The Planning Commission prepared reforms measures for itself during the UPA regime but it did not take off, as the leadership did not demonstrate its commitment to enforce it, former panel member Arun Maria says in his new book.
As he gets the “satisfaction” that the Commission was “finally shaken out of the rut in which it was stuck and the rust in which it was entrapped” with the formation of NITI Ayog, Maira wants the “new driver” in the seat to “step on the gas and steer it”.
He calls the then Deputy Chairman Montek Singh Ahluwalia a “reluctant reformer” and talks about the “disconnection of top leadership” from the transformation of Planning Commission in reference to then Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s farewell speech to the panel.
Recalling his days in Planning Commission in ‘An Upstart in Government: Journeys of Change and Learning’, Maira describes the mandate given by then Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to reform the existing edifice, which had “become a parking lot for bureaucrats between postings and others who could not be placed anywhere else”.
“The question Dr Manmohan Singh posed to me in 2009 after I joined the Planning Commission was what could be done to reform the Planning Commission, which had resisted many attempts to make significant changes to it,” Maira wrote.
Maira and others prepared a report on the transformation after discussing it with stakeholders. Referring to a 2010 meeting, he wrote, Singh “heard the report. Then he gave directions for the reform of the Planning Commission. He said that the Planning Commission must become a ‘Systems Reform Commission rather than a budget-making body. And that the Planning Commission must become ‘an essay (that is a force) in persuasion’, rather than a writer of long plans.
However, in 2014, Maria himself was at a loss to explain why reforms in the panel could not evolve. “The change in the Planning Commission could not be implemented fully because its leadership did not demonstrate that it was committed to it. The deputy chairman was a reluctant reformed,” he wrote.
“The disconnection of the top leadership from the transformation of Planning Commission became painfully evident” when Singh asked once again what should be done for reforming Planning Commission during his farewell speech on April 30, 2014. Maira was “taken aback” as Singh seemed “oblivious” of the measures he himself approved of in 2010.
Acknowledging that it is difficult to change an organisation, Maira says NITI Ayog is “expected to do more transforming than less planning”.
He says that everyone, including industrialists, who were consulted during his tenure, were of the view that the panel should lift itself “out of the rut of allocating funds and approving proposals and play a more strategic role in shaping the future of the country”.
(An edited version appeared in Deccan Herald on Sep 14, 2015)
Also read report on Arun Maira’s previous book ‘Redesigning the Aeroplane while Flying: Reforming Institutions’
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