Planning makeovers

The Planning Commission is an institutional oddity in an economy that has moved decisively away from the government taking a lead role in the allocation of resources. The movement away from central planning of the kind envisaged by Jawaharlal Nehru,the first chairman of the Planning Commission,actually happened much before the economic liberalisation of 1991. But the Planning Commission as an institution has consistently failed to define a clear,new role for itself even as the structure of the economy has transformed from predominantly socialist to mostly capitalist. Now finally,as reported by this newspaper on Wednesday,Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has cleared an ambitious revamp of the institution into a “systems reforms commission”. The revamp is to be steered by Planning Commission member Arun Maira,a former management consultant. The new description is curiously exotic jargon but may actually free the commission from some of its historical baggage.

More substantively,the government intends to convert the Planning Commission into a think-tank to generate original ideas in the very broad domain of economic policy for the government to then act on. It will also be the government agency responsible for acting as an interface with other independent think-tanks and NGOs. The PM would like the commission to

engage more directly with the “polity”,presumably with various ministries in the Central and state governments,and be able to persuade them to implement certain ideas or “plans” generated by the government’s own think tank. That isn’t radically different from its existing role — the Planning Commission has few direct powers of execution in any case and must rely on the power of persuasion to sell its ideas to the Centre and states.

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Interestingly enough,the new role sought for the Planning Commission seems to be very similar to the role played by the National Advisory Council,which also generates ideas within,coordinates with NGOs and civil society and then tries to “persuade” the government to act. Of course,the NAC’s focus so far has been social sectors whereas a systems reforms commission can take on a broader gambit of issues,including public finances,infrastructure and so on. It is surprising though that the government hasn’t thought of the option of

reinventing the commission as an agency to monitor the effectiveness of its many spending programmes — a kind of independent evaluation office. That may be a yet more

relevant reinvention.