India’s new right-wing premier Narendra Modi announced on Friday (Aug 15) an end to Soviet-style economic planning in an Independence Day speech as he pressed ahead with overhauling cumbersome government policymaking.
Modi said he was scrapping the Planning Commission – a relic of socialist policies put in place by India’s first prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, who was impressed by the former Soviet Union’s centralised planning and five-year economic blueprints. The commission, set up in 1950 to set economic growth and social development targets, was relevant for India in its immediate post-independence days, said Modi, who took office in May after a landslide election win by his Bharatiya Janata Party.