Closing down of Planning Commission a 'good thing': Arun Maira

NEW DELHI: Former member of the erstwhile Planning Commission, Arun Maira today said closing down of the institution and its replacement with Niti Aayog was a "good thing".

Interestingly, Maira was appointed by former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, who had recently said that the country's economic policy has "no sense of direction" after the Modi government decided to scrap the Planning Commission.

"One good thing I would say... I think the closing down of the Planning Commission and putting in its place a charter for another institution was a good thing...," Maira said here at the Times LitFest.

He further said that India needs to build a democratic institutional capacity to make economic progress sustainable and inclusive.

"Whether the Niti Aayog is going to do it or not is still an open question but the charter is a very good one. It is what you need today in an institution.

"We stopped needing a Planning Commission around the time of 1991 reforms, yet for so many years after that we continued with it barely changed," he added.

Maira said as the country moves forward one needs to learn what is needed in future and that Planning Commission was a "hangover" of an old concept.

"... I control the budget, I tell you what to do, one size fits all and it does not work. It did work for the Soviet Union...," he said.

He added that the role of planning centrally should be to help people with methods by which they can make their plans and implement them and produce the results.

Socialist-era Planning Commission was on January 1 replaced by a new think-tank, NITI (National Institution for Transforming India) Aayog that is headed by the Prime Minister and has all Chief Ministers as members in a broad-based Governing Council.

The erstwhile command economy era body set up nearly 65 years ago by late Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru had a Deputy Chairman and full-time members with a member secretary, an official, as a convener.

Maira also said that the country needs second generation reforms now.

"I do not think we have been that smart with what we call second order of reform which require many stakeholder within the country and some from outside to work on solution which could be acceptable," he said.

"If we are to work out reforms, we have to have a process which is not a process of big announcements, it is a second order reform, requires policy processes kind the one we used in 1991," he added.