India's new right-wing premier Narendra Modi announced Friday 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. "But the prevalent situation in the country is different," Modi told a huge crowd at the historic Red Fort in Old Delhi in a speech marking India's 68th year of independence.
"To take India forward", the commission must be replaced by a body that will have "a new soul, a new thinking, a new direction... based on creative thinking." Modi's failure to use his hefty mandate to introduce "big bang" steps to reform India's still largely state-dominated economy and spur stumbling growth has sparked criticism among some commentators that he should be bolder.