Planning for social and economic development : essays in honour of Prof, D.M. Nanjundappa.

India can be credited with having made an important contribution to the concept of planning by applying it to a developing country with a mixed economy. Despite the recent emphasis on the role of market forces in economic development, the need to achieve broad social objectives through planning and state intervention remains as important today as it did forty-five years ago. This is true not just at the national level but at the state and district levels where the problems of poverty, unemployment and literacy have to be tackled on a war footing. In short, the task facing a country like India is not merely one of increasing productivity and achieving economic growth but of meeting the basic needs of all - and this can be done only through planning.

This volume comprises eighteen original essays

by eminent social scientists which highlight the problems involved in planning for India's social and economic development. Taken together, the essays highlight how planning is not merely a bureaucratic process and can coexist with, and function in, an economy dominated by market forces. Further, the necessity for planning arises precisely to take care of those aspects which are often ignored by market forces and in order to make economic development humane and purposeful.

Among the issues discussed by the contributors are: education, land reforms, food and agriculture, energy, public finance, the environment and district and state level planning. The purpose of this volume is to show how planning needs to be an open process, amenable to learning both from outside and from independent expertise. The contributors also establish that planning cannot be confined merely to stepping up growth rates and investment but that it must work towards placing the human being at the centre of the development process.

This book is aimed at economists in particular and social scientists in general. It will also interest policy-makers and planners and will serve as supplementary reading for students of development economics and planning.