Vinod Anand

AMONGST the mixed economies of the world India has been the pioneer in development planning. Although there were several attempts, at different levels, to formulate different kinds of plans during the pre-independence era, yet planning was seriously taken up only after independence. Unlike the sub-Saharan Africa and the Caribbean, where planning was largely formalistic (sometimes even ritualistic), and unlike Latin America, where it was more of a side show, planning in India and elsewhere in Asia, and even in East Europe and Northern Africa was, at least in the beginning, greatly influenced by planning in the Soviet Union, and was essentially based on Fabian Socialism. But later most of these countries including India gradually lost faith essentially in the allocation mechanism of the socialist planning, and started assigning greater role to market system for resource allocation. In India such a shift occurred after 1970.

After having gone through almost the six-decade of planning and completed the first eight five-year-plans and a few annual plans, India has already been through the first year of the eleventh plan (2007-2012). It is, therefore, time that we look back, and make some reflections on how India has performed over the years.

In terms of the planning experience of the developing countries, many interesting hypotheses emerge. One of the most important hypotheses that is there is that in most of these countries, irrespective of the kind of planning they pursued, planning had failed to live up to the expectations in the sense that there was no clear association between a high degree of planning efforts in these countries and their performances in terms of growth.

This paper briefly looks at the experience of India in terms of its planning efforts over the years, essentially in terms of outlays and targets, and the resulting performance in terms of growth. Beyond that it also looks at the overtime changes that have taken place in certain crucial economic and social indicators that ultimately affect the quality of life of the people. The performance of the economy has, therefore, been judged both in terms of economic growth and development. As an epilogue, the Paper briefly reflects on the present scenario in terms of the Reforms and their impact on the Indian economy. The focus is on qualitative (like pulse reading), and not quantitative (like pathology testing) analysis, because according to my experience in spite of the facility of mathematics and statistics in economics, coupled with the fact that economics is inherently mathematical, quantitative economics is greatly constrained by a number of both built-in and other assumptions with the result that it invariably fails to reflect reality. These assumptions relate to quantification of economic and social variables, fixing the sample size, collection of data, and finally to the analysis of data. Besides that, even the (secondary) data are highly fabricated in support of the ruling party (wielding all power and authority to control the economy of the country) just to appease the masses and to increase their voting bank.

The growth scenario

Let us summarize the performance of the Economy in terms of growth, as indicated by outlays and targets, and the resulting outcomes over the different plan periods. It is seen that,
In case the outlays figures are not deflated, there appears to be an enormously increasing trend in plan outlays over the 1951-97 (i.e. from the First to the Eighth Plan). As compared to the First Plan (1951-56), outlay is seen to have risen by about 138% in the Second Plan (1956-61), 338% in the Third Plan (1961-66), around 700% in the Fourth Plan (1979-74), 1900% in the Fifth Plan (1974-79), about 5600% in the Sixth Plan (1980-85), more than 9000% in the Seventh Plan (1985-90), and more than 22000% in the Eighth Plan (1992-97).The trend continues even up to the eleventh plan (2007-12). But if the outlay figures are deflated by using the indices of wholesale prices of all commodities with base 1981-82 = 100, it is found that the change in real terms has not been that enormous.
It is, thus, concluded that discounting for inflationary deceptions, the planning effort in India, if measured in terms of outlay alone, has not even doubled since the sixth plan. On the face of it this appears to offer a gloomy picture, but it is not so once we scan through the performance of the economy over the years.

Coming to the performance side of the economy it should be clearly understood that the degree of success or failure of planning is not an easy task to assess. Planning, as we understand, has many purposes, some of stated, others are not. It is perhaps comparatively easy to say something with respect to a particular stated purpose. But under no circumstance can we say with confidence that this plan has fully succeeded and that plan has fully failed. It is only up to a certain degree to which a given plan may succeed or fail and that too with respect to a given stated purpose. More is the degree to which the stated purpose is achieved the more successful is the plan. In certain cases even if the stated purpose is not at all achieved, and the plan in question becomes successful in mobilizing some kind of a public awakening or support in favour of that stated purpose, the plan is said to be successful. [To be continued]

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Bhutan: measuring gross national happiness

THE tiny Himalayan kingdom of Bhutan on November 6 coronated its fifth monarch, Jigme Khesar Namgyel Wangchuck at a lavish ceremony attended by dignitaries from around the world and over 2000 Bhutanese. This Buddhist country, sandwiched between Asian giants India and China has never been colonised.

Outgoing King Jigme Singye Wangchuck, 52, placed the crown on the head of his son, 28-year-old Jigme Khesar Namgyel Wangchuck, who becomes the world's youngest reigning monarch. Foreign dignitaries who attended the coronation included Indian President Pratibha Patil and Japanese Ambassador to Bhutan Hideaki Domichi.

