Q.Discuss the achievements and limitations of economic planning in India.

Planning built real, lasting foundations for the Indian economy, but it also fell well short of several of its own stated goals.

Economic planning in India shows a genuinely mixed record.

Achievements:

1. A much larger and more diversified economy, with national and per-capita income growing substantially over the plan era compared with the near-stagnant colonial economy.
2. A modern industrial base — heavy and capital-goods industries such as steel and machine tools — built up almost from scratch.
3. Major infrastructure development in irrigation, power, transport, and communication.
4. The Green Revolution, which moved India from a food-deficit, import-dependent country to broad self-sufficiency in foodgrains.
5. Expansion of education, health services, and scientific/technical manpower, including specialised institutions such as the IITs and national research laboratories.
6. A public-sector base that, in its early decades, supplied capital goods and infrastructure that helped jump-start private industrial growth as well.

Limitations:

1. Slow overall growth for long stretches of the plan era relative to the targets set.
2. Persistence of poverty and unemployment despite decades of planning explicitly aimed at reducing both.
3. Continuing, and at times widening, regional disparities between more- and less-industrialised states.
4. Growing inequality of income and wealth in several plan periods, even as aggregate output grew.
5. Inefficiency and financial losses in many public-sector undertakings.
6. Over-centralisation and bureaucratic delay (red-tapism) that slowed project implementation. …