Functions
The Planning Commission's functions as outlined by the Government's 1950 resolution are following:
- To make an assessment of the material, capital and human resources of the country, including technical personnel, and investigate the possibilities of augmenting those resources which are found to be deficient in relation to the nation's requirement.
- To formulate a plan for the most effective and balanced utilisation of country's resources.
- To define the stages, on the basis of priority, in which the plan should be carried out and propose the allocation of resources for the due completion of each stage.
- To indicate the factors that tend to retard economic development.
- To determine the conditions which need to be established for the successful execution of the plan within the incumbent socio-political situation of the country.
- To determine the nature of the machinery required for securing the successful implementation of each stage of the plan in all its aspects.
- To appraise from time to time the progress achieved in the execution of each stage of the plan and also recommend the adjustments of policy and measures which are deemed important vis-a-vis a successful implementation of the plan.
- To make necessary recommendations from time to time regarding those things which are deemed necessary for facilitating the execution of these functions. Such recommendations can be related to the prevailing economic conditions, current policies, measures or development programmes. They can even be given out in response to some specific problems referred to the commission by the central or the state governments.
From a highly centralised planning system, the Indian economy is gradually moving towards indicative planning where the Planning Commission concerns itself with the building of a long-term strategic vision of the future and decide on priorities of nation. It works out sectoral targets and provides promotional stimulus to the economy to grow in the desired direction. It also plays an integrative role in the development of a holistic approach to the policy formulation in critical areas of human and economic development. In the social sector, schemes that require coordination and synthesis like rural health, drinking water, rural energy needs, literacy and environment protection have yet to be subjected to coordinated policy formulation. It has led to multiplicity of agencies. The commission has now been trying to formulate and integrated approach to deal with this issue. The Planning Commission has asked the States to hike the power tarrif to save the ailing power sector. It also called upon the States to utilise the power subsidy for improvement to essential services like drinking water supply, education and health for promoting inclusive growth.
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Famous quotes containing the word functions:
“One of the most highly valued functions of used parents these days is to be the villains of their children’s lives, the people the child blames for any shortcomings or disappointments. But if your identity comes from your parents’ failings, then you remain forever a member of the child generation, stuck and unable to move on to an adulthood in which you identify yourself in terms of what you do, not what has been done to you.”
—Frank Pittman (20th century)
“When Western people train the mind, the focus is generally on the left hemisphere of the cortex, which is the portion of the brain that is concerned with words and numbers. We enhance the logical, bounded, linear functions of the mind. In the East, exercises of this sort are for the purpose of getting in tune with the unconscious—to get rid of boundaries, not to create them.”
—Edward T. Hall (b. 1914)
“Adolescents, for all their self-involvement, are emerging from the self-centeredness of childhood. Their perception of other people has more depth. They are better equipped at appreciating others’ reasons for action, or the basis of others’ emotions. But this maturity functions in a piecemeal fashion. They show more understanding of their friends, but not of their teachers.”
—Terri Apter (20th century)