Skip to main content Accessibility help

We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.

Close cookie message
×
Hostname: page-component-7479d7b7d-767nl Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-07-13T22:05:24.067Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

1 - Planning for a 21st Century India

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 April 2020

By
Sylvie Guichard  and
Santosh Mehrotra
Edited by
Santosh Mehrotra  and
Sylvie Guichard
Santosh Mehrotra
Affiliation:
Jawaharlal Nehru University
Sylvie Guichard
Affiliation:
Université de Genève
Get access

Summary

In his Independence Day speech on 15 August 2014, Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced the demise of the Planning Commission (PC). A reader unfamiliar with Indian politics could be surprised to learn that the PC still existed rather than that it would be terminated.

Researchers often assume that institutions never die; they find a new mission. This was true for a long time about the PC. Founded in 1950 inspired by the socialist leaning views of Jawaharlal Nehru, the successive governments in the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s continued working with it. In 1991, when the liberalization of the Indian economy began, the PC was not dissolved. In its own words, it ‘respond[ed] and adjust[ed] to the changes quickly and creatively’ (PC 1992: 1). Some analysts considered that the commission then moved from directive planning to prescriptive planning. However, criticism was growing. The commission was said, among other things, to be inefficient, to be a vestige of the Soviet style planning, and to propose always another version of the same plan.

The PC represents an interesting case of an institution that has survived radical changes (the liberalization of the economy) and whose end came suddenly, signalled in a few sentences. Shiv Visvanathan remarked in The Hindu on 26 August 2014 that

Mr. Modi dismissed and dispensed with the institution without a footnote of thanks. There was a sadness to his rank indifference. But politics cannot dismiss history. Planning was once a great idea, a wonderful fable of the dreams, even the arrogance of knowledge. It was a great experiment which became erratic, but its history, its genius, its innovations need to be told and told fully.

The PC occupies indeed an important place in the history of India and Indian development. Scholars agree that it played a crucial role in the type of development that India followed after independence. However, even if most economic analyses of India mention the five-year plans (FYPs), the PC as an institution remains little studied.

This is why this book proposes to look backwards, examining the history of the idea of planning and the history and experiences of planning in India. It also looks forward, trying to evaluate, beyond ideologies, what role the practice of planning has and should have in contemporary India.

Type
Chapter
Information
Planning in the 20th Century and Beyond
India's Planning Commission and the NITI Aayog
 , pp. 1 - 20
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2020

