8. Relevance of Planning to Economic Reforms

After the two five-year plans (the eighth and the ninth) were already implemented, the government took up the cause of establishing a relevance between the process of planning and the broader process of economic reforms. Different steering committees have been set up which look after the plan implementation of the different sectors according to the idea of economic reforms. This step should be seen as the government’s answer to the critics who opined that planning has become irrelevant in the era of economic reforms.

9. Reforming the Planning Process

The government called this Plan a ‘reform plan’ rather than a ‘resource plan’. There has been a long-standing criticism about Indian plans that they are

mere excercises in resource mobilisation. Probably, the Planning Commission has tried to do away with this criticism. The above given points visibly prove that the Tenth Plan was not merely a ‘resource plan’. Basically, the Plan initiates many pathbreaking changes in the planning process—its methods, strategies and ideas—all at the same time. Rightly, it has been called a ‘reform plan’ by the Planning Commission. Second, this was the first plan in the era of economic reforms which accepts to go for establishing relevance to the process of economic reforms. From this perspective, too, this Plan is a ‘reform plan’.

The inclusion of the above-given new elements into the Indian planning process has gone to really change the nature, role and scope of planning in the country. All these new elements are today carried forward by the Eleventh Plan with an emphasis wherever it is required. The planning process is more established today in India as the changes in the political arrangements at the Centre do not seem to be affecting it unlike the past.