India has a long way to go: Prime Minister Manmohan Singh

New Delhi: Maintaining that India’s growth story is “work in progress”, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, at a meeting in Planning Commission on Wednesday, said, to achieve the high target there is still a long way to go. However, his deputy in the plan panel Montek Singh Ahluwalia said, the economic growth prospects of the country would entirely depend on the policies of the new government to be formed next month.

In his last interaction with the officials of the plan panel, Dr Singh said, “India’s development story is a work in progress... But there is a lot of distance that is still to be covered.” Dr Singh, who is chairman of the plan panel, made a case for reorienting the body to remain relevant in the globalised world.

“With an increasingly open and liberalised economy with a greater reliance on market mechanisms, we need to reflect on what the role of the Planning Commission needs to be in this new world,” he said. Expressing satisfaction over the working of the Commission during the UPA’s 10-year rule, the PM hoped the panel would “subject itself to a critical review and will continue to play a leading role in the policy debate in government and in the development of our nation”.

Suggesting the panel to evaluate its approach to problems and challenges in the evolving economic scenario, Dr Singh said: “Are we still using tools and approaches which were designed for a different era? Have we added on new functions and layers without any restructuring of the more traditional activities in the commission?” Lauding the initiatives taken by the commission to reduce the number of Centrally-Sponsored Schemes (CCS), he said there was a need to prune them further.