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http://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/21/w...ule=Recommendation&src=rechp&WT.nav=RecEngine
NEW DELHI — The Planning Commission ofIndia is like those old men who are no longer harmful but are reviled because they once were. In their glory years, their ideas and deeds, couched in exalted convictions, destroyed lives.
The commission, in its final days now, was officially a think tank embedded in the government with the honorable mandate to reimagine India’s economic future. But culturally it was a lesson six decades in the telling that there is much to fear in the idealism of the elite. Created in 1950, it was once the heartbeat of India’s planned economy, when a small cabal in Delhi allocated funds, decided what factories should produce and how much, and what sort of industries — in fact, what sort of anything — was good for the nation. Its powers have diminished over the years, and its relevance has been questioned.
On Friday, Prime Minister Narendra Modi said in his Independence Day address: “Sometimes it costs more to repair an old house, but it gives us no satisfaction. We have a feeling that it would be better to construct a new house altogether. Therefore, within a short period, we will replace the Planning Commission with a new institution.”
Mr. Modi displayed a degree of respect for the commission, but economic analysts rejoiced, saying that an ancient beast created during India’s experiment with socialism had finally been slain. Amusing then that the seeds of the commission were sown by some of India’s leading capitalists.
In 1944, eight men, including the heroes of Indian industry of the time, J.R.D. Tata and G.D. Birla, wrote a 15-year vision for the Indian economy to be circulated among their influential acquaintances. It soon came to be known as “The Bombay Plan.” The authors wanted per capita income to double in 15 years, and every Indian to enjoy a minimum standard of living — for instance, to have access to 30 yards of cloth in a year and at least 100 square feet of space to call home.
As incredible as it might appear now, they wanted government to exercise tight oversight over industry. “Practically every aspect of economic life will have to be so rigorously controlled by government that individual liberty and freedom of enterprise will suffer a temporary eclipse,” they declared.
It is widely believed among academics that this document was among the major forces that influenced newly independent India to create the Planning Commission, which would in time become the most hated institution among the business community.
The commission is commonly referred to as a “Soviet-style” behemoth. The comparison annoys the economist Amartya Sen.
In “An Uncertain Glory,” he and the economist Jean Drèze write: “One thing that Communist countries — from the U.S.S.R. and pre-reform China to Vietnam or Cuba — were committed to achieving, despite all the political indoctrination and dogmatism, was to ensure free and universal school education without delay.”
India’s central planning, at least in its early years, showed a disregard for the primary education of the poor, which would in time assume the proportions of a criminal neglect.
“In fact, the first Five-Year Plan, initiated in 1951 — even though sympathetic to the need for university education, which it strongly supported — argued against regular schooling at the elementary level, favoring instead a so-called ‘basic education’ system, built on the hugely romantic and rather eccentric idea that children should learn through self-financing handicraft,” the authors note.
That idea was inspired by Mohandas K. Gandhi, who believed that making children literate before they learned how to make a bag “hampers their intellectual growth.”
An unsung triumph of India is how many of Gandhi’s ideas it discarded on its way to progress.
India survived its philosophers and, of course, the long decades of the commission, until deep economic reforms made it less harmful and, finally, a relic.
NEW DELHI — The Planning Commission ofIndia is like those old men who are no longer harmful but are reviled because they once were. In their glory years, their ideas and deeds, couched in exalted convictions, destroyed lives.
The commission, in its final days now, was officially a think tank embedded in the government with the honorable mandate to reimagine India’s economic future. But culturally it was a lesson six decades in the telling that there is much to fear in the idealism of the elite. Created in 1950, it was once the heartbeat of India’s planned economy, when a small cabal in Delhi allocated funds, decided what factories should produce and how much, and what sort of industries — in fact, what sort of anything — was good for the nation. Its powers have diminished over the years, and its relevance has been questioned.
On Friday, Prime Minister Narendra Modi said in his Independence Day address: “Sometimes it costs more to repair an old house, but it gives us no satisfaction. We have a feeling that it would be better to construct a new house altogether. Therefore, within a short period, we will replace the Planning Commission with a new institution.”
Mr. Modi displayed a degree of respect for the commission, but economic analysts rejoiced, saying that an ancient beast created during India’s experiment with socialism had finally been slain. Amusing then that the seeds of the commission were sown by some of India’s leading capitalists.
In 1944, eight men, including the heroes of Indian industry of the time, J.R.D. Tata and G.D. Birla, wrote a 15-year vision for the Indian economy to be circulated among their influential acquaintances. It soon came to be known as “The Bombay Plan.” The authors wanted per capita income to double in 15 years, and every Indian to enjoy a minimum standard of living — for instance, to have access to 30 yards of cloth in a year and at least 100 square feet of space to call home.
As incredible as it might appear now, they wanted government to exercise tight oversight over industry. “Practically every aspect of economic life will have to be so rigorously controlled by government that individual liberty and freedom of enterprise will suffer a temporary eclipse,” they declared.
It is widely believed among academics that this document was among the major forces that influenced newly independent India to create the Planning Commission, which would in time become the most hated institution among the business community.
The commission is commonly referred to as a “Soviet-style” behemoth. The comparison annoys the economist Amartya Sen.
In “An Uncertain Glory,” he and the economist Jean Drèze write: “One thing that Communist countries — from the U.S.S.R. and pre-reform China to Vietnam or Cuba — were committed to achieving, despite all the political indoctrination and dogmatism, was to ensure free and universal school education without delay.”
India’s central planning, at least in its early years, showed a disregard for the primary education of the poor, which would in time assume the proportions of a criminal neglect.
“In fact, the first Five-Year Plan, initiated in 1951 — even though sympathetic to the need for university education, which it strongly supported — argued against regular schooling at the elementary level, favoring instead a so-called ‘basic education’ system, built on the hugely romantic and rather eccentric idea that children should learn through self-financing handicraft,” the authors note.
That idea was inspired by Mohandas K. Gandhi, who believed that making children literate before they learned how to make a bag “hampers their intellectual growth.”
An unsung triumph of India is how many of Gandhi’s ideas it discarded on its way to progress.
India survived its philosophers and, of course, the long decades of the commission, until deep economic reforms made it less harmful and, finally, a relic.
