Demise of planning

At the time of Indian Independence, there were three important features of the global state of affairs following the end of the Second World War. The resolution tells us that an “Advisory Planning Board” appointed by the Government of India reviewed planning problems and recommended, towards the end of 1949, “ …the appointment of a Planning Commission to devote continuous attention to the whole field of development, so far as the Central government was concerned with it”. Accordingly, as announced by the Finance Minister in his Budget speech on February 28, 1950, the Government of India has decided to set up a Planning Commission.” The resolution specifically recalled the rights enshrined in the Constitution of India and the Directive Principles of State Policy and noted that planning must be geared to ensure that “…the citizens, men and women, equally, have the right to an adequate means of livelihood; the ownership and control of the material resources of the community are so distributed as best to subserve the common good; and the operation of the economic system does not result in the concentration of wealth and means of production to the common detriment”. Over the decades, as the compulsions of a capitalist path, led by big business, dictated more and more centralisation of political and economic governance by the Union government, the Planning Commission became, among other things, an instrument to punish recalcitrant State governments and reward the pliant ones. The Bharatiya Janata Party-led National Democratic Alliance government seized upon these inequities to get rid of the Planning Commission itself, using the slogan of “cooperative federalism”.