By Dr Bertie Ramcharan Director of the Guyana Institute of Public Policy
The acclaimed Indian Nobel economics laureate, Amartya Sen, an economist, philosopher and public thinker, who wrote the much-cited work, Development as Freedom, has just published another powerful book, the Idea of Justice (2009), in which he argues that instead of approaching the issue of justice from the traditional perspective of a social contract and of being concerned with identifying what perfectly just social and institutional arrangements might be, one should concentrate instead on preventing and reducing injustices in society as a concrete way of rendering justice.
In Sen’s approach, principles of justice are defined in terms of the lives and freedoms of the people involved. The focus on actual lives in the assessment of justice has implications for the nature and reach of the idea of justice. A realization-focused perspective emphasises the importance of the prevention of manifest injustice in the world, rather than seeking the perfectly just.
Sen insists on the role of public reasoning and discussions in establishing what can make societies less unjust. He assesses democracy in terms of public reasoning and offers a view of democracy as ‘government by discussion’. Democracy has to be judged, he writes, not just by the institutions that formally exist but by the extent to which different voices from diverse sections of the people can actually be heard.
This, essentially, is the philosophy of the Guyana Institute of Public Policy, namely, to encourage public discussion and reasoning about issues that can help prevent and reduce injustices in our country. While related, there is an important difference between politicians and discussants of public policy. Politicians, especially party politicians, approach national issues through the perspectives of their, or their party’s, core beliefs or ideology. Politicians, ideally, seek to improve society and one must respect those who enter politics with a view to working for positive change in people’s lives. But party politicians often become ensnared and enmeshed in partisan political wrangling. The public policy discussant seeks to distil, assess, and encourage what there is that is valuable in party policies or in the policies of independent politicians, and also seeks to contribute to discussion, to public reasoning, about policies that can help enhance justice in the country.
The role of the advocate of public policy is to encourage public reasoning and discussion, and to invite the society, including the politicians, to reflection on matters of national concern from different perspectives. In advancing ideas, the public policy advocate understands, and expects, that the ideas put forward may trigger others, perhaps better ideas. But that is precisely the object of the exercise and the value of the process of public reasoning and discussion.
In recent essays, we have invited reflection about whether it might be useful to recognise constituent peoples in Guyana. We have drawn attention to ideas that might help bring about inclusive governance.
We have discussed the issue of truth and reconciliation, suggesting an historical approach. We have drawn attention to the dangers that rising oceans present for the national security of Guyana. We have offered some thoughts on the future of the University of Guyana. We have raised the issue whether the society might be improved through the establishment of an institution of social dialogue such as that which operates successfully in South Africa. And we have presented the philosophy of the Guyana Institute of Public Policy. These all invite the society to public reasoning – and a fair measure of that has taken place.
In this essay we present the essence of the Indian Planning Commission as an institution that has worked for economic and social justice in India for the past sixty years and we invite reflection on whether the establishment of a Guyana Planning Commission might help improve the cause of economic and social justice in Guyana and contribute to nation-building in the process. We note, for a start, that in the literature on the Indian Planning Commission there are those who argue that since India moved to a market economy in the 1990s the raison d’etre for a planning commission no longer existed. There are others, however, who argue that even in a liberalised market economy there is an important role for a planning commission in helping to anchor the society in goals of poverty alleviation and social justice and human rights.
In the spirit of advancing economic and social justice and human rights, the latest, the eleventh five year plan of India’s Planning Commission aims at:
Rapid growth (at 9 per cent per annum) that can reduce poverty and create employment opportunities;
Access to essential services in health and education especially for the poor.
Equality of opportunity;
Empowerment through education and skill development;
Employment opportunities underpinned by the National Rural Employment Guarantee;
Environmental sustainability;
Recognition of women’s agency; and
Good governance.
The goal of access to essential services in health and education, especially for the poor, is worthy of some elaboration. The thinking of the Indian Planning Commission is that access to basic facilities such as health, education, clean drinking water, etc , impacts directly on welfare in the short-run while in the longer-run it determines economic opportunities for the future. Since access to these services for the mass of the population depends not only upon their income levels but upon the delivery of these services through publicly funded systems, the Eleventh Plan envisages a major expansion in the supply of these services. It hopes that the high growth being targeted over the plan period will help in providing ample resources to fund these programmes by way of higher tax revenues that would become available and a larger borrowing capability.