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Ahluwalia, Isher J. 1997. ‘The Contribution of Planning to Indian Industrialization.’ In The State, Development Planning and Liberalization in India, ed. Byres, Terence J., 254–297. Delhi: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Bardhan, Pranab K. 2001. ‘The Nature of Institutional Impediments to Economic Development.’ In A New Institutional Approach to Economic Development, ed. Kahkonen, S. and Olson, Mancur, 245–268. New Delhi: Vistaar Publications.Google Scholar
Bhagwati, Jagdish and Chakravarty, Sukhamoy. 1969. ‘Contributions to Indian Economic Analysis: A Survey.’ American Economic Review 59 (4, part 2, supplement): 1–73.Google Scholar
Byrd, William A. 1990. ‘Planning in India: Lessons from Four Decades of Development Experience.’ Journal of Comparative Economics 14 (4): 713–735.Google Scholar
Chatterjee, Partha. 1998. ‘Development Planning and the Indian State.’ In State and Politics in India, ed. Chatterjee, Partha, 271–297. New Delhi: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Chibber, Vivek. 2006. Locked in Place: State-Building and Industrialization in India. Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 1st ed. 2003.Google Scholar
De La Torre, Joseba and García-Zúniga, Mario. 2014. ‘Was It a Spanish Miracle? Development Plans and Regional Industrialization’. In Industrial Policy in Europe after 1945: Wealth, Power and Economic Development in the Cold War, ed. Grabas, Christian and Nützenadel, Alexander, 162–183. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.Google Scholar
DeLong, B. 1997. ‘The Corporation as a Command Economy.’ Available at http://delong.typepad.com/sdj/2013/05/brad-delong-1997-the-corporation-as-a-commandeconomy.html (accessed on 8 October 2019).Google Scholar
Denton, Geoffrey, Forsyth, Murray, and MacLennan, Malcolm. [1968] 2018. Economic Planning and Policies in Britain, France and Germany. Abington: Routledge.Google Scholar
Drèze, Jean and Sen, Amartya. 2013. An Uncertain Glory: India and Its Contradictions. London: Allen Lane.Google Scholar
Escobar, Arturo. 2007. ‘Planning.’ In The Development Dictionary: A Guide to Knowledge as Power, ed. Sachs, Wolfgang, 132–145, London and New York: Zed Books, 12th ed.Google Scholar
Evan, Peter. 1995. Embedded Autonomy. Princeton: Princeton University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Frankel, Francine. 1978. India's Political Economy, 1947–1977: The Gradual Revolution. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Galbraith, John Kenneth. 1967. The New Industrial State. London: H. Hamilton.Google Scholar
Grabas, Chrisitan and Nützenadel, Alexander. 2014. Industrial Policy in Europe after 1945: Wealth, Power and Economic Development in the Cold War. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hackett, John. 2011. ‘Economic Planning.’ Encyclopaedia Britannica. Available at https://www.britannica.com/topic/economic-planning (accessed on 11 April 2018).Google Scholar
Hall, Peter. 1986. Governing the Economy: The Politics of State Intervention in Britain and France. Cambridge: Polity Press.Google Scholar
Kafouros, Wassily. 2009. ‘Economic Plannig: Time to Reconsider?’ Panoeconomicus 56 (4): 527–534.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Loriaux, Michael. 2003. ‘France: A New “Capitalism of Voice”?’ In States in the Global Economy. Bringing Domestic Institutions Back In, ed. Weiss, Linda, 101–120. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mehrotra, Santosh. 2016. Realising the Demographic Dividend: Policies to Achieve Inclusive Growth in India. New Delhi: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Mehrotra, Santosh and Delamonica, Enrique. 2007. Eliminating Human Poverty: Macro- Economic and Social Policies for Equitable Growth. London: Zed Books.Google Scholar
Mehtrotra, Santosh and Parida, Jajati K.. 2019. ‘India's Employment Crisis: Rising Education Levels and Falling Non-agricultural Job Growth.’ CSE Working Paper 2019-04. Available at https://cse.azimpremjiuniversity.edu.in/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/Mehrotra_Parida_India_Employment_Crisis.pdf (accessed on 21 November 2019).Google Scholar
Mehrotra, Santosh and Jolly, R. (eds). 1997. Development with a Human Face: Experiences in Social Achievement and Economic Growth. Oxford: Clarendon Press.Google Scholar
Mehrotra, Sanotsh, Parida, Jajati, Sinha, Sharmistha, and Gandhi, Ankita. 2014. ‘Explaining employment Trends in the Indian Economy: 1993–94 to 2011–12.’ Economic and Political Weekly 49 (32): 49–57.Google Scholar
Middendorf, Stefanie, Schulz, Ulrike, and Unger, Corinna R. (eds). 2014. Institutional History Rediscovered: Observing Organizations' Behavior in Times of Change. Special issue of Comparativ. Zeitschrift für Globalgeschichte und vergleichende Gesellschaftforschung (1) 24.Google Scholar
National Institution for Transforming India (NITI). 2018. Strategy for New India @75. New Delhi: Government of India.Google Scholar
O'Hara, Glen. 2007. From Dreams to Disillusionment: Economic and Social Planning in 1960s Britain. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Olson, Mancur. 1965. The Logic of Collective Action: Public Action and the Theory of Groups. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Paranjape, H. K. 1990. ‘Planning Commission as a Constitutional Body.’ Economic and Political Weekly 25 (45): 2479–2481.Google Scholar
Planning Commission (PC). 1952. The First Five Year Plan. New Delhi: Government of India.Google Scholar
Planning Commission (PC). 1992. Eighth Five Year Plan, Vol. 1. Delhi: Government of India.Google Scholar
Planning Commission (PC). 2007. The Eleventh Five Year Plan, 2007–2012. New Delhi: Oxford University Press for the Government of India.Google Scholar
Radhakrishna, R. and Panda, Manoj. 2006. Macroeconomics of Poverty Reduction: India Case Study. Indira Gandhi Institute of Development Research. Available at www. igidr.ac.in/pdf/publication/PP-057.pdf (accessed on 26 October 2017).Google Scholar
Rajora, No date. ‘Economic Planning in India, Institute of Lifelong Learning.’ University of Delhi. Available at http://vle.du.ac.in/mod/book/print.php?id=12068&chapterid=24275 (accessed on 11 April 2018).Google Scholar
Roy, R. 2019. ‘Strategy? What Strategy?’ Blog, National Institute of Public Finance and Policy, 4 April.Google Scholar
Rudra, Ashok. 1985. ‘Planning in India: An Evaluation in Terms of Its Models.’ Economic and Political Weekly 20 (17): 758–764.Google Scholar
Vibert, Frank. 2007. The Rise of the Unelected: Democracy and the New Separation of Powers. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Visvanathan, Shiv. 2014. ‘An Ode to the Planning Commission.’ The Hindu, 26 August.Google Scholar
Williamson, J. 1990. ‘What Washington Means by Policy Reform?’ In Latin American Adjustment: How Much Has Happened? ed. Williamson, J.. Washington DC: Institute of International Economics.Google Scholar
Zhi, Liu. 2004. ‘Planning and Policy Coordination in China's Infrastructure Development.’ In ADB-IBIC-World Bank East Asia Pacific Infrastructure Flagship Study, 2004. Available at https://www.researchgate.net/publication/326795436_Planning_and_Policy_Coordination_in_China's_Infrastructure_Development (accessed on 8 October 2019).Google Scholar

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure coreplatform@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×