June 7, 1999
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NINTH FIVE YEAR PLAN Plan for Inaction Delayed and truncated by almost two years, the Plan is one of the most telling victims of the raging political uncertainty. By Rohit Saran
It was only on February 19 this year that the National Development Council (NDC) comprising the Union Cabinet and all state chief ministers cleared the Plan which is supposed to have come into effect from April 1, 1997. But two months after its was finally set to sail, the Rs 8,59,000-crore Plan was hit by another storm when the BJP-led government resigned after having lost the vote of confidence. For the Plan, the consequences of a yet another change in government range from delay in implementation to its outright review. That is precisely what the BJP-led government had done in 1998. The fact that the outgoing United Front (UF) government had finalised the Ninth Plan and the Plan was already a year behind schedule did not deter Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee's cabinet from reviewing it. Rather, the BJP had decided to change the Plan even before it formed the government. On March 4, 1998, a fortnight before the party finalised its coalition, the BJP's senior Vice-President K.L. Sharma had declared, "We will review every aspect of the Plan and will not accept it just because it has already been prepared." Eventually, the review, which did not amount to anything more than adding a Rs 22,000-crore Special Action Plan (SAP) and downward adjustment in certain targets, delayed the Plan by 11 critical months (see box). "Other than the sap, the Plan finally cleared is exactly the same as was announced by the UF government. Even the inadvertent spelling mistakes in the earlier version have not been corrected," comments Madhu Dandavate, who was deputy chairman of the commission during the UF reign. And rues a member of the Commission: "Thanks to political upmanship, the Ninth Five Year Plan is now actually a three-year plan (1999-2002). Even that may not fructify if the next government decides to incorporate its vision in the Plan." Given this backdrop the two questions dogging the commission are: Will the Plan undergo yet another change? And, more fundamentally, is there a way to insulate planning from political changes? Thankfully, it won't be as easy for the future government to change the Ninth Plan as it was for the outgoing BJP-led government. Reason: when this government assumed power, only the approach paper to the Plan had been approved by the NDC. But in January 1999 the NDC cleared the final Plan as well. Making amendments to the NDC-finalised plan will be near impossible for any government. Besides, as Dandavate quips, "Parties ranging from infra-red to ultra-violet have cleared the Plan, so chances of another review are negligible." But there could be a non-political reason for a review. Says Planning Commission member S.P. Gupta: "The Ninth Plan needs to be reviewed irrespective of the change in governments." According to him, the Plan has been overtaken by economic changes since its framework was first finalised and a review is necessary to make it more realistic. Take for instance, the 6.5 per cent growth in gross domestic product (GDP) targeted by the Plan. In the first two years of the Plan, i.e. in 1997-98 and 1998-99, the GDP growth was much lower at 4.6 per cent and 5.6 per cent. And for the Plan target to be met, the GDP growth will have to be at least 7 per cent for each of the coming three years. Even the most optimistic economists say that this is an ambitious target. Though some experts suggest a quick mid-term review of the Plan to align it better with economic realities, others consider such a review to be a misnomer since the Plan was cleared only in February this year. The impact of frequent government changes on the Ninth Plan has also prompted a search for ways to insulate Plans and the Planning Commission from political upheavals. One suggestion is to make the commission statutory, thus making the Plans binding on the government. Many experts, however, question the feasibility and desirability of such a move. "A government may not implement a Plan foisted on it. The outcome will be worse than the government modifying a Plan. Ultimately the Plans are meant to be a combination of political and economic visions," says Pronab Sen, adviser for perspective planning in the commission. Besides, there may be practical problems with statutory status. As B.B. Bhattacharya, director of the Development Planning Centre at the Institute of Economic Growth, Delhi, points out, "Since the prime minister is the chairman of the commission, it is impossible not to have his views incorporated into the Plan." Most observers point to a less formal way of insulating Plans form politics: consensus. In a way the Ninth Plan has been a test case of building that consensus. In its final form, it does reflect the combined work of all parties which have been in government since 1995. Though in doing so they have left the country with an apology for a Plan. |
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Come
October 1999 and all members of the Planning Commission, including its Deputy Chairman
K.C. Pant, will resign from their posts. This would be the fourth overhaul in as many
years of the commission, which is bound by a convention that requires its brass to put in
their papers every time a government changes. And the worst victim of the ever-changing
Commission has been the Ninth Five Year Plan (1997-2000). 
