Concept of Planning

One of the most harmful policy decisions of recent times has been the abolition of the Planning Commission. This is ironical at a time when there is greater need for careful planning than before. One of the first major policy decisions of the Modi government was to do away with the Planning Commission when the need was to improve, strengthen and reform it. There was no real debate before taking such a far reaching step; it was implemented in a great hurry. Whatever little debate took place was also indicative that the real decision had already been taken even before the debate was initiated.

What has been equally unfortunate since then is that even the opposition has not really given much attention to keeping alive this issue. The need for careful planning is clearly increasing due to several factors, particularly, the sharp aggravation of several environmental threats and the appearance of some of them in the form of survival threats. India’s basic natural resource base needs careful protection more today than perhaps ever before but vested interests who want to plunder the natural resources as quickly as possible do not want this. There is a huge need to integrate ecologically protective policies with the fulfilment of basic needs of the people. We face a situation that demands challenging and creative work which can be of great value to future generations on how greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions can be decreased adequately in time while also ensuring that the basic needs of all people can be met in a satisfactory way. In other areas too the need of the hour is deliberation and planning.