Rs 14k cr plan for Punjab approved

Punjab’s plan for 2012-13 has been pegged at Rs. 14,000 crore. The plan was approved at a meeting between Planning Commission Deputy Chairman Montek Singh Ahluwalia and Chief Minister Parkash Singh Badal in New Delhi. This marks a 22 per cent increase over last year.

The Planning Commission had earlier decided to fix the size of annual plan at Rs.12800 crore which was subsequently hiked to Rs.14000.

Badal has called for a drastic recasting of the planning process in the country and said that the unitary form of governance besides the centralized and top down approach to planning had brought the country to the brink of an explosive situation in which one third of the country was afflicted by conditions of insurgency, Naxalism and other forms of violence.

Pleading for decentralization of planning process at the level of the states, Badal said that the states should be given free hand so that the specific issues related to them could be effectively addressed in accordance with the felt needs of the people. He bemoaned even after 65 years of independence and planning our country was still one of the poorest in the world. He asked “Where has our planning in all these years brought us”?

The Chief Minister argued only a truly federal system of governance and a decentralized approach to the planning process could help us to address the issues in an effective and result-oriented manner.  Too much concentration of power at the Center which neither had a feel of ground realities nor was directly accountable to the people had led to the present mess. Different areas and states have different needs but we try to impose uniform policies and decisions on the entire country. 

He also demanded immediate debt waiver of small saving loan of Rs.23264 crore or moratorium on the repayment of loan for a period of five years. Badal also urged the Commission to recommend the state’s long pending case to waive Rs. 35000 crore debt on farmers as a onetime settlement regardless of the size of the land holdings. He also asked the commission to accept the recommendations of noted farm economist, Dr.MS Swaminathan to link the Minimum Support Price to the consumer price index for accounting the cost of production plus 50% as profit.