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Suggestions for the Institution to replace Planning Commission

Suggestions for the Institution to replace Planning Commission
Start Date :
Aug 17, 2014
Last Date :
Jan 30, 2015
04:15 AM IST (GMT +5.30 Hrs)
Submission Closed

Addressing his fellow Indians from the Red Fort on 15th August 2014 the Prime Minister called for replacing the Planning Commission with another Institution that is in sync with ...

Addressing his fellow Indians from the Red Fort on 15th August 2014 the Prime Minister called for replacing the Planning Commission with another Institution that is in sync with the modern times and most importantly in sync with the aspirations of 21st century India. The Prime Minister also emphasized on the important role the states have to play in taking the nation forward.

This forum invites your innovative ideas on what shape will this proposed institution take in terms of structure, composition and area of functioning. Another area of focus that requires your inputs is how this proposed institution can enhance Centre-State coordination and thus become a true celebration of India’s Federal Structure.

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Showing 3121 Submission(s)
Devendra Narain
Devendra Narain 11 years 11 months ago
• No single appraising agency, outside a body like PC, can have expertise from different sectors for proper information about the sector to which the project pertains. • Centralisation of appraisal of Central projects helps build institutional memory which is of great help in appraisal.
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Devendra Narain
Devendra Narain 11 years 11 months ago
Permit me to give just three examples of advantage of a centralised appraisal agency. (a) The Eighth Report of the COPU (1985-86) contains scathing criticism of the Central government organisations, particularly PAD and PIB, created for appraisal and approval of investment projects. At that time large PSUs like ONGC did not have much autonomy for investment decisions.
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Devendra Narain
Devendra Narain 11 years 11 months ago
The then Chairman, ONGC, had told the COPU: ‘It is just a waste of time to go through the various processes of clearance. I have not seen a single proposal having been modified drastically because of the clearance by the government agencies. The proposals remain identically the same.’ Based on his evidence, the COPU passed strictures against the appraisal agency and clearance procedure.
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Devendra Narain
Devendra Narain 11 years 11 months ago
Subsequently, when records were produced before a Committee of Secretaries (COS) to show that out of a dozen and half projects appraised by the PAD during the preceding two years, the ONGC withdrew 2/3 projects, made important changes in more than a dozen projects and that only two or three had been cleared without any amendment, the COS (on September 30, 1986) recorded that the ONGC had misled the COPU. It was a very serious offence but there was no follow-up action.
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Devendra Narain
Devendra Narain 11 years 11 months ago
(b) In 1987, petroleum Ministry submitted a proposal for approval of revised cost estimates (RCE) of a multi-crore offshore pipeline project. The proposal, approved by Petroleum Secretary, had claimed that the cost had gone up on account of, among others, drastic change in specifications of pipeline (leading to higher diameter, thickness of wall, etc.).
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Devendra Narain
Devendra Narain 11 years 11 months ago
I discovered that what the Ministry had mentioned as revised specifications were actually the approved specifications and what had been mentioned as approved specifications were one of the options considered and rejected earlier. It proved the advantage of institutional memory.
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Devendra Narain
Devendra Narain 11 years 11 months ago
Appraisal of Central Projects -III (c) In 1998, some Indian and American academics submitted a proposal based on World Bank analysis of over 1600 projects that attributed delay in implementation to outdated methodology of CBA. The academics offered to provide what they called “state-of-the-art” methodology. I noticed great enthusiasm in different ministries that at long last the World Bank had discovered the root cause and that a solution was available!
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Devendra Narain
Devendra Narain 11 years 11 months ago
On examination of the proposal submitted, I found that the World Bank had not studied a single case from India and there was nothing like "state-of-the-art" methodology the so-called experts were talking about. On the other hand, after carrying out concurrent and ex-post evaluation of hundreds of projects over a long period of time, our finding was that there was nothing wrong with our methodology; mistakes in appraisal, if any, occurred due to wrong data or wrong application of methodology.
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Devendra Narain
Devendra Narain 11 years 11 months ago
Post-approval, projects go wrong because of several reasons such as pressure to sanction without adequate availability of fund, land and infrastructure facilities (happening on a large scale in the Railways.), delay in award of contracts and/or in supply of equipment, non-availability of adequate number of skilled workers, etc.
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Devendra Narain
Devendra Narain 11 years 11 months ago
Moreover, a central appraisal agency builds a databank to suggest intra-se ranking when there are different projects competing for limited resources and also to suggest common problems faced by projects pertaining to a particular sector or across the sectors. .
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