Q.Explain at least three failures of Plans.

Despite their achievements, India's Five Year Plans failed to remove poverty and unemployment, failed to reduce (and even widened) income inequality and regional imbalance, and failed to control rising prices — three major shortcomings of planning.

This 5-mark planning question in the AP Intermediate 2nd-year Economics course asks for at least three failures of the Plans.

Failures of the Plans

1. Persistence of poverty and unemployment. A central aim of planning was to remove poverty and provide full employment, but a large section of the population remained poor and both open and disguised unemployment continued throughout the plan period.

2. Increase in inequalities and regional imbalance. Instead of reducing the gap between rich and poor and between advanced and backward regions, planning often widened these inequalities, as the benefits of growth concentrated in certain classes and regions.

3. Rising prices (inflation). Planning failed to keep prices stable; the continuous rise in the prices of essential goods hurt the common people, especially the poor and fixed-income groups.

4. Slow growth in several plans and shortfalls in agricultural and industrial targets.

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