Supplanting Peasant Agriculture with Plantation Economy B V Krishna Murti But a bold peasantry, their country's pride, when once destroyed, can never be supplied. Oliver Goldsmith GVK RAO was formerly a member of the Union Planning Commission and is currently the vice-chairman of the Karnataka Economic and Planning Council. He is a wise man in high position influencing (together with a few other wise men like him) development policies of the Union and state governments. And now he has made some major pronouncements that would have a significant impact on the lives of hundreds of millions of people in the country and their life-supporting ecological endowment in the immediate and, subsequently, on the vitality of the nation itself.