Restructuring of Planning Commission outlined

In the future, he said, the Planning Commission would dedicate itself to the economic aspects of nuclear diplomacy in the post-Cold War era and to the need to reconcile the demands of foreign economic policy with “the imperatives of the domestic political economy”.

A much-used word in this context was “globalisation”. Both Europe and the United States give huge subsidies to their farmers. The US Senate was recently “up in arms” to offload $ 500 million worth of wheat in Pakistan in response to the Americanfarm lobby’s fears about falling prices. And yet, he said, globally the US is a champion of liberalisation. The Planning Commission must aim to understand the reality of global economic thought.

On “trade in currency” or global capital flows, Singh said there was no world agreement and no internal restraint. This too was a task for the Planning Commission.

The body would also address itself to the question whether the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank were performing their original role of being vehicles of global economic transformation or whether they were “subservient to a limited economic thought and vision”.

The lessons for India of the current global economic crisis, issues of food and energy security, regional imbalances and of social infrastructure, were all subjects with which the Commission was much preoccupied.