State and development planning in India / edited by Terence J. Byres

This volume includes essays by some of India's outstanding economists and political economists, all of focus on the history and current status of development planning in India. Fourteen papers are presented here.

The aim of this book is to provide a comprehensive treatment of the nature, achievement, and limitations of Indian development planning between 1950 and the late 1980s. The issues addressed are of central relevance: with India firmly in an era of economic liberalization, and with planning in disrepute in India and elsewhere, it is necessary to take stock. If, in the 1990s, the Indian state is 'withdrawing' and planning has become a perfunctory exercise (hypothetically devoid of the potential to transform), we need to examine carefully India's remarkable experiment in development planning in the past. To understand the logic, limitations and legacy of this experiment enables an assessment of it. The present volume contributes significantly to such an understanding. With the two great sectors of agriculture and industry in central focus, this book ranges from a treatment of plan formulation and plan implementation; through to the role and significance of the public sector; to domestic resource mobilization; technology and technical change; to the regional dimension and the dynamics of class formation; and thence to trade, aid and private foreign investment.