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Journalism of Courage
There are just 15 of them and the Left fears they will actually have the power to influence the 415 other ‘‘pure Indians’’ who will sit on panels with them.
Meet the bogeymen, the representatives of foreign agencies who had been invited by the Planning Commission to review the progress of the Tenth Plan.
As The Indian Express reported yesterday, they have offered to quit. And even as the Left insists it would continue to boycott this ‘‘foreign hand,’’ it turned out to be not so foreign after all.
The World Bank representative, for example, is J S Baijal, himself the former Secretary of the Planning Commission.
Representing the Asian Development Bank is Sudipto Mundle, formerly of the National Institute of Public Finance and Policy.
UNIFEM is represented by Feroza Mehrotra, a former IAS officer of the Haryana cadre. UNDP’s man is Dr K. Seetha Prabhu, who used to teach economics at Bombay University.
In all, the Planning Commission had set up 19 consultative groups to review how the Tenth Plan was doing. The Left was upset because among those who were asked to give inputs were these foreign representatives.
It is a different matter that there are only 15 of them, all Indians and all heavily outnumbered.
Still, stubbornly refusing to have anything to do with these “outsiders”, Jayati Ghosh and P. Chandrashekhar, both Leftist economists, stayed away from the meeting of the consultative group on industry today.
Taken aback by the tirade, several of the “foreign representatives’ have volunteered to quit these panels. In keeping with this, Adil Zaimulbhai from McKinsey India also did not attend today’s meeting.
Interestingly, though, Arun Maira, representing Boston Consulting Group, attended the meet, casually reminding everyone that he was an invitee, after all.
Meanwhile, after coming under fire from the Left for allowing this “foreign hand”, the government said that the matter would be resolved once Prime MInister Manmohan Singh and the Planning Commission Deputy Chairman Montek Singh Ahluwalia returned from the US. The Left welcomed this statement while refusing to explain how the presence of 15 men on 11 panels (which are chaired by Planning Commission members and have a strength of 430 between them) could derail the review. So meet the panels under threat and the “foreigners” giving the Left sleepless nights:
• Consultative Group on Social Justice and Empowerment
Total Members : 31 Chairman: Dr B L Mungekar, Member Planning Commission
Foreign Agency appointee: Dr K Seeta Prabhu, Head, Human Development Resource Centre, UNDP, New Delhi, formerly at the Department of Economics, Bombay University.
• Consultative Group on Power and Energy
Total Members : 22 Chairman : Dr Kirit S Parikh, Member, Planning Commission
Foreign Agency appointee : Vipul Tuli, Mckinsey & Company, New Delhi
• Consultative Group on Agriculture
Total Members : 30 Chairman : M V Rajasekharan, Minister of state for Planning
Co-Chairman : Prof. Abhijit Sen, Member Planning Commission
Foreign agency appointees: Sudipto Mundle, Deputy Country Director, Asian Development Bank, New Delhi, formerly at the National Institute of National Public Finance and Policy (NIPFP), and consultant to the Ministry of Finance
Joydeep Sengupta, McKinsey & Co
• Consultative Group on Water Resources
Total Members: 20 Chairman: Dr Kirit Parikh, Member, Planning Commission
Foreign Agency appointee : John Briscoe, Senior Adviser, World Bank, New Delhi
• Consultative Group on Health and Family Welfare
Total Members : 24 Chairman : Dr Syeda Hameed, Member Planning Commission
Foreign Agency appointee: Gautam Kumra, Mckinsey & Co, New Delhi
• Consultative Group on Industry
Total Members : 40 Chairman : Anwarul Hoda, Member Planning Commission
Foreign Agency appointee: Arun Maira, Boston Consulting Group India, Mumbai
Adil Zainulbhai, Director, Mckinsey & Co
• Consultative Group on Tourism
Total Members : 22 Chairman : Anwarul Hoda, Member, Planning Commisson
Foreign Agency appointee : Uttam Dave, CEO, Pannell Kerry Foster Consultants, New Delhi
• Consultative Group on Gender and Development
Total Members : 18 Chairman : Dr Syeda Hameed, Member, Planning Commission
Foreign Agency appointee: Feroza Mehrotra, Dy Regional Programme Director, UNIFEM, New Delhi, former IAS officer of the Haryana cadre
• Consultative Group on Financial Resources
Total Members : 14 Chairman : Prof Abhijit Sen, Member, Planning Commission
Foreign Agency appointee : J S Baijal, former secretary Planning Commission and Executive Director, World Bank. Sudipto Mundle, Dy Country Director, ADB, New Delhi, formerly at NIPFP and consultant to the Ministry of Finance
• Consultative Group on Transport
Total Members: 32 Chairman: Anwarul Hoda, Member, Planning Commission
Foreign Agency appointees: Shirish Sankhe, McKinsey. Sudipto Mundle; Alok Bansal, World Bank
• Consultative Group on Higher and Technical Education
Total Members : 26 Chairman: B L Mungekar, Member, Planning Commission
Foreign Agency Appointee : Pramath Sinha, McKinsey & Co
