देश के सबसे बड़े आर्थिक अखबार THE ECONOMIC TIMES ने निति आयोग की पोल खोली है अपने सम्पादकीय में. THE NEW NITI AAYOG IS LOT LIKE ITS PREDECESSOR. January 3, 2015, 3:10 AM IST ET Edit in ET Editorials | Economy, Edit Page, India, Times View | ET A Planning Commission by any other name will smell pretty much the same. The government has finally announced the successor body to the Planning Commission, which had been decommissioned by the Prime Minister halfway through his first Independence Day address. It will be called Niti Aayog (meaning policy institution) and is conceived as a think tank that will service both the Centre and the states. Much is made of the new body promoting cooperative federalism, as opposed to the topdown approach of the erstwhile commission. This is much of a muchness. The new body is tasked with, among other things, designing planning at the level of the village and monitoring and evaluation of implementation of schemes. Both sound decidedly top-down, rather than of a call to states to revel in unfettered autonomy. Nor is there anything wrong with this. A governing body of chief ministers pretty much mirrors the National Development Council. A CEO instead of a member secretary and ad-hoc regional councils do not make a material difference. The fact of the matter is, seeking to coordinate diverse entities implies both willingness on the part of the entities in question to acquiesce in the process, and assumption of superiority on the part of the entity performing the coordination, arising from its vantage point or from knowledge and insight. To suggest that this amounts to imposition and control is to be disingenuous. If the states want untrammelled autonomy, they have to forgo central funds outside Finance Commission devolutions. So long as the Centre funds projects in the states, it will demand accountability for the money spent. The commission that formulated the 12th Plan was more akin to a think tank that explored scenarios and policy alternatives than to the commission that formulated the Second Plan with its ambition to determine resource allocation across sectors. The Niti Aayog brings that evolution to nomenclature as well, that is all. What should have been part of its mandate but seems missing, so far, is to bring in coherence between and within systems of regulation for the economy’s different sectors. This piece appeared as an editorial opinion in the print edition of The Economic Times.
Posted on: Sat, 03 Jan 2015 23:59:05 +0000
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