Niti Aayog document should have made ripples

Amitabha Bhattacharya
Former Principal Adviser, Planning Commission

Strategy for New India @ 75, published recently by Niti Aayog, sets the ambitious goal of transforming India to a $4-trillion economy by 2022-23 when India would celebrate the 75th year of her independence. The lukewarm response to this document indicates the seriousness with which it has been received by the public and the political establishment. Its release a few months before the General Election, perhaps, makes its intentions suspect. Even then, why has this attempt by the Aayog to draw up an almost five-year plan failed to evoke much enthusiasm? 

Most government reports made for public consumption have something to offer. These update basic information and statistics, and based on an analysis of existing constraints, seek to highlight the future intentions of the government. While the government’s failures make interesting news, its successes rarely do. 

Very few seem interested, for instance, to learn that for access to cheap medicines by the poor under the Janaushadhi Pariyojana, the number of functional stores has been increased from 99 to 4,024, that 1,420 redundant laws have been repealed, that interviews for lower level governmental jobs have largely been dispensed with, or in the number of toilets constructed or households electrified. 

However, since the government is but a continuum, its success depends on continually achieving thousands of such small steps. 

The document faithfully records the government’s achievements in 41 important areas, including education, healthcare, agriculture, energy, technology, industry and digital connectivity. For each, the objectives are defined, the current situation assessed and a blueprint suggested for the way forward. As is the tradition, sectors like defence and external affairs have not been included though they have an impact on the growth and stability of our economy. 

Intentions articulated

Let us concentrate on the major intentions articulated. Its objectives include: GDP growth rate of 8 per cent during 2018-23, doubling the current growth rate in the manufacturing sector, doubling farmers’ income, raising government spending on education to 6 per cent of GDP (against the current about 3 per cent), enhancing public funding on health to at least 2.5 per cent of GDP (currently just over 1 per cent) and augmenting expenditure in R&D to 2 per cent of GDP (with equal participation from private and public sectors).

All these are laudable objectives which every citizen has been hearing about for years, but have remained ensconced in dust-laden sarkari reports. While it is presumed that the background technical work establishing the inter-connectedness of various sectors has been undertaken, as used to be done by economists and statisticians in the erstwhile Planning Commission, the expenditure patterns in the last few years in areas like education, health and R&D do not inspire the confidence that these would be so substantially enhanced in the next four years plus. Expecting the doubling of income and outputs in crucial areas and more than doubling of expenditures in certain others in the next few years appear overtly unrealistic.

Similarly, making 24x7 power available to all by 2019 and achieving 175 GW of renewable energy generation capacity by 2022 appear unduly ambitious and rather weakly correlated with the strategies suggested. While admitting correctly for fossil fuel-based thermal plants that ‘old inefficient plants continue to operate whereas more efficient plants are underutilised’, the remedy suggested does not hint at the renovation and modernisation of the existing old plants. 

Poor learning outcomes from our government schools have been admitted, but the solution focuses on the traditional ones. Why not develop a system so that states with better results, judged by independent monitoring, get duly incentivised? In higher education, why can't the university system be made again the epicentre of scientific research and development? Creating a few institutions of eminence may be a good idea, but can such islands of excellence thrive in an ecosystem of crass mediocrity?  

The chapters on reforming the civil services, judiciary and police raise pertinent issues. One learns that of the 1,514 recommendations of the second Administrative Reforms Commission (2009), 1,183 have been accepted but a bulk of them remains unimplemented. A reduction in the number of civil services, encouraging lateral entry at higher levels and reducing the upper age limit to 27 years are steps in the desired direction. 

While opinions will differ on the strategies suggested, there can be no difference of opinion on the major objectives even if the attainability of many lofty targets remains questionable. The document also painstakingly records the initiatives, however routine they appear, undertaken in the right direction and in right earnest, in virtually every sector. They may not make headlines, but they are not insignificant.

Need to debate on document

This brings us to where we started. Why has the document not made even a ripple, not to talk of waves? In its Preface, the likening of PM’s ‘clarion call’ to achieve a New India by 2022 to our achieving independence within five years of Gandhiji’s call of Quit India betrays an inadequate reading of history, and does not perhaps enhance the value of an official document.

Since the government’s commitment to any cause can be measured by the allocation to and expenditure in that area, why is there no attempt to build a political consensus on issues like the proposed quantum leap in expenditure for education, public health, R&D and the like, as advocated in this strategy?

If the current dispensation is committed to these objectives, why can't these be debated on and later included in the election manifesto? Once one major party takes the lead, competitive populism will demand that the others do not lag behind. 

If this document raises the people’s expectations, triggers public debate and influences political outfits to articulate at least a few major goals in their political discourse, the purpose of bringing it out will be best served. And it may not just end up as a bunch of 'wish lists'.