There is consensus among different segments of the previous UPA-II government and also the current Narendra Modi-led NDA government that the Planning Commission has outlived its role and function, says Ajay Chhibber, Director General, Independent Evaluation Organisation.
He believes the Planning Commission is largely staffed with bureaucrats than experts.
According to Chhibber, the Planning Commission needs cutting edge thinking and new models of development.
Also Read: Replace Planning Commission with new think tank: IEO
Below is the verbatim transcript of Ajay Chhibber's interview with CNBC-TV18's Shereen Bhan.
Q: You have said many things about the Planning Commission, you say in your report that it exceeds the scope of its authority, that it has been acting as a control commission, you also recommend that it should be replaced and that the allocation of funds which is the responsibility of the planning commission should now be vested with the finance ministry. So you believe that the planning commission as we heard from the former finance minister is unwieldy, too big, flabby and needs to go in its current avatar?
A: Yeah, by now there is quite a lot of consensus among many different segments of previous government but also this government that the Planning Commission as it is constituted today has outlived its role and function. The economy has moved on, the needs of the country are quite different and there has been really no reform of the Planning Commission by the Planning Commission for the Planning Commission, so the time had come to make those changes and what we have done is we have done an independent assessment of its role and function and made recommendations to the new government for its consideration. Of course, the final decision is with the new government but we do believe that a fairly serious reform is needed.
Q: Speaking of reform and I want to take this conversation forward to what you have recommended in your report, you believe that the planning commission should be replaced by a think tank called the reform and solutions commission. Is this not going to be in that sense new wine in an old bottle because if I look at the functions that you believe this commission should perform you say that it should be a repository for ideas that have been successful in different aspects at various states and districts, it should provide ideas for integrated systems reform, it should identify new and emerging challenges, surely this is stuff that individual ministries should be doing themselves, do we really need a reforms and solutions think tank to do this?
A: What has become very clear is that a lot of different innovation and thinking has been going on. Of course sector by sector but also in terms of development models in different parts of the country which are more suited to a particular level of development of different states and different areas but what we have had is boilerplate central schemes that provide us centralised template to all these different states with very different levels of development, very different needs. So what is recommended for Nagaland is the same as what is recommended for Kerala or what is recommended for Madhya Pradesh. This kind of centralised approach with flagship programmes providing the next mechanism by which resources that belong to the states have been put into these centralised schemes and provided in a pretty rigid template because if you travel around the country and ask people why you can't innovate around these templates basically the answer you get is that the auditor will come in and assess on the basis of proscribed programmes and these programmes that have been proscribed are pretty detailed in their prescription.
So it is time to unleash more innovations at the state level and the district level, so that is one idea. The other idea is that where reforms have to occur and involve several different ministries and states in conjunction that is another area which the Planning Commission should have done but was not able to do and therefore the reforms commission along those lines would be highly recommended.
Q: So, you still believe that the Planning Commission in that sense becomes this nodal body that can negotiate with state governments can bring ideas from various state governments to the central level and see what works, what doesn't work, swap those ideas so on and so forth, negotiate between state governments and individual ministries and inter-ministerial consultations if need be. However if I could ask you who should head this think-tank, this reform solutions commission that you are talking about because you have highlighted the role of the deputy chairman of the planning commission and you believe that the appointment of the deputy chairman of the planning commission has been opaque, that its lacked accountability, transparency. So, who should really head this new commission or this think-tank?
A: Right now the states are coming to the Planning Commission because that is the only way in which they can get so called plan resources.
I don't think they are coming really for new ideas to the planning commission because if you look at the staffing of the Planning Commission it is largely now staffed with bureaucrats and not so much staffed with people who have expertise in different domains and have deep knowledge of what is happening in different parts of the country. So, we want a body where people are coming because they know that this is a place where they will either get ideas of what is happening outside India, new ideas that are taking place from other parts of the world or what is happening in different parts of the country and some cutting edge thinking and new innovative thinking and new approaches, new inventions, new models of development. This is what we are looking for.
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