Commentary/Mani Shankar Aiyar

It is absurd that a government which has days to go should tell the country where its economy will be five years from now

The polity of India is not confined to Sansad Marg. It is to be found in our villages and mohallas. That is where governance has so far been most ineffective. Planning must begin from there. That is now a constitutional obligation. But you would not know it to go by the present approach paper.

No state, as far as I know, has as yet set up the district planning committee, elected by the members of the panchayats and the nagarpalikas in proportion to their rural: urban population ratio 'to consolidate the plans prepared by the panchayats and the municipalities in the district and to prepare a draft development plan for the district as a whole,' as is required under Article 243-ZD of the Constitution.

Read this with Articles 243-G and 243-W, which provide for the panchayats and nagarpalikas respectively to undertake, 'the preparation of plans for economic development and social justice,' and you will see why it will not be too difficult to get from the Supreme Court a stay order on further consideration of the approach paper till the Planning Commission fulfills its constitutional obligations.

The point, however, is not legal wrangling but a paradigm shift. What we need is a new planning process informed both by the new ethos of liberalisation for the marketplace and the new constitutional provisions for local self-government. It is only if and when this is done that there will be a framework within which to complete the process of economic reform.

Through most of the Eighth Plan period, North Block determined the pace and direction of reform while Yojana Bhavan tugged at Manmohan's coat-tails. Given that there was, at any rate in the initial stages, something less than a national consensus on how far and fast to go from the practices of the past, there was, perhaps, something to be said for setting up a kind of dialectic between a radical North Block and a conservative Yojana Bhavan to get the right balance between continuity and change.

Now, however, it would be an inestimable advantage to get the two behemoths to labour together. For if they did -- and only if they do -- will there be that stability in economic policy which underlines investor confidence. The Budget would then cease to be a Russian roulette of annual policy changes and become, as it should be, an adjustment policy, a fine-tuning, as it were, of a policy that is known and accepted.

This is where a Five-Year perspective, in preference to Five-Year Plan, would push the market segment of our economy to tigerish rates of growth. Just remember a consistent GDP growth rate of seven per cent per annum can lead to the eradication of unemployment within eight years. It is such hopes that are at stake.

Stable economic policy will also provided a clear indication of the revenues available to finance the assault on poverty and the promotion of human development indices. Combined with the machinery of decentralised democratic development in the panchayats and nagarpalikas, Yojana Bhavan can then chart the path of poverty eradication and the building of that human capital which experience from Singapore to Costa Rica has shown has much more to do with growth rates than money capital.

All this is far too tall an order for the Gowda government to even attempt. It will fall apart at the seams if it does. It is, therefore, good bye time for the Gowda government. It must go.

Sitaram Kesri has captured the commanding heights of his party. He must forestall the presentation by this government of both the annual Budget and its approach to the Ninth Plan. It is absurd that a government which has days to go should tell the country where its economy will be five years from now.

Therefore, before the NDC meets, there should be a change of guard. With Manmohan Singh back in finance and someone suitable (why not me?) in the Planning Commission, Sitaram Kesri can then start taking India back to that millennium from which we have been distracted these last six months. Kshma chahte hain, rukawat ke liye khed hain!