#dnaEdit: Grand declaration

It would be wrong to assume that the dismantling of the Planning Commission is the last nail in the coffin of Nehruvian State socialism, and that the country is at last entering the free-market phase. Prime Minister Narendra Modi may not believe in the Nehru model, but he does certainly believe in the State as the driver of the economy, in terms of innovative ideas. If he was a free-market advocate, Modi would not have replaced the old planning commission with the new NITI. He is not a free marketeer in that unalloyed sense. He seems to believe that the State has to be the catalyst to push economic growth. NITI differs from the plan panel in many ways. It now includes the state governments.  It is surprising that economists who claim to be believers in the free market have applauded NITI as the need of the hour.

Apart from the conceptual issues, there is the linguistic problem with NITI. The acronym does not stand alone as it should. It is followed by the official Hindi word for commission, Aayog. If Aayog was to be part of the name of the new panel, then the Hindi word, ‘niti’ or ‘neeti’ as in ‘rajneeti’ or ‘rajniti’ (politics), ‘kuutneeti’ or ‘kuutniti’ (diplomacy), should have sufficed. As it stands now NITI is an acronym which already includes the word ‘aayog’. It would have been better if the Hindi words, Niti Aayog, was used, along with the English equivalent, Policy Commission. An inept neologist in the bureaucratic echelons seems to have come up with the infelicitous NITI Aayog.

The cabinet resolution is couched in grandiloquent bureaucratese which is the norm for official proclamations. What is interesting is the acknowledgment that India has progressed in the last six and a half decades and that there is a compelling need to restate national objectives. Among other issues, the statement states emphatically that “the country has metamorphosed from an under-developed economy to an emergent global nation with one of the world’s largest economies.” There is an indirect nod in this formulation to the progress made through the planning phase. The other important reference is to the progress that the nation has clocked on the social front:

“The past few decades have also witnessed a strengthening of Indian nationhood. India is a diverse country with distinct languages, faiths and cultural ecosystems. This diversity has enriched the totality of the Indian experience.” Then there is the reference to political pluralism and the importance of the states, which is reflected in the inclusion of Chief Ministers and lieutenant governors of Union Territories as members of NITI.

NITI as yet lacks clarity regarding its functions. Will the five-year plans be discontinued so that the new body is not burdened with working out the details of what needs to be done in each sector? Will there be sector-wise plan allocations, and will there be quinquennial growth targets? NITI still seems to carry the burden of a centralised policy-making burden, which was the case with the planning commission. If the states are to decide their own policies, then each Chief Minister must have the freedom to do it in his or her own way. The fundamental objection to NITI is that it lacks simplicity of structure to be effective enough. No good idea can come out of as elaborate a system as NITI Aayog.