Planning makes little difference
Apropos of the edit “New look PlanCom” (January 3), the question to ask is: does planning matter? On the basis of national income and other indicators, it would appear to have made little difference. Paradoxically, the highest growth rate of national income was achieved during the Fifth Plan which, was mostly a non-plan period. The rate was 4.7% per year and the second-highest rate of growth (4.1%) was in the three years (1966-1968) when the planning exercise was in abeyance. The lowest rate of growth (2.4%) was registered during the Third Plan (1961-1965) which, by all accounts, was the most successful of all plans and laid the foundation for much of the basic infrastructure of the economy. Going by national income figures, high rates of growth seem associated with poor or indifferent plans and low rates with forceful planning activity. The Soviet Union and China had their disillusionment with frenzied central plans. Aayog or Commission, in today’s flood of statistics, we need consummate economists and thinkers. This much betters than having bureaucrats and politicians micromanage everything.
R Narayanan, Ghaziabad
What’s in a name?
Apropos of the edit “New look PlanCom” (January 3), about the Planning Commission being replaced by NITI Aayog, a simple question arises: does the new aayog have a time-bound existance like an SPV? Will it be dissolved once India is ‘transformed’? Or will it keep transforming India again and again? Is its perpetual existence ensured? Well the initial reports about the renaming of the Planning Commission han’t implied dissolution of the Soviet-era centralised planning body. But what’s in a name? Or, is there something really?
Subhada Sabade
Pune