Q.Trace briefly the evolution of economic planning in India from the Planning Commission to NITI Aayog.

India's central planning institution changed fundamentally in 2015, reflecting decades of gradual movement away from a fully centralised model.

India's Planning Commission was established in 1950, shortly after Independence, as the country's central planning authority. Its mandate was to assess the nation's available resources, formulate a plan for their most effective and balanced utilisation, and determine development priorities. It went on to frame a long sequence of Five-Year Plans, beginning with the First Five-Year Plan (1951-56), through which national growth targets, sector-wise resource allocations, and public-sector investment programmes were laid down for the entire country. Over more than six decades of Five-Year Plans, the specific priorities shifted across plan periods — from agriculture and irrigation, to heavy and basic industries, to poverty alleviation, to growth with social justice — but the underlying institutional model, a single central body framing detailed national targets and allocating plan funds to states, remained broadly unchanged throughout. …

Describing NITI Aayog as simply 'the new name for the Planning Commission' — the change was institutional, not cosmetic: NITI Aayog does not allocate plan funds to states or issue bin …