Studies in Indian economic problems

We are now at the end of the fourth year of the first Five Year Plan. The present Plan period ends on the 31st March, 1956, and already the Government of India are thinking of the priorities and programmes which should be laid down for the second Five Year Plan. It would, there fore, be worthwhile to consider with what objectives in view the present Plan was launched in 1951 and to what extent these have been attained.

The central objective has been set out in the opening sentence of the Plan itself. It is "to initiate a process of development which will raise living standards and open out to the people new opportunities for a richer and more varied life." Mark the two words "initiate" and "process". The authors of the Plan have clearly recognised that, in the initial stage, only a beginning can be made. Secondly, what ever the Plan hopes to achieve during the first quinquen nium is no more ambitious than an instalment in a series of development programmes. While, therefore, the Plan ning Commission recognises the need for looking beyond the immediate possibilities and for viewing the problems in terms of continuing and overall requirements, it also under lines the wisdom of the principle that, in formulating a plan of development for a particular period, an estimate of what is feasible must carry greater weight than abstract reasoning as to a desirable rate of growth.