, as to warrant rethinking, particularly as we now have a more broad-based entrepreneurial class that goes beyond the pre-independence triad of Tata-Birla-Dalmia. They can look after themselves―the coda being that the state must not intervene to bail them out as our government has been doing at an average of 15 lakh crore stimulus a year since the global meltdown, additional to our banks running up mammoth “non-performing assets”―unpaid loans―to keep the most prosperous Indians in champagne and caviar, however much of a mess they might have made of their businesses. That lot can, and should be, left to look after their own.
The real task of a reformed Planning Commission, following Dr Singh’s outburst, should have been to look after the unsuccessful Indian, amounting to 77 per cent of the Indian population according to Dr Arjun Sengupta (a figure since reprised by Rahul Gandhi). They are the ones in need of subsidies, technological innovation, skill development and all the other necessaries for poverty and “vulnerability” (Sengupta’s phrase) to move to self-reliance and, perhaps eventually, towards prosperity.
Let us, however, end the Planning Commission’s massive stimuli for the AAP―the Ambani Adani Party―and concentrate on the disadvantaged. Their advancement requires the social, political and, above all, administrative empowerment to enable them to access their entitlements and thus to combine empowerment with entitlements to attain, as the nascent middle-class has done, a measure of enrichment. We need a Devolution Commission, if not a Planning Commission. Without that, the rich will swim and the poor will sink.
Aiyar, a former Union minister, is an MP and social commentator.