Prime Minister Narendra Modi earlier this week approved a three-level planning framework for replacing the five-year plans, the last of which ends in March next year.
In the new framework, there will be a 3-year Action Plan for 2017-18 to 2019-20, aligned to the award period of the 14th Finance Commission. In it there is also a 7-year strategy from 2017-18 to 2023-24 to convert “longer vision into implementable policy and action as part of the “National Development Agenda” with a mid-term review after three years, in the financial year ending March 2020.
Finally, it will have an over-arching 15-year aspirational plan for achieving the Sustainable Development Goals.
Focus on povertyIncidentally, this 15-year plan, said an official source close to the Prime Minister, is not dissimilar to 15-year Perspective Plan (1951-1976) the now-scrapped Planning Commission's perspective planning division (PPD) headed by late Pitambar Pant had prepared to eradicate poverty by ensuring the provision of a minimum level of living (MLL) for the entire Indian population — an idea originally mooted in 1938 by the National Planning Committee of the Indian National Congress.
The 15-year plan’s main theme will be poverty, the official said.
