Days before the departure of the UPA government, Planning Commission deputy chairman Montek Singh Ahluwalia told Prime Minister Manmohan Singh that it was high time a committee was formed to tackle graft, wherein honest officers are not penalised and large scale corruption rising from manipulation of government contracts doesn’t go unpunished. In a 14-page note delivered to Manmohan Singh during an internal meeting of the Planning Commission on April 30, Ahluwalia said such a panel should comprise of eminent jurists and former Cabinet secretaries, heads of CVC and CBI and mandated to examine the lacunae in the existing architecture for combating corruption. The proposed panel should delve into measures needed to tackle graft and also ensure that the administration is not hamstrung in the process. Ahluwalia said he believes that the Prevention of Corruption Act has provisions which could easily make officials acting in good faith vulnerable to charges of corruption even if they have never taken any money or favours. However, tackling the increasing menace of large scale corruption arising from manipulation of government contracts, which has undermined the trust of people, needs to be checked. The outgoing deputy chairman believes that the commission needs to re-invest its relevance in a market-based economy and further improvement in the quality of interaction in the (meets of) National Development Council (NDC), “which needs to graduate by moving away from transitional dais-based format in Vigyan Bhawan to a round table format.” Arguing for inducing fresh talent in the plan panel, Ahluwalia said, “The total package is..not attractive for recruiting younger people from outside. It is attractive only to very young people wanting a stint in the government and to retired civil servants and academics.” The planning body can make a difference only if it becomes a genuine knowledge hub. In the note, he concedes that the government has not been successful in many areas, for example in pushing the need for structural reforms in railways.ports, corporatisation, faster alignment of energy prices with world prices, introducing flexibility in labour laws and introducing operational autonomy in PSUs.
