Planning for economic growth of third world countries/ edited by Devendra Thakur

Planning Perspectives of the Central Zone is the third in the series on Zonal Planning brought out by the Economic Affairs Group of the India Interna tional Centre after surveying the scene in the Western and Southern Zones. The Central Zone dealt with in the monograph is the area covered by the states of U.P., Bihar, Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh, which are divided by the Central Government between the Northern Zone and the Western Zone. The four states which have been ter med as the Central Zone in this study are endowed with rich and relatively abundant material and physical re sources, but they are also the area where the poorest people of the country live and who are also on the increase.

The book examines these two con trasting features of the zone and sug gests both directly and indirectly the means of meeting and alleviating the problems and overcoming them in the long run. The one limitation faced by planning for this zone is that the machinery to implement the agreed recommendations of the study does not exist and will have to be subserved within the two Zonal Councils of which our states form a part. Even so, the outline of suggestions and recommendations provides a much needed missing element in Indian Development Planning-planning at the level of homogenous regions below the national and above the individual state level.