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P LANNING P ARADIGM
Almost all wonderful plans devised by
our Planning Commission never saw
themselves bearing fruits in reality
market economy getting stronger, our
Planning Commission failed to reinvent
itself in order to sync with this economic
metamorphosis. In fact, almost all wonderful
plans devised by our Planning
Commission never saw themselves bearing
fruits in reality. The plan always oscillated
between time and cost overruns.
The political pressure forced the Planning
Commission to come up with
projects without any justifi able feasibility
report on fi nancial or economic viability
of the same.
Across the world, with change in economic
model, the centralized planning
system saw its gradual demise. Starting
with the Soviet Union, the Central Committee
of the Communist Party of the
Soviet Union that was designed as the
highest body of the Communist Party of
the Soviet Union (CPSU) started off well
but with time was reduced to just a rubber
stamp body and saw its closure in 1991
with demise of the Communist Party itself.
Present day, the Economic, Social
and Environmental Council of France is
actually a consultative assembly with limited
roles. Unlike ours, it does not play a
role in the adoption of statutes and regulations
but is only there as an advisory
body assisting the lawmaking bodies on
social and economic areas and policies, if
any. Most of the time the body is largely
dormant or inactive and responds only
when the executive arm asks for proposal
on social or economical issues. Talking
cue from France’s Economic and Social
Council, the United Kingdom (UK) designed
its own planning body called the
10 THE IIPM THINK TANK
National Economic Development Offi ce
or NEDO, which later on was restructured
to assist its new corporatist economic
planning forum called National Economic
Development Council (NEDC).
The main work of NEDC (with assistance
from NEDO) was to act as a forum for
collective bargaining between management,
trades unions and government in an
attempt to address Britain's relative economic
decline. However, this was abolished
in 1992 and UK now is a member of
the European Union's Economic and
Social Committee (EESC or EcoSoc).
EESC is more of a consultative assembly
comprising employers, employees, trade
unions and representatives of various sectors.
In simple word it’s like CII or FICCI
from India. The role of the EESC is
largely consultative though it sometime
gets involved in the matters of social policy,
social and economic cohesion, environment,
education, health, customer
protection, industry, transport, indirect
taxation and few more. It is nowadays
focusing on boosting the role of civil society
organisations in non-member countries.
As recent as 2008 China also have
remodelled its centralized planning body
(State Planning Commission and State
Development Planning Commission) to
create the National Development and
Reform Commission (NDRC). The
NDRC mainly works to formulate policies
for economic and social development and
advice on streamlining economic system
of the country. The NDRC is actually a
remodelled body of the State Planning
Commission (SPC).
During early 1980s and 1990s, many
governments who used to follow a planned
economy model began deregulating in a
big way and started adopting more market-oriented
planning model. In case of
USSR, the change of economic system
itself became the reason for its closure.
Attributes and agendas, which were previously
scrutinized by central planning body,
were now left to the private sector wisdom.
Today centralized planning system
exists in very few countries like Cuba,
Libya, Saudi Arabia, Iran, North Korea,
Burma and India, to a limited extent.
Countries like France, China and Russia,
to a large extent follow a planning process
wherein the main objective is to maintain
a coordination (and develop synergy) between
state and private entity. These
countries follow Indicative planning
model (aimed to bridge information gap in
economies and increase economic performance).
The main work of the body is to
advice the state to design subsidies, grants,
and taxes but then it limits itself to advis-