A disclaimer at the outset. I was
born and brought up in the southern Indian state of Kerala, and thus my
opinions are in all likelihood, biased and possibly contrarian from what would
be the opinion of a significant majority of the populace of India. Also, adding
to that. I am claim to be no expert on matters of policy, federal structure of
our democracy, micro finance and all those aspects which typically I see go
into discussions on this topic. What I intend to put forth is a small aspect of
course correction, something I feel would go a long way in recognizing and
imbibing the diversity of India as a nation.
National Institution for
Transforming India Aayog, popularly known by the pseudonym NITI Aayog, was announced by
the Prime Minister of India Mr. Narendra Modi as a part
of his speech on the Independence Day of India on August 15, 2014.
Essentially, it was a revamp of the Planning
Commission of India which was instituted by Jawaharlal Nehru who was
impressed by a similar body that existed in Joseph Stalin’s USSR. For many, the
Planning Commission epitomizes a socialist thought process – one that is often
critiqued as weaker to its capitalist brethren. While it remains to be seen
whether this turns out to be a case of old wine in a new bottle or this venture
does infuse fresh energy into the policy making decisions of the union government,
there is one aspect I wish to point out. I am not very familiar with the
activities of the Planning Commission of India over the past half century, but
if I were to guess, this issue would’ve existed in those days as well. The lack
of respect for the diversity and plurality of India.
To illustrate, I wish to take a
different, probably a completely tangential analogy. I studied in a Kendriya
Vidyalaya, a central government chain of schools, in my home state of Kerala.
Geographically Kerala (as with other territories like Tamil Nadu, Lakshadweep
and Andaman and Nicobar Islands) is located close to the equator and enjoys a
tropical climate throughout the year. There is not much difference in the
length of day during summers and winters. Sometime around the year 2000,
Kendriya Vidyalaya Sangathan took a decision to bring up the school hours which
till then, was from 9 AM to 3.30 PM, by almost two hours. So in effect, this
made the school hours from 7.30 AM to around 2 PM. This decision was made to
ensure maximum utilization of day hours in winter and to shift the school hours
from the peak sunny time of the day in summers. While I actually did like the
new school hours, the decision was probably relevant to a large part of
northern and western India but did not consider the southern and eastern parts
of the country. The point I am trying to make is, while the intention might
indeed have been noble, the blanket implementation might not have been well
thought off.
As much as we like to propagate
the idea of India as a country of diversity, along with the territory of
celebration of the diverse nature of our fabric, we must not turn a blind eye
to the diversity of problems confronting the various regions of the country. Taking
the specific example of my state of Kerala, a myriad of problems she faces are
quite different from those faced by a lot of other territories in the Indian
Union (Singling out Kerala here because I am more familiar with the state, this
analogy could be extrapolated to other states in other fields as well). For
instance, the Prime Minister’s dream scheme for comprehensive financial
inclusion of the Indian population, the Jan Dhan
Yojana does not add much value to Kerala which has, over the past few
decades, had significant financial inclusion statistics. A case for the same
effect can also be made out for Beti Bachao Beti
Padhao scheme, which is aimed at eradicating gender based discrimination
against women among other similar objectives. Again, Kerala has been
traditionally a state where education across both sexes has historically been
very high and not much discrimination exists against women as compared to a lot
of other states in the union and hence, this scheme would not be very much
relevant when juxtaposed with Kerala’s social indicators. While not going into depth,
I would also argue that education and primary healthcare are also sectors where
the state is generally considered to be farther ahead of a lot of its North
Indian peers, if not all.
I am not trying here to spew
propaganda. The point I am trying to put across is an allocation of plans and
expenditures according to, not only the population or clout of the state, but
also the strengths (and thereby, weaknesses) of the state. There are states
that have a significant dependence on agriculture, on industries or natural
resources or on services and tertiary sectors. The needs for them are different
and more often than not, mutually independent and so should be the allocations.
Hopefully, NITI Aayog will do better than Planning Commission which, to me,
sometimes seemed to incentivize poor performance of states and victimize better
performance of others when deciding on fiscal spending for central government
policies.
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