JANUARY 19, 2015

By TIOL Edit Team

THE NDA Government's decision to replace Planning Commission with National Institution for Transforming India (NITI Aayog) requires guarded welcome. Guarded because it has left a lot of issues unanswered.

The positive element of the decision is that it reflects the Government's urge to meet the public's growing aspirations through a directional shift in policies. The Cabinet resolution on formation of NITI has also aptly focused on formulation of policies that should be pursued within the framework of cooperative federalism.

The public can now look forward to knowing the "Bharatiya approach to development" which NITI as the policy think tank would roll out.

It would also be interesting to watch how this nascent institution performs its mandate to serve as "a platform for resolution of inter-sectoral and inter-departmental issues in order to accelerate the implementation of the development agenda."

The crucial issue is whether the Union Cabinet and the States would accept NITI's recommendations on issues on which ministries and sector's stakeholders take conflicting and non-compromising stand.

It is moot point whether Planning Commission should have been reformed or disbanded. No one can, however, deny that Planning Commission required to be cut to size. It encroached into other ministries turf by creating administrative structures under its fold. A case in point is National Rainfed Area Authority (NRAA), which should have under the domain of Agriculture Ministry. NRAA ended up doing the same job that is performed by the Ministry and its different entities.

Another case in point is Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) which was formed to introduce and govern Aadhar for all residents of the country. This is a 12-digit individual identification number that serves as a proof of identity and address, anywhere in India.

Through UIDAI, Planning Commission encroached into turf of Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA), which had mooted multipurpose National Identity Cards (MNICs) for citizens in the nineties.

MNICs were later renamed as Resident Identity (Smart) Cards (RICs) under the slow-moving National Population Register (NPR) managed by Office of Registrar General India (ORGI), a statutory authority under MHA.

A lot has been said and written about duplication of efforts by ORGI and UIDAI towards giving an identity to persons residing in the country. It is for the Government to order probe into waste of expenditure on duplication of such efforts in the Government. The least it can do is ask the Expenditure Management Commission (EMC) to take these UIDAI and NRAA as case studies of profligacy of tax payers' money by unaccountable powers that be.

The comprehensive Cabinet resolution on NITI is silent on UIDAI and NRAA. Would they be transferred respectively to MHA and Agriculture Ministry? Would these two authorities be retained under the Ministry of Planning, which is the other side of the same coin (Planning Commission)? Has the Planning Ministry been abolished or is it still in existence?

Official Information on all these issues is unavailable in the public domain. Even the updated Allocation of Business Rules (ABR) that defines the precise domain and mandate of different ministries is unavailable. The website of Cabinet Secretariat that host ABR flashes the message "under process" if the ABR link is clicked.

This is not smart governance. The failure to update and upload the latest information on the distribution of workload among different ministries shows lack of holistic approach.

In its keenness to demolish Planning Commission, the perceived symbol of the Centre's domineering attitude towards the States, Modi Government has not done its home work on issues that cannot be wished away.

One such subject is the concept of five-year plans and annual plans, which facilitate integrated development of the country. Associated with this is the concept of Centre giving additional financial assistance (plan and non-plan funds) to the States outside the domain of Finance Commission.

In the absence of clarity on these issues, we can presume that the domain of annual and five year planning would be retained at present through the two planning divisions of the Ministry of Finance - with one of them dealing with State plans and the other dealing with central projects that are channeled through Public Investment Board and Expenditure Finance Committee.

The Finance Ministry and Planning Commission often differed on the size of plans, resources mobilization and allocation of funds for different schemes and projects.

Keeping in view this fact, would it not be better to subsume the planning functions of the erstwhile Planning Commission into Finance Ministry.

It makes a sense to rename the Finance Ministry as Ministry of Finance and Planning by empowering it with the functions of Planning Commission and Planning Ministry (which presumably would cease to exist under the hoped-for amended ABR).

Yet another issue that requires clarification is whether NITI would serve as secretariat for National Development Council (NDC), a task that Planning Commission performed poorly. Or would moribund NDC become redundant as NITI would have all Chief Ministers as members of its governing council.

There are a few more issues that need to be sorted out. We hope Cabinet Secretariat is aware of all uncertainties resulting from replacement of Planning Commission.

We expect a comprehensive resolution of all such issues to ensure that planning and development process becomes more efficient under the new governance structure.