There is much that can be discussed about the other goals of the Eleventh Plan enumerated above. Our focus here, however, is on the Planning Commission itself as a policy model. The Planning Commission, the supreme planning body in India, was set up in March, 1950 by a Resolution of the Central Government. It is not a statutory or constitutional body. It was placed outside of the conventional Ministries and departments with a view to preventing it from falling into a rut and to facilitate development of supra-departmental views. The Commission format was intended to provide flexibility in response to emerging needs and to build up a brains trust for development.
Its functions from the outset were five-fold:
Formulation of five-year plans for the most effective and balanced utilisation of the country’s resources;
Working out priorities in the plan;
Assessment of national resources and devising ways and means of augmenting them;
Determination of the best machinery to secure the successful implementation of the plan;
Periodic evaluation of the progress of the plan with a view to suggesting adjustments if necessary.
The composition and structure of the Commission have evolved since its establishment some sixty years ago. More recently the Commission has consisted of a full-time Deputy Chairman and eight other full-time members. The day to day work of the Commission is in the hands of the Deputy Chairman, who has the rank of a Cabinet Minister, while the other full-time Members have the rank of Ministers of State (equivalent to a junior minister). The Chair of the Commission is the Prime Minister who, however, only participates from time to time on matters of special importance. Different Ministers have, from time to time, served as part time ex officio Members. There are those who have criticised the membership of the Prime Minister and the Ministers. The Deputy Chairman, who is also Minister of Planning, is invited to attend all Cabinet meetings and when necessary other members also attend the meetings of the Cabinet or its Committees.
The Planning Commission is an advisory body to the Government. It may take the initiative in suggesting new policies and programmes and in coordinating those originating from other agencies of government. To support the Planning Commission there is also a small Ministry of Planning. We shall not go into details of its composition here. There is a Minister of State in this Ministry whose main task is to act as spokesman of the Commission and to be answerable to Parliament for the Commission’s work.
The main work of the Planning Commission is organized through Divisions which include a General Planning Division responsible for a comprehensive study of the country as a whole and whose work and conclusions are prerequisites for studies relating to individual sectors. Special Planning Divisions are concerned with the study of particular sectors of social and economic development. Other Divisions include those on educational health and family welfare; labour, employment and manpower; rural development; village and small industries; rural energy; and development policy; and backward classes.
One of the attractions of the idea of a Planning Commission for Guyana could lie in the structure of the country with its different ethnic groups. It would be fair to say that since the suspension of the internally self-governing constitution in 1953 Guyana has only had few periods of broad-based confidence in government.
After independence the period of PNC rule was accompanied by great distrust on the part of opposition supporters. Probably the brief period when Dr Cheddi Jagan was President witnessed some broad-based confidence in the government but that evaporated with his demise. Confidence in government is still seriously lacking. This is not to knock the present Government but simply to recognize the perceptions of PNC supporters. We have many bridges to cross yet in nation-building.
In such a situation it could be helpful to introduce institutions that draw upon the best thinking in our country and thereby attract respect and confidence. In a previous essay we drew attention to South Africa’s social dialogue institution, NEDLAC, which has a negotiating role. In this essay we have presented features of the Indian Planning Commission because it is a model of a brains trust thinking for the country. Such a brains trust could be truly helpful to our country. Governing parties do not necessarily consist of the best brains in the country. They are coalitions of the faithful, often entrapped and enmeshed, as we mentioned earlier, in party-political jockeying. A planning commission invites us to a brains trust rising above this.
The structure of the Indian Planning Commission is not necessarily the one we should consider. It is the model that is worthy of consideration. It probably would be better to have a truly independent commission backed by a statutory mandate and given the resources needed to help its members and staff think about policies and strategies for promoting national unity, cohesion, development, social justice and human rights. A brains trust such as a planning commission can contribute greatly to the development of public policy for social justice in Guyana.
(Sources acknowledgement: Indian Planning Commission, Eleventh Plan (2008); S.R. Maheshwari, Indian Administration: S.K. Misra and V.K. Puri, Indian Economy).
