Bring rigour in economic policymaking

Executing schemes or projects is only one part of the government's work

Who misses the Planning Commission? Hardly anyone, barring a handful of nostalgists. Its two most important roles — formulating five-year plans for India and approving the spending plans of its 29 states — were either irrelevant or counter-productive in the post 1991 economy and polity whose orientation had become more market-based and more federal. Remarkably, almost every state continued to operate its own mini-Planning Commission — the State Planning Board — even while frowning on the national one. Perhaps there was, and is, a felt need for some sort of strategic planning, not so much in terms of the allocation