NITI Aayog vs Planning Commission: Does Anyone Really Know the Difference
Couple of years ago, was have a discussion with Andhbhakt,
who firmly believed that Prime Minister Modi was correcting the ills of the
past, my position was vehemently opposite. During the argument, my question to
this friend was, “what’s the difference between planning commission and NITI
aayog.” This was rhetorical question because none of us had a clue, but the
response was interesting. “This kind of hair splitting is for JNU kind of
debates, not for working mortals like us.” In other words which is the standard
belief among the community “Modi ji ne kiya hoga to soch samajh ke he keya hoga.”
But I came to see, thanks largely to Eram Agha’s Caravan
article and other public sources, that the differences are deep, structural,
and troubling.
The Planning Commission was born in 1950, just after the
Constitution came into effect. It was the product of a consensus among leaders
across party lines. President Rajendra Prasad spoke of raising living standards
through structured planning, and Nehru built a body that would plan for decades
— not just budgets, but for what kinds of industries, what sectors, what
infrastructure, what education, what poverty lines. The Commission was designed
to be independent (at least in its technical functioning), long-term,
analytical. It produced the first national poverty line in 1962, established
the National Sample Survey, and guided India through twelve Five-Year Plans,
setting up IITs, major dams, UGC, industry policy, public sector investment—all
coordinated through its pan-India vision and alignment of state and central
plans.
Then came the rot, as it always does. Indira Gandhi, with
her imperial instincts, discovered that the Commission could be bent to
political will. What had once been a temple of data and debate became a bazaar
of patronage. Chief Ministers still came to Delhi to plead their case, but the
arguments were increasingly about politics, not planning. In the 1970s and 80s,
as growth slowed and slogans grew louder, the Commission became the convenient
villain — a socialist dinosaur lumbering through the corridors of power.
When liberalisation came in 1991, the winds of reform blew
the other way. Economists wanted markets, not ministries. Bureaucrats wanted to
breathe. By the time Modi arrived in 2014, the Commission had few friends left.
So in 2015, it was put out of its misery, and NITI Aayog — National
Institution for Transforming India, a name that sounds like an advertising
agency’s brainstorm — took its place
It was against that background that in 2015 NITI Aayog was
created. The design instructions were clear: replace rigid Five-Year Plans with
flexible outcomes; shift from central allocation of resources to advisory
tools; emphasise cooperative federalism, while ensuring political proximity to
the Prime Minister; create dashboards, indices, summits; have young
professionals, experts, task forces; do less of direct execution and more of
coordination and recommendation; rely more on data, or so the rhetoric said;
reduce bureaucratic inertia.
But there is a difference between design and architecture. A
design can be clever; an architecture must stand. NITI Aayog was born without
bones. It has no budgetary power, no statutory status, no teeth. Its
recommendations can be ignored, and often are. Its young recruits, full of
talent and ambition, arrive as consultants on short contracts. They are
rule-based hires — a bureaucratic euphemism for “temporary and disposable.” In
2018, the Aayog itself admitted that reservation norms were not applied to these
consultants, since they were technically not government employees. So they
come, they PowerPoint, and they go. Institutional memory — that slow sediment
of experience — evaporates each time the contract ends.
Balraj Madhok, that austere ideologue of the Jana Sangh,
would have hated this spectacle. He may have quarrelled with Nehru’s socialism,
but he believed in the sanctity of institutions. “A weak state is a burden on
its people; a strong state is a shelter for its dreams,” he once said — or at
least implied in everything he wrote. Madhok’s nationalism was disciplined, not
performative. For him, an institution that could not command or enforce, that
existed only to advise, was not an instrument of governance but a mask of it.
Throughout India’s history, Prime Ministers from different
political dispensations believed in continuity. Nehru institutionalized
planning, Indira kept up large state-planning machinery (even while
centralizing), Rajiv, PV Narasimha Rao, and Manmohan Singh recognized that some
planning, some centralized investment, and alignment among states were
essential. Even the BJP governments before Modi continued many central schemes
(even if retargeted). But what changed under Modi was the formal abolition of Planning
Commission, the removal of budgetary control, and a shift toward advisory
bodies without enforcement.
