The Planning Commission has been replaced by a new institution named Niti Aayog or the National Institution for Transforming India. The government has envisaged this body to function as an economic think-tank with more participation from the states.
In an interview to CNBC-TV18, Kirit Parikh Ex-Head, Fuel Decontrol Panel & Former Member of Planning Commission, says the new institute provides real innovation by giving states liberty.
“Instead of Planning Commission formulating plan and then asking states to agree on it, here states would have much more input at the earlier level of the formulation of the plan,” he said.
Below is the transcript of Kirit Parikh's interview with CNBC-TV18's Surabhi Upadhyay and Nayantara Rai.
Surabhi: Is it really going to be a materially different or new body or are we just talking about a change of name here?
A: Certainly there has been a change of name. The change of name implies a certain degree of change in emphasis. While the structure of the Planning Commission as proposed in the new resolution of the Cabinet is almost similar to the earlier one, except that the Planning Commission was reporting to the National Development Council consisting of the state chief ministers and Lieutenant Governors of Indian territory, but now there is a governing council which consists of the state Chief Ministers and Lieutenant Governors. So, I don’t see much of a difference there.
Nayantara: What did you make of the fact that there is going to be a regional council, for example the governments press release makes one believe that while the Planning Commission had been top down, the new body is going to be bottom-up. We are going to have a regional council for a fixed tenure, it is going to only look at specific issues for states, is that materially different?
A: No it is not. Whenever there are issues which concern couple of states or few states together there was always consultative group setup of these states. However now we are formalising it, having a policy of regional council but this is a similar mechanism as we have seen in the past. So, I do not see this as much of an innovation.
Where I find the real innovation comes in this is that hopefully that instead of Planning Commission formulating a plan and then asking the states whether they agree with this or not, this is going to be something where states would have much more input at the earlier level of plan formulation.
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