Q.Explain the main objectives of economic planning in India.

Every Five Year Plan pursued a common set of objectives, even though the emphasis shifted over time. These are best remembered as growth, equity, modernisation, self-reliance and full employment.

Growth meant raising national and per capita income; equity meant reducing inequality and poverty; modernisation meant technological upgrading and structural change; self-reliance meant reduced dependence on imports and foreign aid; and full employment meant absorbing the growing labour force productively.

India's Five Year Plans, from the First Plan of 1951 onward, were built around five recurring objectives.

Growth was the foremost aim -- raising the rate of growth of national income and per capita income through higher rates of saving, investment and capital formation across agriculture, industry and infrastructure, since a rising national income was seen as the basic precondition for improving living standards.

Equity meant reducing inequalities of income and wealth and lowering the incidence of poverty, so that the fruits of growth were shared widely rather than concentrated among a few, through mechanisms such as progressive taxation, land reform and targeted anti-poverty programmes.

Modernisation referred to the adoption of new technology and changes in the structure of production and employment -- for example, a gradual shift of workers and output away from low-productivity agriculture toward industry and services, along with the mechanisation of production processes and the upgrading of skills.

Self-reliance meant reducing dependence on foreign aid, foreign capital and imports -- particularly of food grains and capital goods -- by building up India's own agricultural and industrial capacity; this became an especially urgent priority after the foreign-exchange and food crises of the mid-1960s.

Full employment meant creating enough productive job opportunities to absorb a labour force that was growing faster than the pace of industrialisation in the early plan period, so that growth translated into rising incomes for ordinary households and not merely into higher output on paper.

These five objectives were pursued together, within a mixed-economy structure in which the public and private sectors coexisted, and they remain a useful lens through which to judge how far Indian planning succeeded or fell short.

A common error is listing only 'growth and employment' and omitting equity, modernisation and self-reliance, or treating the five objectives as if they were pursued in isolation rather than simultaneously.