Q.Distinguish between the Industrial Policy Resolutions of 1948 and 1956.

The 1948 Resolution laid the basic foundation of a mixed economy through four broad industry categories, while the 1956 Resolution reorganised industries into three schedules and gave the public sector a much larger, dominant role.

The Industrial Policy Resolution, 1948 was India's first post-independence statement on industry. It divided industries into four categories: exclusive Central Government monopoly (arms, atomic energy, railways); new undertakings of basic and strategic importance to be set up only by the State, while permitting existing private units to continue for a time; industries where the State reserved the right to progressively nationalise existing private units after a review, though for the time being remaining with private enterprise under regulation; and all other industries, left open to private and cooperative enterprise. This established the broad principle of a mixed economy without yet fixing a detailed, binding classification.

The Industrial Policy Resolution, 1956 went considerably further. It grouped industries into three explicit schedules: Schedule A comprised 17 industries of basic and strategic importance (defence, atomic energy, iron and steel, heavy machine-building, railways, and others) reserved exclusively for the State; Schedule B comprised 12 industries to be progressively State-owned, with private enterprise permitted to supplement State effort; and Schedule C comprised all remaining industries, left to the private sector under general State regulation. The 1956 Resolution also placed explicit emphasis on developing cottage and small-scale industries and reducing regional and income disparities, and it guided Indian industrial policy, essentially unchanged, for the next thirty-five years — far longer and with a much more binding and detailed structure than the 1948 Resolution.

Students often list only the 1956 schedules and forget to contrast them explicitly with the 1948 categories, losing marks on the comparative part of the question.