Rekha Saxena

Rethinking central planning: A federal critique of the Planning Commission

ABSTRACT This article critically assesses the impact of the Planning Commission on center-state relations in India. It argues that the Planning Commission had a centralizing effect due to its role in overseeing five year and annual planning, its contribution to designing and overseeing Centrally Sponsored Schemes (CSS), and its involvement in discretionary grant-making. Central policy priorities and inter-state disagreements prevented the Planning Commission from acquiring the role of a shared rule institution, capable of offsetting the centralizing implications of the aforementioned policies. The article then speculates on what prompted the recent replacement of the Planning Commission with the NITI Aayog and what this may mean for shared rule and the nature of collaborative federalism in India more in general.

Federalism without a Centre: The Impact of Political and Economic Reforms on India's Federal System

The book under review seeks to study the federal idea in India historically, along with the process of hrthei, federalization that India has experienced in recent decades. It also addresses the impact of political and economic reforms on India’s federal system as well as the concomitant effects of the rise of regional political parties that have significantly altered the parameters of political and economic decisionmaking in the country. Lawrence Saez in this book perceives a shift from cooperative federalism to jurisdictional conflicts in the expanded ambience of Union-State relations as well as the relationship between the state sector and. the private sector of the economy.

The Hindu Nationalist Movement and Indian Politics 1925 to the 1990s

The book under review is based on the authors Ph.D. thesis, an abridged form ofwhich was first published in French in 1993. The English version has been updated with the addition of a new fifth part. Comprising fourteen chapters, besides an Introduction, a Conclusion, an Epilogue, Appendices, and a Select Bibliography, it is one ofthe most thoroughly researched and well-documented studies of the Hindu nationalist politics covering the penod 1925-1990s. The bulk of the book is based on library research including party documents, etc., which has been well supplemented with interviews of party leaders and a case-study of the BJP and allied organizations in Madhya Pradesh.

Book Review: The Hindu Nationalist Movement and Indian Politics 1925 to the 1990sJaffrelotChristophe, The Hindu Nationalist Movement and Indian Politics 1925 to the 1990s (Viking-Penguin India, New Delhi, 1996). Pp. xxiv + 592; 3 maps, 2 tables, 1 illustration. Rs 400.00.

The book under review is based on the authors Ph.D. thesis, an abridged form of which was first published in French in 1993. The English version has been updated with the.addition of a new fifth part. Comprising fourteen chapters, besides an Introduction, a Conclusion, an Epilogue, Appendices, and a Select Bibliography, it is one of the most thoroughly researched and well-documented studies of the Hindu nationalist politics covering the penod 1925-1990s. The bulk of the book is based on library research including party documents, etc., which has been well supplemented with interviews of party leaders and a case-study of the BJP and allied organizations in Madhya Pradesh.

India Independent: The First Half Century of Political Development and Decay

India in 1997 completed 50 years oflndependence as a new multi-national nation-state. Is it an occasion for celebra.tion or lament? Any balance-sheet that we seek to draw seems to be cancelled out by indefinitive pluses and minuses. If she has turned the comer on the food front and graduated from ship-to-mouth existence in the 1960s to self-sufficiency in grain, nutritional levels even for the middle classes are still shockingly low. If she is hailed as a nation with the third largest community of scientists and technocrats in the world, she is still vulnerable to international pressures for high-tech and defence supplies. If the largely agrarian country of the 1950s is today counted as among the top ten industrialized economies of the world (in terms of value-added in manufacturing in millions of current dollars in 1987), and the sixth economy of the world in terms of the value of Gross Domestic Product measuring the purchasing power of the rupee currency at home, the disastrous failure of.the public sector-led strategy of industrialization has today brought India back to the initial point of departure for economic development where, according to Jagdish Bhagwati, 1 promise once again counts for more than the achievements. The new economic policy is really a new pipe-dream with attendant uncertainties rather than the end of the tunnel. Indias economic take-off is still in the future. In the last 50 years while the area and expenditure of the governments expanded enormously, public expenditure in the social sector health, education, social services, etc. has been grossly inadequate. A_nd despite 50 years of planned economic development, economic inequality has increased instead ofbeing reduced, and the number of pee>ple below the poverty-line is on the increase. To quote Amartya Sen: