In his first Independence Day speech in 2014, Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced his intention to dissolve the Planning Commission.

Rudimentary economic planning, deriving from the sovereign authority of the state, was first initiated in India in 1938 by Congress President Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose, Atul Tiwari, Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru who had been persuaded by Meghnad Saha to set up a National Planning Committee.

Meghnad Saha approached him and requested him to step down, putting forward the argument that planning needed a reciprocity between science and politics.

M. Visvesvaraya generously agreed and Jawaharlal Nehru was made head of the National Planning Committee.

The so-called "British Raj" also formally established the Advisory Planning Board under K. C. Neogy that functioned from 1944 to 1946.

Some scholars have argued that the introduction of planning as an instrument was intended to transcend the ideological divisions between Mahatma Gandhi and Nehru.