Modernization imperative and Indian planning.
- New Delhi Vikas 1972
- 246 p.
Although interdisciplinary research has received much enthusias tic endorsement, in actual practice the study of existential problems remains considerably fragmented among the social sciences, espe cially in the area of the interrelationship and interaction between the economy and the polity. This study is an attempt at under standing the political factors involved in the adoption of the eco nomic strategy associated with the Second Five Year Plan in India. However, its conception of politics goes beyond the usual one in political science of group struggle over economic benefits and pat ronage to one that takes into account political vision and grand design. This larger vision and design would seem to have been neg lected, if not denigrated, in the excessive concentration in poli tical studies of India on party factionalism, caste associations. voting behaviour and village politics. The present writer is himself not above reproach in this respect as is obvious from his earlier work. Consequently, any critical references made in the course of this study to scholars and policies are not the result of personal bias or political prejudice, but are rather dictated by the data. As will be seen from the first chapter, this study is essentially set in the mainstream of scholarship on political development. How ever, it is the intellectual puzzle that emerges in the second chapter that has forced a different perspective.
The methodology of the study is the result of deliberate choice and not of inadvertence. The study is specifically oriented to broad systemic factors at work, rather than narrowly focused, in the mode of contemporary behavioral science, on some small segment of the polity or economy. Nor does the argument rest on data developed through sample surveys or interview schedules. On the contrary, the study is based on the abundant material that is generated by the political process itself. Apart from secondary sources, the study utilizes primary sources such as parliamentary debates, public speeches, and government documents.