The former king abdicated two years ago as part of his plan to reform and modernise the country. The country earlier this year elected a National Assembly, completing its peaceful transition from an absolute monarchy to a constitutional monarchy. In the 1990s, the then king was quoted as saying Bhutan was too small to afford the luxury of pluralism. A little earlier, some 80,000 Nepali-speakers were expelled from the country. Many had apparently been stripped of their citizenship as the teaching of their language in school was banned. Bhutan insists many of them were illegal immigrants. Stuck in camps in Nepal, none have returned.

What is the message of this young king educated in America and oxford? He wants to shield his remote, traditional and inward-looking Himalayan nation from the negative forces of globalisation. In a speech the day after his coronation, the 28-year new king said he would protect the landlocked country's unique culture and traditions by pursuing the principle of 'Gross National Happiness.'

"My deepest concern is that as the world changes we may lose these fundamental values on which we rest our character as a nation and people," King Wangchuck, now the world's youngest reigning monarch, said in a speech to tens of thousands of people. "Henceforth, even as more dramatic changes transform the world and our nation, as long as we continue to pursue the simple and timeless goal of being good human beings... we can ensure that our future generations will live in happiness and peace," he said.

"Ultimately without peace, security and happiness we have nothing. That is the essence of Gross National Happiness."

The crowning of the new king Thursday capped a year of sweeping changes for the Bhutan held its first democratic elections for a new parliament and prime minister in March, as part of a plan by the former king to modernise the country by relinquishing the Wangchuck dynasty's absolute power.
It was the revered former king, who is 52, who devised the principle of pursuing national happiness rather than focussing on purely economic indicators. He abdicated two years ago, saying he wanted to match the shift to democracy with a change of face in the white-walled palace that overlooks Thimphu.

The new king is viewed as having brought a more common touch to the royal family. Immediately after being crowned, he stood for hours personally greeting thousands of well-wishers. "Throughout my reign, I will never rule you as a king. I will protect you as a parent, care for you as a brother and serve you as a son," he said in his speech.

"As the king of a Buddhist nation, my duty is not only to ensure your happiness today but to create fertile ground from which you may gain the fruits of spiritual pursuit and attain good karma.

"As citizens of a spiritual land you treasure the qualities of a good human being -- honesty, kindness, charity, integrity, unity, respect for our culture and traditions, love for our country and for God," he said. The king's first speech was delivered to at least 30,000 people in Thimphu's main stadium, the scene of traditional dance, military parades and Buddhist rituals throughout the day.

Bhutan, home to just over 600,000 people had no roads or currency until the 1960s, allowed television only in 1999 and continues to resist the temptation of allowing mass tourism -- preferring instead to allow access to only small organised groups of well-heeled visitors.

The trajectory on which the former king has put Bhutan can be measured by his statement in 2005: “The best time to change a political system is when the country enjoys stability and peace.” He has thus pre-empted a Nepal on Bhutanese soil, he has saved his royal line and avoided the violence often associated with systemic change. Of course, Bhutanese “gross national happiness” didn’t apparently entail such a predicament.

But not everybody is happy with the state of the Bhutanese nation. There are justifiable complaints that the former monarch still remains very much in control of everything; and a Western education and youth don’t necessarily mean the new king will modernise faster than his father. There also remains the Nepalese refugee issue, prominently.

Bhutan’s significance and vulnerability also arise from the fact that it is sandwiched between India and China, with the Chinese eating into its borders and also attempting to buy it off at the same time. Therefore, India can only welcome the Incremental momentum is visible in Bhutan. India itself had taken the right step last year by amending the 1949 treaty to allow Bhutan greater freedom in its foreign and defence affairs. Along with that dignity provided to the Himalayan state, India now needs to support the Bhutanese establishment in this moment of transition to help itself and its colourful neighbour.

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Afghan peace talks widen US-UK rift on war policy

Gareth Porter

THE beginning of political talks between the Afghan government and the Taliban revealed by press accounts this week is likely to deepen the rift that has just erupted in public between the United States and its British ally over the U.S. commitment to an escalation of the war in Afghanistan.

According to a French diplomatic cable that leaked to a French magazine last week, Prime Minister Gordon Brown's government is looking for an exit strategy from Afghanistan rather than an endless war, and it sees a U.S. escalation of the war as an alternative to a political settlement rather than as supporting such an outcome.

The first meetings between the two sides were held in Saudi Arabia in the presence of Saudi King Abdullah Sep. 24 to 27, as reported by CNN's Nic Robertson from London Tuesday. Eleven Taliban delegates, two Afghan government officials and a representative of independent former mujahideen commander Gulfadin Hekmatyar participated in the meetings, according to Robertson.

Brigadier Mark Carleton-Smith of the British command in Afghanistan enthusiastically welcomed such talks. He was quoted by The Sunday Times of London as saying, "We want to change the nature of the debate from one where disputes are settled through the barrel of the gun to one where it is done through negotiations."

If the Taliban were prepared to talk about a political settlement, said Carleton-Smith, "that's precisely the sort of the progress that concludes insurgencies like this."

