One size doesn’t fit all; an important lesson that the Indian policymakers took only 65 years to learn.

The Indian government has decided to abolish the Planning Commission, a relic of the Soviet-style central policy mindset, and replace it with the National Institution for Transforming India (NITI Aayog), which will serve as a think-tank and a “directional and policy dynamo.” Instead of trying to govern India from New Delhi, NITI will adopt a regional approach. The Prime Minister will head NITI and its Governing Council will comprise States’ chief ministers and Lt. Governors of Union Territories.

The Planning Commission in India was established in March 1950. Over the years, the Commission became a tool to grow the public sector and made the state both the operator and the regulator. The Commission consolidated the control at the centre resulting in made in Delhi policies being forced fed to the States and Union Territories.

NITI, instead, is intended to be a think-tank for the central and the state governments with enough diversity in its central and regional bodies to provide “relevant strategic and technical advice” that will help the Central, State, and local governments deliver on their mandates.

Also read: Planning anew

While India experiments with bold new approaches for planning and governance, Pakistan should also take note. The current structure of Pakistan’s Planning Commission is similar to that of India’s now defunct Commission. Slightly younger than its Indian counterpart, Pakistan’s Planning Commission also adopted the five-year planning cycles that set lofty targets for growth.

However, seldom did the elected governments complete their tenures so that one may evaluate their performance against the five-year plans and the targets they set for themselves.

With 180 million people and almost 800,000 square km in land, Pakistan is a large and complex place. The diversity in cultures, languages, beliefs, climate, and terrain has contributed to the uneven development landscape, where some places are much worse off than the rest.