The tragedy is that the old Planning Commission, for all its
bureaucratic sins, was also a technical marvel. P.C. Mahalanobis, the
statistician who advised Nehru, insisted that policy without data was
witchcraft. He founded the Indian Statistical Institute, set up the National
Sample Survey, and invented models of multi-sector growth that were the envy of
developing nations. He made the simple but revolutionary point that you cannot
plan without knowing what exists. Without data on consumption, employment, migration,
and poverty, you are guessing — and guessing with other people’s lives.
Mahalanobis’s numbers gave the Commission its moral authority. It could argue
with ministers because it knew what the ministers did not.
Today, however, data is too often ignored or manipulated for
political expediency. In Caravan’s telling, many of NITI’s flagship
promises — like doubling farmers’ income by 2022 — were predicated on
assumptions that did not match ground reality; the growth rate in real
agricultural income between 2011-16 was only ~0.44 % per year. When data didn’t
favour the narrative, survey methods, definitions, or reporting were quietly
altered. Data delays are routine; surveys suppressed or postponed. Dashboards
glow, but behind them the statistical underpinnings are weak. States may show
improved indicators but many of these are metrics easy to move: institutional
births, immunization, toilet construction — all worth doing — but easier than
changing farmer incomes, land rights, or soil degradation. Political
considerations often decide what to count, when, and how.
NITI’s flagship ventures — the Aspirational Districts
Programme, the Atal Innovation Mission, the endless Vision documents — sound
impressive, and in fairness, some have achieved modest improvements. In 112
districts, health and education indicators have moved upward; more children in
school, more women delivering in hospitals, more bank accounts opened. But
these are often low-hanging fruits. A change in Chief Minister or a hiccup in
funding can undo years of progress. Innovation labs sprout everywhere, but many
are token — tinkering without traction. Vision 2030 reads like a marketing
brochure for a company that hasn’t yet figured out its product.
Madhok would have found this deeply unsatisfactory. He would
say that a nation is built not on indices and summits but on discipline and
endurance. Institutions must outlive their founders, and must have power that
survives political fashion. NITI Aayog, with all its glossy reports, fails that
test. It is an institution of appearances, not of authority.
Drawing on Caravan and other sources, the changes
required are clear. First, NITI must be given statutory status: its authority
must be recognized in law, not just by executive fiat, so that states and
ministries cannot ignore its recommendations with impunity. Second, it must
regain — at least in part — the power of budget allocation or linkage: certain
funds or conditional grants should be tied to NITI’s plans or indices, so that
advice is backed by financial incentive. Third, its data architecture must be
overhauled: strong primary data collection, standardised formats, consistent
definitions, frequent surveys; independence for some statistical arms;
transparency so that methods cannot be altered for politics. Fourth, the young professional’s
cadre must have longer tenures, more rigorous technical training, and
institutional mentorship so that they can replace the old technical elite, but
with continuity, depth, and integrity; not just interns or consultants. Fifth,
federal mechanisms to ensure states are partners not subordinated: true
cooperative federalism, not competition engineered by the centre; dispute
resolution, transparent criteria, respect for local conditions; political
alignment without coercion. Sixth, accountability for outcomes: when promises
are made (farmers’ income, poverty reduction, etc.), there must be independent
auditing, public disclosure, and consequences for failure.
This is not nostalgia. Every Prime Minister until Modi
understood that institutions are like trees: you prune them, you do not uproot
them. Nehru believed in planning; Indira used it for her ends but kept it
alive; Rao and Singh adapted it to a market economy. We, in our zeal for
newness, have confused reinvention with destruction.
Balraj Madhok’s words still echo: “A weak state is a burden
on its people; a strong state is a shelter for its dreams.” In neglecting
structure, ignoring continuity, privileging spectacle over substance, we risk
becoming a nation of promises that flicker and fade. Sahir Ludhianvi’s verse
reminds us that what was good yesterday anchors what can be good tomorrow: “Woh
jo sami tha kal ka, uske sahare jee lete hain; Kyon dushmani zindagi se, jab
dosti hai laazmi.” Continuity is not conservatism; it is the necessary
condition for real transformation.
Comments
Post a Comment