Planning commission to launch website calling for suggestions

The planning commission proposes to launch a website shortly inviting for suggestions from individuals and organisations on the approach to the 12th Five Year Plan, deputy chairman of planning commission Dr Montek Singh Ahluwalia said in Bangalore today.

"We will be launching it shortly, probably next week", Ahluwalia said during a lecture titled "Challenges in the 12th Plan", organised to mark the 83rd birthday of former Union minister and Member of Karnataka legislative council MV Rajasekharan.

The aim of launching the website was to create a mechanism to ensure people's participation in chalking out the next five year plan by inviting suggestions from individuals, civil organisations, representatives and groups to comment on various new emerging dimensions.

"Sometimes, some of the very good suggestions came from very young people", he said.

The commission also plans to get in a group of interns to go through the suggestions, finalise them and feed it to the commission, he said.

"We have just begun thinking about the 12th plan. We have just begun the process of identifying the challenges", he said.

The mantra of the 11th plan was inclusive growth and that would continue as inclusive growth cannot be sought to be achieved in just a single plan. Inclusive growth was complex and multi-dimensional. "When one dimension was addressed another surfaced", he said.

The commission would reflect on the achievements and what needs to be corrected, he said.

He said India from being `growth laggards' two decades ago was now emerging as the second fastest growing country among the major nations in the emerging markets. Despite perceptions by some that the poor were getting poorer and rich richer, he said there were no statistical evidence to prove it.

The poor were also benefiting from growth, he maintained. The issue often was that the expectations were far ahead of what was being delivered, he said.

Ahluwalia said that the midterm appraisal of the 11th plan had also revealed that the even erstwhile 'Bimaru states' that were lagging behind growth had also begun showing signs of growth and sometimes accelerated growth.

Ahluwalia said the challenges in the 12th plan was to define some issues, including what would be the role of the centre and state. Would the centre restrict itself to merely channelising money to states and leave it to the states to decide utilisation of he resources as propagated by some were some of the issues that would have to be addressed.

"How do we establish accountability" was a crucial issue in face of allegations that some of the resources channeled through the centre were being misused by state or unutilised. Currently, the centre had little punitive actions that could be taken if the money was not spend.

The centrally-sponsored schemes through which resources are now channelised aims at providing some broad guidelines for states to follow to ensure some control. "The challenge in the 12th plan would be to ensure the implementation of these schemes on ground level were more effective", he said.

"How do we get more effective transfer of responsibility to the local level" was the challenge it faced. The challenge also lay in how to ensure that people participated and that local bodies delivered.

Raising the current level of agricultural growth to at least 4% was another major challenge. Raising agricultural productivity per person using current technology and inputs was a major issue.

How do we expand industrial employment was another challenge. China currently dominated in areas of labour intensive industries like garments and shoes but soon China would vacate it when rising income make it non-competitive, he said.

"Who would fill these gaps. Are we going to miss the bus", he asked, he said, adding, there was no progress at all in liberalising labour laws in the country.

With India set to be becoming more urbanised, the challenge was in ensuring governance of these cities. Most state governments are not ready tor face the issue of increased urbanisation.

Ensuring energy and water efficiency were other challenges. "Energy constraints in India are going to be big" and discussing fair and sensible approach as to how to exploit resources would have to be addressed.

Designing policies that encourage energy efficiency was a challenge. Setting up an integrated water policy that bring in legal issue including property rights about water would be crucial going forward, he said.