Minister Kamalnath’s outburst on the role of planning commission is justified. The commission played a key role in the license raj and quota days where it controlled all central ministerial and state allocations and advised on them on aspects of investments, prioritization of development programs etc . The question is in the current liberalized economic context do we need such centralized planning institutions anymore?
In many ways the planning commission is a vestige of the License raj, Socialistic economic agenda of independent India, it should be given a new name and agenda or should be wound down. Planning commission in some ways has contributed to the restrictive regulatory environment that existed in the country up to the early 1990s and some of those still exist.
With the private sector fully involved in the development process and government actively disinvesting the role for a centralized commission is rapidly becoming less relevant.
The central ministries and state governments today enjoy financial autonomy and they should be further handed over authority to decide on the investments, modes of raising finance etc and hasten the overall development agenda.
Montek Singh and other capable colleagues of his need to be moved to a development commission and given the target of executing large scale development projects than producing voluminous reports on all and sundry aspects.
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