Planning in India

INDIA is in its tenth year of independence. The pace of change in India since 1947 has been fast; new goals have been set and new ideas and new methods have been incorporated into the governing process. British India and a half-a-thousand princely states have been consolidated. A Constitution has been adopted. Two general elections, attracting the world's largest free electorate, have been held. India's first five-year plan, begun in 1951, reached its goals, designed, among other things, to return the country at least to 1938-39 per capita income levels. The country has now entered a second five-year plan period. The agency primarily responsible for the plans, the Planning Commission, was appointed in March, 1950, to assess the available resources, formulate a plan for their utilization, determine priorities in respect to programs of development, appraise the progress achieved in each stage, and determine the nature of the machinery of implementation. The commission, in producing a draft outline of the first five-year plan, found its range of choice limited by two conditions, among others. First, the central government was committed to a sizable investment in projects sanctioned in previous years, years in which there were many plans and projects, but no single plan. These commitments were largely for agricultural and irrigation projects in the provinces. Second, the work of the commission was conditioned by the limited amount of factual-statistical information from which it had to work. The Organization of Research

Administration (probate law · Business · Political science · Agricultural Economics and Practices · Law · Public Administration · Social and Economic Development in India