Planning Commission outlived its original objectives and its credibility has rapidly lost. Discuss the various reasons that led to demise of this body.

Model Answer:
Successive governments have used the planning commission as a parking lot for decent placement for the favorable officers and academics, who could not be accommodated anywhere else as its members. Its credibility was lost due to its theoretical reports and data-mining which generally did not stand correct on ground. Various other reasons are as follows :
Firstly, it is focused on theoretical tools such as sophisticated mathematical models which were highly aggregative and thus could not success. Secondly; the planning documents generally resulted in duplication of the jobs of central ministries and the states by setting up parallel divisions in planning commission itself. Thirdly, during the successive plan periods, the targeted goals were compromised in most arbitrary way. This was mainly because of the faulty budgeting resulting in absence of annualized break-up of targets set in the plan. Fourthly, the multiyear budgeting in our country has its own problems. The rationale behind multiyear budgeting is that different programmes have different time spans. For example, Bharat Nirman was launched for four-year period 2005-09, while JNNURM was launched for seven years beginning 2006.However, five years is a too long a period and almost every plan immediately started dwindling after its launch.

Topics: GS-III: Indian Economy Issues Relating to Planning