NITI's new 3-year strategic paper: How different is it from a 5-year plan?

The NITI Aayog new three-year strategic paper, which forms part of its 15-year vision document, and seven-year national development agenda that replaced the five-year plans would be conceptually different from the earlier documents. 
It will focus on shorter goals and most importantly will be aligned with the finance commission recommendations. The 12^th and the last five-year plan ended on March 31, 2017.

Five-Year Plans: The five-year plan was one of the most important documents before the Planning Commission was disbanded to be replaced with the NITI Aayog. The five-year plan laid down the development and economic agenda of the government was approved by the cabinet and full-planning commission before the National Development Council (NDC), which comprised chief ministers of all states that endorsed the documents. The document thereafter became the guiding principle of government functioning and laid down its priorities and challenges. Funds needed for each programme and also the schemes to achieve those stated objectives were clearly laid down in the five-year plans which also compelled the union government to allocate those amounts as the document itself was endorsed by the union cabinet and thereafter the NDC. Though, since liberalization the five-year plans had lost some of its zing and private sector started playing a more dominant role in the Indian economy, but in the later years it transformed itself to focus more on the development and welfare agenda of the government and less on economic roadmap. Key development schemes like the Rashtriya Krishi Vikas Yojana, Livelihood Mission are all the contributions of five-year plans.

NITI Aayog’s Three-Year Strategic Paper: This document is expected to fundamentally different from the five-year plans as it is expected to lay down the broad roadmap that the government should take on various sectors in the next three years, finances for which would be provided through the finance commissions. As the Aayog does not have any financial powers, it won’t be able to sanction any funds or suggest schemes and programmes to reach the objective. It will lay down roles that each institution should play in reaching the stated goals. The document is not required to be approved by the union cabinet which also does not make it binding for the government and its ministries and departments. Unlike a five-year plan, the three-year strategic paper would not be as comprehensive as the five-year plan and is not expected to go into minute details of each sector and schemes programmes and their probable allocation. The removal of the plan and non-plan distinction in the budget exercise also made this bifurcation redundant and the vision document thereby is expected to be an exercise to lay down broad policy objectives and directions that the Narendra Modi government should take as it goes into a 2019 General Elections