Why in news?
The draft “Three Year Action Agenda” of the NITI Aayog has been circulated recently to its governing council.
What is the Agenda about?
- After dismantling Planning Commission and taking its place, NITI Aayog set to create 15-year long-term vision and subsequently the seven-year policy strategy along with Three Year Action Agenda.
- This set the phasing out of Five Year planning as a concept completely.
- But for the NITI Aayog’s initiative to be an improvement on the Five Year Plan, pragmatic moves, such as delinking planning from finance, will be required.
- The NITI Aayog’s governing council, which is currently reviewing the “Three Year Action Agenda”, comprises all chief ministers, mirroring the erstwhile National Development Council.
- The “Three Year Action Agenda” seeks to embark on “a path to achieve all-round development of India and its people” through concerted action, outlined in seven parts covering multiple facets of the Indian economy.
What are the advantages of the Agenda?
- Electoral cycles do not synchronise with five-year plans; quite often, this entailed outcome accountability to rest with a successor government.
- But a “Three Year Action Agenda” makes the government in office more directly accountable for the implementation of its plans.
- It gives the government an improved prospect to make corrections and adaptations during its own term in office.
- Augmenting the “Three Year Action Agenda” with a seven-year implementable policy strategy and a 15-year vision allows adaptation to changing times and exogenous variables.
- It enables us to look into the future, particularly at evolving technology, demography and ecology, and accordingly align our policies.
- The 15-year vision is also somewhat coterminous with the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) of the United Nations (UN).
- The new format thus combines domestic aspiration with global aims.
- The agenda projects three scenarios for nominal GVA (Gross Value Added), namely, low growth, baseline and high growth.
What does the Agenda offer?
- Relying on the proposals forwarded by the FRBM Review Committee, the action agenda estimates a fall in the share of non-development revenue expenditure, both as a proportion of total budget expenditure and GDP.
- It rightly emphasises the need for optimal utilisation of resources and regular monitoring of progress.
- The agenda rightly points out that a functional classification of public expenditure rather than distinction between revenue and capital expenditures will prove to be more meaningful.
- The agenda says that there exist many exogenous factors: Unfavourable monsoons, global protectionist trends - could impinge our twin deficits which critically undermine our growth prospects.
- The continued pursuit of an unconventional monetary policy approach by advanced economies could limit the manoeuvrability of our monetary authority.
- Agenda says credible efforts at enhancing tax compliance and realisation, deeper penetration of the digital economy and medium-term gains from the GST can be expected.
- Non-tax revenues, particularly from spectrum sale, necessitate structural changes in telecom policy.
- The public listing of PSUs will enable improved price discovery as per the agenda.
How can this Agenda be realised?
- It would be advantageous to constitute a separate parliamentary committee on planning, which could meaningfully engage with the NITI Aayog’s policy prescriptions.
- It would also be desirable to create state-level bodies, to be called Sub-National Institutes for Transforming India (SuNITI), in formulating and expediting state-specific policies.
- This should enable state assemblies to discuss state-level plans in sync with the “Three Year Action Agenda”.
- In the notification constituting the NITI Aayog, there is a provision to form “Regional Councils to address specific issues impacting more than one state or a region”.
- This is the right time to implement this enabling mandate.
Source: The Indian Express
