योजना आयोग खत्म करने की खबर पर आज के टेलीग्राफ ने अपना पूरा पहला पेज इस खबर को समर्पित कर दिया। इस पेज में काफी रोचक जानकारियाँ हैं।
ONE DINO DOWN
- Jurassic plan panel set to be replaced
New Delhi, Aug. 16: The Narendra Modi government plans to transform the Soviet-era Planning Commission into a Chinese-style National Development Reforms Commission.
The proposed commission will act not only as an economic and human development think tank but also as a body that plans and monitors the implementation of mega projects and industrial areas, liaising with state governments to get the projects up and running within a timeframe.
Modi feels the plan panel — a Jurassic-era relic of the command economy — has outlived its utility in the new age where the larger chunk of the economy is in private hands, and where the State’s role is that of a catalyst rather than a Soviet-style target setter.
Those days of commanding heights
- Species that towered over the economy is finally being declared extinct
JAYANTA ROY CHOWDHURY
Yojana Bhavan, which houses the Planning Commission. Picture by Ramakant Kushwaha
An apocryphal story: Raj Krishna, the economist who coined the phrase “Hindu rate of growth”, was a member of the Planning Commission when it was formulating the Sixth Five-Year Plan. Someone asked him what the approach to the Sixth Plan would be. Krishna replied: “This is not the approach to the Sixth Plan. This is the Sixth approach to the same Plan.”
Like other relics of the Nehruvian era — smoke-belching Ambassador cars, unwieldy Murphy radio sets, urban sprawls of ugly, box-like, post-World War flats, the fashion statement of the Nehru jacket and Godrej typewriters — the Planning Commission, housed just three buildings away from Parliament, is now destined for history’s dustbin.
