NITI AAYOG- lessons from India's planning experience

 The NITI Aayog has been charged with developing a 15-year Vision, a seven-year Strategy and a three-year Implementation framework. Although expectedly the term “plan” is scrupulously avoided, it is quite obvious that planning is back. This is a good thing. After all, the principal function of planning is to evolve a shared commitment to a common vision and an integrated strategy not only in the higher echelons of government, but among all stakeholders. No development strategy can be successful unless each component of the system works towards a common purpose with the full realisation of the role that it has to play within an overall structure of responsibilities. The NITI Aayog mandate meets this requirement admirably.
However, for this to happen, it is not sufficient that the vision and the strategy are clearly articulated in a formal document which is communicated and is readily available to everyone in the government, and appropriate orders issued for compliance and implementation. Nor is it enough that all other stakeholders, in the states and among the public at large, are kept abreast through a well thought-out communications strategy. The process through which the vision and the final strategic plan are evolved and implemented can be at least as important as both the product (that is, the strategic plan) and the communication strategy. An inappropriate process of formulating a strategic plan can have a number of undesirable effects which adversely affect the quality of the plan and even more so the quality of its implementation. The national planning experience in India clearly illustrates the dangers of faulty processes, which led to progressive disenchantment with the plan, and eventually culminated in the demise of the Planning Commission in 2014.
The Strategy and the Action Plan Devising a strategy to attain the vision is possibly the most difficult part of the planning process. This is particularly so when the vision encompasses multiple, seemingly unrelated, objectives. In a country as large and diverse as India, this has pretty much always been the case. But the magnitude has become even more daunting with the adoption of the SDGs.

The Experience
Returning to the mandate of the NITI Aayog, from all accounts it appears that the responsibility for framing the Vision has been delegated to the NITI Aayog, instead of being articulated at the highest political level. The Indian experience shows that this can be seriously problematic. The Second, Third, Fourth, Fifth and Tenth Plans were instances where the vision was articulated at the highest political level, and only the strategic thinking was left to the technocrats, who also were responsible for the detailed planning. Each of these plans recorded spectacular success. The Seventh Plan, on the other hand, is an instance where there was a political vision but little strategic thinking, leading to a situation where the strategic plan was at odds with the vision. The result was a serious economic crisis.
The Sixth, Eighth, Ninth and Twelfth Plans were examples of a lack of vision, with the predictable result of the strategic plan being little more than business-as-usual. The Eleventh Plan is interesting in the sense that although the political vision was less about growth and more about equity and social development, the economy performed spectacularly well until the global financial crisis hit. This is mainly because this plan essentially built upon the strategy of the Tenth Plan, which was overtly growth-oriented, and reaped the benefits of the momentum that had been created. The first thing that is quite clear from this experience is that no good strategic planning can ever occur in the absence of a challenging and well-articulated vision.

A good vision statement must have three critical characteristics:
(i) It must capture the imagination of the nation so that all stakeholders feel that it is an end worth working towards.
(ii) It should be seen to have full political commitment especially at the highest level.
(iii) It must force the strategic thinkers and technocrats to go beyond mere extrapolations.
None of these characteristics is likely to hold if the vision is framed by the technocrats themselves or, even worse, through crowd-sourcing. On this count alone, the NITI Aayog appears to have been started off on the wrong foot. It is not too late yet to undo this weakness, but it will require the Prime Minister to: (i) publicly declare his vision for the nation; (ii) to charge the NITI Aayog to give it substance; and (iii) to work actively in propagating it across all stakeholder categories.

The Lessons
The main learning from this experience is that the NITI Aayog needs to devote as careful thought to the planning process as to formulating the strategic plan itself. This is not a technical exercise, and involves a deep understanding of people and of organisational behaviour. Some of the features of this process can be summarised as:
(i) The Prime Minister should articulate the broad vision for the country, and not merely endorse a suggestion put up by the bureaucracy.
(ii) The NITI Aayog should work out the components of this vision in terms of the objectives and targets, and obtain full support of the Prime Minister. It may also be desirable to place these before the Governing Council of the NITI Aayog for its endorsement.
(iii) The broad strategy for attaining the expanded vision should be worked out within the NITI Aayog, keeping in mind the interrelationships and synergies that may exist among the various objectives. This strategic plan should confine itself to strategy and not extend itself to detailed design, which should be left to the lower tiers. This involves laying out the objectives, the targets, the time path and the resources. All else is detail, which is best done by others.
(iv) In framing the implementation or action plan, the NITI Aayog should clearly specify which interventions should be designed and controlled by the central ministries and which should be left to the state governments with only financial support from the centre.
(v) In the course of formulating the strategic plan, there will inevitably be serious differences of opinion between the NITI Aayog and the ministries/state governments. These differences need to be resolved before the strategic plan is finalised. The resolution can only be done at a level higher than that of the Aayog, and this role has to be played by the chief executive officer (CEO).
(vi) Last, but not the least, the NITI Aayog should consciously guard against developing hubris, which inevitably leads to micro-prescriptions—the bane of the erstwhile Planning Commission.

By: Abhishek Sharma