1951–1952
The Planning Commission began its life surrounded by misunderstanding.
Some believed it would command ministries.Others feared it would replace them.Most were unsure why it existed at all.
That uncertainty was deliberate.
The first meeting was anticlimactic.
No flags.No declarations.No sense of occasion.
Just a long table, stacks of paper, and men who had spent their lives either administering orders or resisting them—now asked to do something unfamiliar.
Coordinate.
"What exactly do we decide?" someone asked.
Nothing, I thought.
And everything.
But I did not say that aloud.
The Commission had no enforcement authority. It could not sanction a ministry. It could not command a state. It could not redirect funds on its own.
It could only advise.
And persuasion, I knew, was the most exhausting form of power.
The ministries reacted first with politeness.
They attended meetings.They submitted reports.They nodded at targets.
Then they continued as before.
Old habits do not revolt.
They wait.
Agriculture wanted flexibility.Industry wanted protection.Transport wanted funding without oversight.Education wanted time.
Each request made sense in isolation.
Together, they dissolved coherence.
The states were less diplomatic.
They had tasted autonomy after independence and were unwilling to surrender it quietly to Delhi—especially not to a body that lacked constitutional clarity.
"Planning is not in the Constitution," one Chief Minister remarked.
He was correct.
And he knew it.
I resisted the temptation to clarify authority.
Clarity too early would have invited confrontation.
Instead, I allowed the Commission to struggle.
Institutions must earn obedience before they can demand it.
Behind closed doors, frustration grew.
Economists complained they were being ignored.Administrators complained they were being second-guessed.States accused Delhi of moral imperialism.
I listened.
And waited.
The first real test came over targets.
The Plan proposed modest agricultural increases.
Some states inflated their own numbers, hoping to extract larger allocations. Others underreported capacity to avoid scrutiny.
Data, I realized, was now political.
And politics does not submit easily to spreadsheets.
Rather than impose correction, the Commission did something unexpected.
It compared.
Quietly.
Districts against districts.States against states.Claims against outcomes.
Patterns emerged.
So did embarrassment.
No one likes being quietly outperformed.
This was the Commission's true power.
Not command.
Contrast.
Ministries began adjusting behavior—not because they were ordered to, but because inconsistency was now visible.
Visibility creates discipline faster than punishment.
Still, the absence of teeth had consequences.
Projects stalled when coordination failed.Delays multiplied in shared jurisdictions.No one could be compelled to compromise.
Critics seized on this.
"The Plan cannot enforce itself," they said.
They were right.
That was the cost.
But there was another cost I feared more.
If the Commission gained authority too quickly, it would be blamed for every failure. Ministries would comply publicly, sabotage privately, and escape responsibility.
Without teeth, accountability remained dispersed.
Messy.
But real.
Patel questioned me once, directly.
"You've built a body that cannot command," he said.
"Yes."
"Then what will it do when people ignore it?"
"It will remember," I replied.
"Institutions that remember outlast those that punish."
He said nothing.
Which meant he was thinking.
The Commission began publishing summaries—not judgments, not rankings. Just observations.
Delays noted.Targets revised.Outcomes compared.
This unnerved people more than reprimands.
A reprimand ends a conversation.
A record does not.
By 1952, something subtle had shifted.
Ministries consulted the Commission before finalizing projects. States negotiated rather than defied. Arguments moved from ideology to sequence.
The Commission still had no teeth.
But it had presence.
It was not loved.
It was not feared.
It was necessary.
And necessity, in government, is the most durable authority of all.
One evening, reviewing the year's reports, I understood what we had actually built.
Not a planner.
A referee.
Someone to slow the game, replay the move, and remind everyone where the lines were—even if they chose to cross them anyway.
I wrote in my notebook that night:
"Power compels obedience.""Memory compels caution."
The Commission had memory.
That would be enough—for now.
As the First Plan moved forward, pressure mounted for more.
More speed.More ambition.More certainty.
The Commission would not provide it.
And that refusal would force the next argument—the one that would define India's economic soul.