Advantages of Planning Commission
- Planning Commission laid emphasis on infrastructure developments and capacity building. As a result, huge investments were made in education, energy, industry, railways and irrigation.
- India became self-sufficient in agriculture and made great progress in capital sector goods and consumer sector goods.
- Planning Commission introduced many remarkable concepts like nationalisation, green revolution etc and transformed itself to align with new concepts like liberalisation, privatisation and inclusion.
- Planning commission made great emphasis on social justice, governance, employment generation, poverty alleviation, health and skill development.
- The transformation of India from a poor to an emerging economic power is credited to the orderly and phased manner in which planning was implemented.
Challenges of Planning Commission
- No structural mechanism for regular engagement with states.
- Ineffective forum for the resolution of centre-state and inter-ministerial issues.
- Inadequate capacity expertise and domain knowledge; weak networks with think tanks and lack of access to expertise outside government.
- Failed to implement land reforms.
- It was a toothless body, was not able to make union/states/UTs answerable for not achieving the targets.
- Designed plans with ‘one size fit for all’ approach. Hence, many plans failed to show tangible results.
- Weak implementation, monitoring and evaluation.
