India PM scraps Soviet-style economic planning body

India’s new right-wing premier Narendra Modi Friday announced an end to Soviet-style economic planning in an Independence Day speech as he pressed ahead with modernising the government's cumbersome policymaking apparatus. The commission, set up in 1950, was a relic of the socialist policies put in place by India’s first prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, who had been impressed by the then-Soviet Union's command economy with its central planning and five-year economic blueprints. The commission had been relevant in earlier days, said Modi, who took office in May after a landslide election win by his Bharatiya Janata Party. ‘But the prevalent situation in the country is different, the global scenario has also changed,’ Modi told a huge crowd at the historic Red Fort in Old Delhi in a speech to mark India’s 68th year of independence, according to AFP.