While Anna Hazare and his select team of civil society leaders are still getting their high-visibility act together to co-draft the anti-corruption Lokpal Bill along with government representatives, another set of grassroots coalitions, representing more than 1,000 NGOs, have in a first of its kind transformational initiative made their recommendations without much ado to the Planning Commission to feed into the Approach Paper to the 12th Five Year Plan.
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh was recently briefed about the approach issues at a meeting of the Planning Commission.
Underlining that the 12th Five Year Plan must target 9-9.5% growth, he added that the objective must be faster, sustainable and more inclusive growth with monitorable targets of various dimensions of inclusiveness.
Inclusive growth is the buzzword guiding the preparation of the Approach Paper, which will lay down major targets, key challenges, and the approach to be followed.
The format is unprecedented because its for the first time that civil society has been engaged in large numbers in the Plan-making process from the beginning and not at the last stage as in the past and even the opinions of citizens are being sought with the help of an interactive website and social media like Facebook.
Explaining the nuancing of the exercise, member of the Planning Commission Arun Maira says, We have been keen to have broad-based, genuine and meaningful consultations with civil society in a structured manner to feed into the plan process from the beginning.
The idea is to cut across boundaries to come up with systemic solutions to systemic problems to pursue inclusive growth, Maira added.
So, instead of taking comments from individual NGOs at the Yojna Bhawan, the Planning Commission identified coalitions and platforms like Wada Na Todo Abhiyan (WNTA), Arghyam & WaterAid, and UNs Solution Exchange, encouraged them to return to their constituencies, hold wide-ranging consultations at the grassroots level and come back with consensus inputs. Appreciating the confidence the Planning Commission has shown in civil society platforms, Amitabh Behar, convenor, WNTA, says, The participatory consultation is exciting, for it creates space for civil society to input into the Plan process. So far, our biggest achievement has been to institutionalise the process.
Referring to a broad range of development issues, WNTA has, in its inputs of about 200 pages, emphasised the need to make the 12th Five Year Plan inclusive and to create enabling spaces where the viewpoints of the most marginalised, disadvantaged and poorest of the poor groups and citizens of the country can be voiced and heard. The concept of inclusion in the planning process should be centred on mobilising the excluded as active agents of their own development; their participation should be made essential to the very design of the development process; and they themselves must not simply be welfare targets of development programmes.
Adds Rohini Nilekani, chairperson, Arghyam, which along with WaterAid facilitated interactions with 300 representatives of civil society organisations, gram panchayats, community groups and research institutions in six meetings around the country on water and sanitation, I have no doubt that some of the very pragmatic suggestions that came out of the consultations like a clear pro-poor policy in urban local bodies, more decentralised and data based decision making with clearly defined norms for citizen participation, would be acceptable. Maira could not agree more with the sentiment. He says, Civil society has made useful contributions. Its already influencing the language of the Plan process. We are processing the vertical inputs from civil society horizontally to capture the essence of pressing concerns to address them.
Going forward, the Planning Commission will prepare the draft Approach Paper to the 12th Five Year Plan, discuss it with states in regional consultations, circulate the revised Approach Paper to concerned ministries, and submit it to the cabinet before it finally goes to the National Development Council, including chief ministers and headed by the Prime Minister, preferably by July. It would not be the end of the engagement between civil society and the Planning Commission, but only content for more engagement.
Behar says, We are keeping a close watch on the cognisance the Planning Commission is taking of our inputs. After the government releases the Approach Paper, we will issue a critique or a rejoinder. Remember, we are not partnering with the government, but only engaging with it. Its a half-inside, half-outside model to help in the preparation of a people-centric Plan document.
Source: The Financial Express
Published on 30 April 2011