Harsh Shrivastava, a policy and communications expert, is a consultant to the Planning Commission of India. He is currently working on the 12th Plan, an initiative aimed to improve the Commission’s current five-year planning process. Previously Shrivastava was a Director of CII, working on national policy and he was predominately responsible for CII's Agribusiness. Harsh was also the deputy speechwriter to Prime Minister Vajpayee, a corporate executive with Reliance Capital, a journalist with Business World and he co-wrote The Business of Social Responsibility, India's first book on corporate social responsibility. He has a PGDM from IIM-A.

The speaker describes the stages in formulating the 12th FYP of India by the Planning Commission, the epic decision making authority in policy issues whose foot prints of ideas lay over all the ministries. He highlights the gigantic exercise in exacting meticulous coordination, and in involving stakeholders across different sectors and experts from various disciplines of study. In this, the speaker provides insights into the internal working mechanism of Planning Commission. He discusses the time line of events that follows in drafting the 12^th FYP starting from how the work is allocated across different members; collecting key inputs from various stake holders, and experts in their respective fields ranging from economists to NGOs to small business operators; reaching to the state governments; identification and prioritizing the major issues facing the nation; allocating the resources and capital spending; and governance issues among others.