India’s Five Year Plans
Planning is a sine qua non for any programme of economic prosperity. Our needs are many and we have but limited resources. In order that these limited resources are put to the best possible use, it is necessary to fix an order of priorities or programme of development. Planning of some sort or the other is a necessity, particularly in a underdeveloped country like India, struggling to find themselves after centuries of subjugation, colonial exploitation and misrule and damage done by two world wars.
The need of planning was realized by India long before freedom came. As early as in mid thirties a National Planning Committee was set up under the chairmanship of the late Sri Jawaharlal Nehru. The blueprint of national reconstruction, drawn up by committee could not, however, be put in top practice because with the outbreak of war the Congress, which has assumed power in states under the scheme of provincial autonomy, went into wilderness.
With the installation of popular Governments at the Centre and in the States following transfer of power in 1947, leaders of Government, particularly Prime Minister, Sri Jawaharlal Nehru, who had headed the National Planning Committee, took active interest in the preparation of a Five-Year Plan for the country’s development. A full-fledged Planning Commission was appointed and India’s First Five Year Plan was launched in 1951.
Since then India has had eight five-year plans. As a result of the success achieved under the plans so far, progress has been achieved in almost every sphere of national activity. Agricultural production, despite recurrent natural calamities like the flood and the drought has maintained an upward trend. Industrial production has registered marked increase and there has been considerable increase in the employment potential and expansion in educational, medical and social security facilities. National income has also registered sizable increase.
The ninth plan is on the anvil. The estimated proposed outlay on it envisages a progressive increase in the national income and all round development in all the spheres of our life.
Already the critics have termed the eighth plan as ambitious. But then the earlier plan itself was also termed as ambitious. If the nation has to attain the take off stage of economic development and a self-generating economy, unnecessary controversy about the size of the plan would not do. We will have to muster and mobilize all our resources to usher in a prosperous and happy tomorrow even if it might cause certain difficulties and sacrifices today. We must not hesitate in making sacrifices today so that posterity may live in plenty. But it is also a fact that the plans are for the people and not the people for the plans. Their immediate needs have to be satisfied, for only a well-contented people can success-fully implement the plans for our future prosperity. Today there is rise in price of almost every commodity. The need is to curb the price rise and hold the price. If it goes unarrested, it might not only cause greater hardship to the people but also make plan implementation difficult.
In the various five-year plans, the face of India has undergone a great change. Great projects have come up all over India. The three steel plants have laid a sound industrial base for the country. Various multipurpose projects augur well for our agricultural and industrial development. These projects had been aptly described as the new temples of India by the late Prime Minister Sri Nehru.
But it cannot be denied that big projects take consider-able time to materialize. People’s need cannot wait for long to be satisfied. There is therefore some scope for taking up small, short-term projects of development which would field quicker results so that people’s immediate needs are satisfied. It is indeed heartening that after the fourth plan pro-vision has been made for meeting people’s immediate needs.
India is passing through a silent revolution. We will have to pay the price of our future prosperity. This generation, as the late Prime Minister said, is condemned to hard labour. There is no respite for it. We must labour and make sacrifices today so that India may be happy tomorrow, so’ that our children may live in plenty and prosperity.
