Human rights Planning machinery at state level?

Answer 1

Hi... This is sri aarthi...doing final year MSW...Here answer for your question...

Planning Machinery at the State Level

State Plans account for substantial part of the total outlay of the Government

under the Five Year Plans. These plans relate to important development

functions in the field of agriculture, cooperation, irrigation, power, road

transport, education, social services, etc. In the fields which come closer to

the welfare measures, fulfillment of important national goals depends

directly to the successful implementation of the State Plans. For these

reasons, a great deal of value both in Planning and implementation is

attached to the State Plans. It has already been mentioned that the national

plan is formulated in close cooperation and consultation with the State

Governments. The final plan incorporates the State Plans also. Since the

State Plans have to be incorporated in the National Plan the need for

effective planning machinery at the State level has been felt for the long time.

No much information is available about the details of the States Planning

Machinery in the textbooks as well as in the National Plan Documents.

However, we will study here some of the efforts that have been made in

strengthening the planning machinery at the state level.

A. Efforts of Government of India

From the very beginning the government of India has been exhorting

the State Governments to set up adequate planning machinery at the

State level. Since no response was coming from the State

Governments, the Government of India collected whatever

information was available in the State planning machinery in 1972

and accumulated certain guidelines for strengthening it. They found

that the existing planning organization available with the State

Governments is unable to fulfill the various tasks connected with the

formulation of the Fifth Five Year Plan which was in the process at

that time. In a significant communication addressed to all the State

Governments in May 1972, the Planning Commission stressed the need to set up a two level organization for formulating State Plans and

watching their implementation. A description of these two levels is

given below:

a) Apex level

The essential features of the organization at the Apex level as

suggested by the Government of India were:

i) The Apex Body at the State level should be set up under

the Chairmanship of the Chief Minster. The Finance

Minister and a couple of other important Ministers

should also be made members. This would ensure that

the decisions arrived at by the Central Commission will

command the respect of the plan as well as its

implementation. However, the number of Ministers

should not be too large, otherwise the planning body

would be overshadowed by the Government

functionaries and lose its expert character.

ii) Apart from the few ministers mentioned above, the Apex

body should have a few respected professional experts, in

important fields like commerce and industry, agriculture,

economics, public finance, administration etc.

iii) The work of the Apex body should be supported by

steering groups consisting of technical experts preferably

from outside the Government in the fields of agriculture,

industry, irrigation and power, social service, transport,

manpower and employment and other important

functional fields.

iv) Since the Chief Minister is a very busy person who would

not be able to attend all the meetings of the State

Planning Board nor would he be able to associate with its

day to day working, the Board should, therefore, have a

full time non-official Deputy Chairman. The Deputy

Chairman can operate through the State Planning

Department which should provide the security to the Apex Planning Body. The department can maintain a

liaison with the Planning Board on the one had and

Ministries/Departments of the Government on the other.

Being a non-official, the Deputy Chairman may also keep

contact with other shades of public opinion like the

legislators, opposition parties and other interested groups

like Chambers of Commerce and Industry, Farmers

Forums, Labour Organizations, etc. The Deputy

Chairman has to function as the de facto Chairman of the

Planning Board and has to provide the necessary

guidance and leadership to it. He should be the moving

spirit behind it. The Deputy Chairman should, therefore,

be a person of high eminence in public affairs, if possible,

with some previous experience or association in the

planning process at the State or the National level.

b) Supporting Services

The present organization of the Planning Department consists

of only the usual compliment of officers like the Secretary,

Deputy Secretary, Under Secretary etc. They do not have any

particular expertise - in any field. The Planning Department, as

it is constituted, would, therefore not be in the position to

provide effective Secretariat to the Apex Planning Board. For

enabling the Planning Department to adequately discharge their

secretarial functions for the apex Planning Boards, their

strength should be suitably augmented with experts drawn from

various disciplines. These experts will also have to be

functionally reorganized into different units. It was suggested

that the secretariat should have at least the following important

units:

(i) Perspective Planning Unit

The main function of this unit will be to prepare and

update the resources inventories and prepare the long term perspective plans. For this purpose, the unit will

have to take the assistance of the existing statistical

organizations. The main organization at the State level is

the Directorate of Economic and Statistics. Besides a lot

of information has to be gathered from other Government

Departments like Agriculture, Directorate of Manpower

planning, Irrigation, Commissioner Land Records etc.

who are maintaining their own statistics. The perspective

planning unit will have to develop their own detailed

guidelines as to the form in which the data has to be

complied on a continuous basis. Naturally, it will require

experts who can provide the guidelines for data

collection and analyze and interpret the data which

becomes available from so many sources.

(ii) Project Formulation Unit

This unit will have to assist various departments in the

preparation of the projects for investment. Most of the

departments in the State Governments do not have the

necessary expertise in project formulation. The collection

and presentation of data and projection of the anticipated

benefits over a period of time and analyzing it by the

appraisal techniques like cost benefit analysis or

calculation of internal rate of return etc. are still not very

well known to a number of departments in the States.

Often the State Governments are not unable to take

advantage of the national and the international finances

because of their inability to properly prepare project

reports. In any case, the formulation and implementation

of State Plan is almost impossible without a properly

staffed project formulation and appraisal unit.

(iii) Regional/District Planning Units

the planning process in the country. The successive Five

Year Plans have been emphasizing the need for initiating

district level and block level planning. At the moment,

the districts and the blocks do not have any worthwhile

planning machinery. However, the block and districts

plans will have to be incorporated in the State plans just

as the State Plans were incorporated in the National Plans.

