Manipur under the Five Year Plans: Objectives, Targets, Performance and Achievements

Like every state, Manipur planned its development through successive State Plans that ran alongside the national Five Year Plans. Because Manipur started from a low base — remote location, little industry, poor connectivity and limited own-revenue — the broad objectives of its plans stayed remarkably consistent across the decades:

• Raise agricultural output and rural incomes, chiefly by improving irrigation, seeds and support to paddy and horticulture.
• Build basic infrastructure — roads, bridges, power and water supply — to connect the valley and the hills and to link the state with the rest of India.
• Promote handloom, handicrafts and small industry to create employment.
• Expand education, health and social services and reduce regional imbalance between valley and hill areas.
• Reduce poverty and unemployment and improve the overall standard of living.

Targets in each plan were framed around these objectives — for example, a targeted increase in foodgrain (rice) production, additional area brought under irrigation, more kilometres of road, more villages electrified, and more schools and health centres. Precise plan-wise target figures vary from plan to plan and from one official document to another, so they should be treated as illustrative rather than memorised as fixed numbers.

Performance and achievements. Over the plan decades Manipur recorded real, visible progress: a substantial expansion of the road network and improved connectivity; wider rural electrification; growth in irrigated area and foodgrain production; a large increase in school and health-care coverage and in literacy; and continued support to the handloom and handicraft sector that sustained thousands of weavers. The services sector grew to become the largest part of the economy. …