lannin in ndia 5.31
(i) Village-Level Planning (iv) The MLP, thus, failed to include the
(ii) Hill Area Planning people’s participation in planning, badly
(iii) Tribal Area Planning betraying the local aspirations.91
But at least the failure of MLP made
Basically, the MLP was started to promote the
the government to think in the direction of
process of decentralised planning in the country.
decentralised planning afresh leading to the
It was the Indian version of democratic planning
enactment of the two important Constitutional
which ultimately sought to guarantee the people’s
Amendments—the 73rd and 74th.
participation in the process of planning. But it
failed to do so due to many reasons. The reasons
WAy to dEcEntrALISEd pLAnnInG
have been discussed below:
(i) It could not promote people’s participation Economic planning was basically an element
in the formation of the various plans. The of the centralised kind of political system (i.e.,
basic idea of the MLP model was that the socialist and the communist). When India
once the local-level plans will be handed decided in favour of a planned economy it was to
over to the blocks, the blocks will make face double challenges:
their plans and once the blocks hand over (i) The first challenge was to realise the
their plans to the districts, the district- objectives of planning in a time-bound
level plans will be formulated. Similarly, frame, and
the state plans and finally the Five Year (ii) Making economic planning a suitable
Plan if the Centre will formulate one. By instrument of development in the
doing so, every idea of planning will have democratic set up—to democratise and
the representation of everybody in the decentralise the process of planning itself.
country at the time of plan formation—a The government tried to decentralise the
special kind of plan empathy would have planning process by setting up the NDC and
developed out of this process. But this promoting the MLP, but without being able to
was not the reality. Every strata made achieve the desired results. By the late 1980s, a
their own plans—lacking the empathy direct link was established92 between development
factor. and democracy. And it was established that
(ii) Only Central Plans were implemented the above-given challenges were basically
complementary—without solving the second
as the states lacked the required level
challenge (i.e., decentralisation) the first challenge
of finance to support the plans. They
ultimately had to be satisfied by 91. G.V.K. Rao Committee (CAARD), 1985; L.M. Singhvi
implementing the Central Plans which Committee (CCPPRI), 1986 and Sarkaria Commission,
1988 all discussed this inter-connection (Suresh Mishra,
failed to include the states’ empathy. Legislative Status of Panchayat Raj in India (New
(iii) As the local bodies in India were not Delhi: Indian Institute of Public Administration, 1997).
having any constitutional mandate, they 92. Governments’ failure in including the local aspirations
in the process of planned development has been
just played the complementary roles to considered by major experts as the foremost reason
the state planning process. As they had behind the success of the regional political parties,
no financial independence, their plans, which has led to the governments of the ‘compromises’,
i.e., coalition governments, at the Centre and in
even if they were formulated, remained the states via the ‘hung parliaments’ and the ‘hung
only on paper. assemblies’, respectively.