No one is going to shed any tears as the Modi government
finally gets rid of India’s Planning Commission.
“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.”