The George W. Bush administration, however, was evidently taken by surprise by news of the Afghan peace talks and was decidedly cool toward it. One U.S. official told The Washington Times that it was unclear that the meetings in Saudi Arabia presage government peace talks with the Taliban. The implication was that the administration would not welcome such talks.

A U.S. defence official in Afghanistan told the paper the Bush administration was "surprised" that it had not been informed about the meeting in advance by the Afghan government.

Defence Secretary Robert Gates, on his way to discuss Afghanistan with NATO defence ministers in Budapest, made it clear that the Bush administration supports talks only for the purposes of attracting individual leaders to leave the Taliban and join the government. "What is important is detaching those who are reconcilable and who are willing to be part of the future of the country from those who are irreconcilable," he said.

Gates said he drew line at talks with the head of the Taliban, Mullah Mohammad Omar.

However, representatives of the Taliban leader are apparently involved in the talks, and President Hamid Karzai is committed to going well beyond the tactic of appealing to individual Taliban figures.

Afghan Defence Minister Abdul Rahim Wardak said in a news conference Oct. 4 that resolution of the conflict required a "political settlement with the Taliban". He added that such a settlement would come only "after Taliban's acceptance of the Afghan constitution and the peaceful rotation of power by democratic means."

The Afghan talks come against the backdrop of a Bush administration decision to send 8,000 more U.S. troops to Afghanistan next year, and the expressed desire of the U.S. commander, Gen. David. D. McKiernan, for yet another 15,000 combat and support troops. Both Democratic candidate Barack Obama and Republican candidate John McCain have said they would increase U.S. troop strength in Afghanistan.

Obama has said he would send troops now scheduled to remain in Iraq until next summer to Afghanistan as an urgent priority, whereas McCain has not said when or how he would increase the troop level.

Such a U.S. troop increase is exactly what the British fear, however. The British ambassador in Afghanistan, Sir Sherard Cowper-Coles, was quoted in a diplomatic cable leaked to the French investigative magazine "Le Canard enchaine" last week as telling the French deputy ambassador that the U.S. presidential candidates "must be dissuaded from getting further bogged down in Afghanistan".

In the French diplomatic report of the Sep. 2 conversation, Cowper-Coles is reported as saying that an increase in foreign troop strength in Afghanistan would only exacerbate the overall political problem in Afghanistan.

The report has the ambassador saying that such an increase "would identify us even more strongly as an occupation force and would multiply the targets" for the insurgents.

Cowper-Coles is quoted as saying foreign forces are the "lifeline" of the Afghan regime and that additional forces would "slow down and complicate a possible emergence from the crisis."

In an obvious reference to the intention to rely on higher levels of military force, Cowper-Coles said U.S. strategy in Afghanistan "is destined to fail".

Cowper-Coles is reported to have put much of the blame for the deterioration of the situation in Afghanistan on the Karzai government. "The security situation is getting worse," the report quoted him as saying. "So is corruption, and the government had lost all trust."

The report makes it clear that the British want to withdraw all their troops from Afghanistan within five to 10 years. Cowper-Coles is said to have suggested that the only way to do so is through the emergence of what he called an "acceptable dictator".

The British foreign office has denied that the report reflected the policy of the government itself. Nevertheless, statements by Brigadier Carleton-Smith, the senior British commander in Afghanistan, last week, underlined the gulf between U.S. and British views on Afghanistan.

"We're not going to win this war," said Carleton-Smith, according to The Sunday Times of London Sep. 28. Carleton-Smith, commander of an air assault brigade who completed two tours in Afghanistan, suggested that foreign troops would and should leave Afghanistan without having defeated the insurgency. "We may leave with there still being a low but steady ebb of rural insurgency," he said.

Like Cowper-Coles, Carleton-Smith suggested that the real problem for the coalition was not military but political. "This struggle is more down to the credibility of the Afghan Government," he said, "than the threat from the Taliban."

When Gordon Brown replaced Tony Blair as British prime minister in June 2007, British officials concluded that the Taliban was too deep-rooted to be defeated militarily, according to a report in The Guardian last October. The Brown government decided to pursue a strategy of courting "moderate" Taliban leaders and fighters who were believed to be motivated more by tribal obligation than jihadi ideology.

That idea was in line with U.S. strategy as well. Now, however, both Karzai and the British have moved beyond that to a policy of negotiating directly and officially with the Taliban. For the British it appears to be part of an exit strategy that is not shared by Washington.

Defence Secretary Gates responded to Carleton-Smith's remarks Tuesday by reiterating the official U.S. view that additional forces are needed in Afghanistan and implying that the British's officer's views are "defeatist". Gates said, "[T]here certainly is no reason to be defeatist or to underestimate the opportunity to be successful in the long run."

*Gareth Porter is an investigative historian and journalist specialising in U.S. national security policy. The paperback edition of his latest book, "Perils of Dominance: Imbalance of Power and the Road to War in Vietnam", was published in 2006. [Courtesy IPS]

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