NEW DELHI: India from Saturday embarked on a journey without the five years plan. Even while schemes approved under the 12th five years plan, which ceased to exist on March 31, have been given extension for six months, the NITI Aayog could not fill the void by unveiling the three years action plan as announced earlier.
“The 12th five years plan (2012-17) has come to an end along with the 66 years old practice of planning for socio-economic growth of the country. It was planned that the three years action plan, which has been drafted by the NITI Aayog, would have come in force from April 1. But the draft despite being ready could not be unveiled in time to fill the void due to delay on the parts of the Ministry of Finance. We are hopeful that the Prime Minister Narendra Modi will soon unveil the three years action plan,” said a senior official of the think-tank.
The NITI Aayog, which succeeded the Planning Commission, has not yet come out with the report on performance of the 12th five years plan, besides assessment of the impact. India’s journey of planned development had begun in 1951, which had seen a few disruptions as the Morarji Desai government had not accepted the 5th five years plan (1974-79) midway.
“The NITI Aayog will unveil the 15-year Vision Document (2017-32), which will include the three years action plan and seven years perspective plan. Since the 14th Finance Commission has completely changed the sharing of taxable revenue much in favour of the states, the Centre will now focus more on transformative ideas for the country than taking up schemes, which could better be taken up by the state government as per their specific requirements. The panel headed by the Madhya Pradesh chief minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan has also favoured that the states should design and implement schemes which in the past were being implemented by the Central government,” added the official.
Even while India will no more have the five years plan, the Modi government is seeking to migrate to the “Action Plan” model, sources said, under which the allocations of funds to the states will be linked to achieving the milestones specified for each sector. “We will soon have a system of incentivising good performance of the state governments. The states which fail to meet the milestones will know that the non-performance would bring in disincentives,” said the official.