Yojna Bhawan-Planned failure

By Jay Dubashi | Sep 18, 2010


It seems they didn't consult an astrologer before they selected the plot in Delhi's Sansad Marg for the mansion known as Yojana Bhavan, which houses the Planning Commission. Nothing has gone right for it during all these years. Its five-year plans have not worked, its projections have gone haywire and most of the men who ran it - economists, politicians and babus - have vanished without trace.

The commission has always been a controversial body. In fact, within days of its announcement, union finance minister Dr John Mathai resigned in a huff, protesting against it being set up. Nehru accepted the resignation promptly as one less headache, but nothing really went right after that. Nehru said that the commission would be an independent body of experts and would guide the government. Here he was wrong. Whatever else the commission may have been, it was not an independent body. Nehru himself was its chairman, but in the initial years, the agency was run by a man called P C Mahalonobis, a leftist-leaning statistician, who almost ruined it.

I met Mahalonobis a number of times but we never really hit it off, as he was a slippery customer, though a very clever one. He spoke in big numbers, so many millions of this and so many millions of that, which must have fascinated Nehru, who always thought in big terms. But the millions meant nothing. The country's GDP growth rate was confined to 3.5 per cent a year, one of the lowest in the world, which some mischievous people promptly termed Hindu rate of growth, though Nehru was not much of a Hindu, nor was Mahalonobis.

The man who really shook up the commission was improbably a businessman from Poona, S L Kirloskar, who headed the famous business group named after the family. At that time, companies had to go by production targets laid down by the commission. Kirloskar planned for a big expansion of his oil engine business, but the demand never went beyond a fraction of the official figure. He suffered a big loss, and complained loudly to everyone in the government, including the new prime minister, Indira Gandhi, and that too at the annual meeting of the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry (FICCI) which Kirloskar headed that year, and which was inaugurated by Indira Gandhi herself. I was present at Kirloskar's speech in which he pulled no punches. Indira Gandhi was furious, for here was a mere businessman who was criticising.

Within months, the commission had been downgraded, though the five-year plans emerged year after year, like telephone directories. When the Janata government came to power in 1977 after the Emergency, and I found myself in the government, the first man to call on me was Kirloskar, with a mischievous smile on his face and the bluest bow tie I have seen outside Westminster. In fact, for years afterwards, whenever Kirloskar came to Delhi, he made it a point to see me, though his bow ties grew less and less blue, but by that time I had ceased to be in the government.

I have never really taken kindly to the commission and its armchair experts picked up from stray universities. After 30 years of producing plans on a conveyor belt, it gave up the ghost in 1991 when we were forced to open up the economy and the plans became useless, as they served no purpose. But the commission still goes on and one sees commission members on this and that TV channel, though even union ministers like Kamal Nath do not take them seriously.

I still maintain that a fine building like Yojana Bhavan in a prime location in the capital should not be wasted on a government office but should be converted into a posh department store and handed over to Macy's of New York. The location - right in Sansad Marg and next to cash-rich Reserve Bank - is wonderful and there is enough parking place. Perhaps our good friend Montek Ahluwalia will give it a thought!

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