But before this can be done, the district and the block

plans will have to be prepared in a proper format. Even

when proper district/block planning units are set up, they

will need proper guidance to prepare their plans in a form

which can be incorporated in the State Plans. This

function will have to be performed by the

regional/district planning unit, recommended to be set up

in the secretariat of the planning department at the State

level. The unit will require experts with experience in

district/block planning.

(iv) The Plan Coordination Unit

The function of this unit would be:

a) to assess the existing /anticipated level of

development;

b) to determine inter se priorities within the integrated

strategy for the next five years or one year depending

upon whether a five year plan or annual plan is being

considered;

c) to ascertain the availability of manpower and material

resources and synthesis spatial and sectoral plans into

a balanced and operational plan.

(v) Monitoring and Evaluation Unit

The weakest link in Indian Planning is the monitoring

and evaluation. Any plan encounters a number of

problems when it is put into execution. The progress of the plan is to be assessed from time to time mainly for

two reasons:

a) to find out whether the plan is progressing according

to the anticipation of the planners. Any slackness on

the part of any individual or the organization has to be

set right.

b) Any bottlenecks have to be identified so that

corrective action can be devised while the plan is still

in operation.

To achieve this objective it is necessary to collect

information on the various parameters which indicate the

progress of the plan. The purpose of the unit is to design

such information systems which will enable it to exercise

the necessary supervision over the implementation

process. This unit is also expected to pursue the various

departments and ministries to send the progress reports

according to the system designed by it.

The evaluation is a much more complicated process

which is meant to judge the impact of the particular

programme on the socio-economic system of the State. It

will require the help of experts who can devise the

evaluation systems and conduct the field operation to

access the impact of the programmes. The monitoring

and evaluation unit is, therefore, a very important part of

the planning machinery which provides it with the

necessary feed-back to assess the progress of the

implementation of the plan and its impact after such

implementation.

(vi) Manpower and Employment Unit

Due to the growing populations, the country is facing a

lot of problems in providing employment in urban as well

as in the rural areas. It is therefore, necessary to have a very strong component about employment programmes

in the Five Year Plans. To assess the extent of

unemployment and to devise suitable employment

programmes it is necessary to have a Manpower and

Employment Unit at the State level. The functions of this

unit would be:

a) To collect available information and analyze it with a

view to present the current situation and trends with

regard to the demand, supply and utilization of

different cadres of employees.

b) To identify gaps in the information system and devise

procedures for the improvement of the information

system with regard to the manpower.

c) To initiate studies and surveys in collaboration with

the concerned departments, universities and research

institutions.

d) To judge requirements of different categories of

manpower so that proper programmes can be

formulated for matching the manpower with their

requirements.

e) To ensure that the programmes for sectoral and spatial

development are drawn up keeping in view the

problems, objectives and policies with regard to the

augmentation and diversification of employment

opportunities.

B) Financial Assistance

The Governments

The Government of India felt that most of the State Governments do

not realize the importance of setting up of planning machinery.

Moreover, a suitable strengthening of the planning machinery at the

State level will definitely require a good deal of expenditure. While

such an expenditure is not much compared to the advantages which

would accrue in proper formulation, implementation, monitoring and evaluation of the plans. Since the State Governments were not

listening to the exhortations of the Government of India, the latter

came forward with a scheme to provide financial assistance for setting

up suitable planning machinery at the State level. While the

Government of India gave detailed guidelines to the State

Governments for setting up such a machinery, a great deal of

flexibility was permitted to the States to adopt the general pattern to

their conditions. The Government of India also agreed to finance the

State Governments to the extent of two-thirds of additional

expenditure incurred in the strengthening of the State Planning

Machinery. This was done with a view to provide a financial

inducement to the State Governments to adopt the recommended

pattern which in any case will be found by them to be useful in plan

formulation and implementation. It was expected that the State

Government would latter themselves like to continue this arrangement.

C) The Progress

In spite of the efforts of the Government of India, the progress of

strengthening the planning Machinery at the State level has not been

very satisfactory. Detailed information on this aspect is not available

in any books on Public Administration or in any Government

Publication. The available information is analyzed below:

(i) Setting up of the Board

Almost all the State Governments have set up State Planning

Boards. The position of the Board and its effectiveness in the

planning process varies from State to State. The Boards of

Gujarat, Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, West Bengal etc.

are said to be functioning rather effectively. The others are not

so effective.

(ii) Chairman

In most of the States, the Chief Minister is the Chairman of the State Planning Board.

(iii) Deputy Chairman

In Bihar, Gujarat, Maharashtra, Nagaland, Rajasthan and Uttar

Pradesh, Minister of Planning is either Vice-Chairman or

Deputy Chairman. In Haryana, Himachal Pradesh, Tripura,

Mehalaya, usually, an MLA is nominated as full time Deputy

Chairman with the Status of a Minister. In other States, either

some officer or a prominent non-official is made the Deputy

Chairman.

(iv) Members

The number of members on the Planning Board varies very

widely from State to State. For example, there are only two

members in the Planning Boards of Assam whereas Uttar

Pradesh Planning Board has as many as 24 members. Very few

Boards have full time members. Most of the members are

therefore working part time.

(v) Secretary

The usual pattern is that the Secretary of the Planning

Department of the State acts also as the Secretary of the

Planning Board. In some cases, e.g. Kerala and Tamil Nadu,

there is a whole time Member-Secretary. In some States, Joint

Secretary, Special Secretary or Deputy Secretary Planning is

made the Secretary of the Planning Board.