Govt revives 15-yr vision document

Having put its much touted 15-year vision document—which was supposed to replace the Five Year Plan legacy soon after the culmination of the 12th Plan period in March 2017—on the backburner, the NDA government has now decided to formally launch it in 2020. However, now there is a probability that it could be a 20-year draft covering the period between 2015 and 2035.

Highly placed sources informed this writer that the government think-tank Niti Aayog has already begun holding parleys on issues like circular economy, governance, data & public policy, ease of living and manufacturing, which the Centre plans to include in the vision document.

The sudden surge in reviving the vision document, sources said, has come after the nudge from the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO), with the directive that it has to be launched in 2020.

Also, with the economy facing a downturn and lack of jobs having become a burgeoning concern, the government is keen to give a message that it is working towards addressing these issues by including them in the vision document, sources said.

They added that though the 15-year vision document was for the 2015-30 period and it was first envisaged in 2016, the loss of more than two crucial years between 2017 and 2019 when the priorities of the government were fixed more on propagating the idea of New India and shaping the Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s five-year initiative on promoting good governance called ‘Sankalp se Siddhi’ (from 2017-2022), it may now expand its ambit to a 20-year time frame.

The original idea was to formally wind up the Nehruvian legacy of Five Year Plans when the 12th Plan period ended on March 31, 2017.

The 15-year vision document format was to immediately begin from April 2017 onwards. As part of its implementation, the government had unveiled a Three Year Action Agenda in August 2017, which was to last till 2020.

The basic idea behind the action agenda was to increase the deadlines of all incomplete schemes under the 12th Plan period till 2019-20.

However, during this period while several schemes under the 12th Plan, after receiving due approval from the Union Cabinet, were shifted till 2019-20, the Niti Aayog could not complete consultations with all the states on various issues which the action agenda was supposed to cover, by the deadline of March 31, 2017.

Due to this, the 15-year vision document could not be implemented from April 2017 onwards and the Niti Aayog too got busy with the Centre’s Sankalp Se Siddhi initiative.

Now, sources privy to the developments say that the government is keen to include the aforementioned issues in the vision document, as part of its endeavor to revive the economy.