Finding some serious flaws in the Five-Year Plan period era, the NDA government is taking a critical view of the Nehruvian-era legacy and has especially criticised the protectionist trade and foreign investment policies of the 1970s. It has blamed the license-permit raj of that period for almost zero growth in foreign investment, leading to heavy borrowings and imports.
The government has identified the highly-protectionist trade and foreign investment policies of the regimes of the yore and the then prevailing license-permit raj as the two main mistakes which had persisted during the plan era “till recently” (or in other words till the time the NDA government came to power two years back).
These observations have been made by the government’s think tank, Niti Aayog, which recently made a detailed presentation before Prime Minister Narendra Modi on the Five-Year Plan periods starting from 1951 till the ongoing 12th period which is to end on March 31, 2017.
The government think tank has sought greater expertise from specialists in various fields in order to chart out a fool-proof future roadmap once the 12th plan period comes to an end.
The exercise was primarily undertaken to finetune the 15-year vision document, which the Modi regime plans to introduce from the next financial year once the current 12th plan period ends.
Niti Aayog has informed the Centre to provide it with more experts in order to make the vision document instrumental in bringing more transformational changes in the nation’s planning.
Not only has the Centre identified flaws in the policies prevailing in the 1970s, it has also found flaws with some of the key social sector initiatives of the previous governments.
Primary among these are the UPA regime’s Right to Education Act, NREGA, as well as the public distribution system (PDS).
While both the Right to Education Act and NREGA have been described by it as “flawed”, the government feels that “half-hearted efforts” were made by the previous regimes at spreading primary education during the early years of the plan era.
Also, the PDS has been found to be quite “leaky” and not properly targetted.
