Question

Essay on Is India ready for social change

Answer 1

Explanation:

In India, economic planning was advocated by M. Visveswaraya in the 1940s. The Indian National Congress appointed a National Planning Committee on the eve of the Second World War (1938-39) to frame an all- India plan. But it was the Bombay Plan (known as Tata Birla Plan) which made people planning-conscious in India.

The Government of India set up in 1943 a committee of the Viceroy’s Council, known as Reconstruc­tion Committee of Council (RCC), which was assisted by Provincial Policy Committees to chalk out plans for reconstruction. In 1944, the De­partment of Planning and Development was also created. However, at this stage, government plans were not concerned with definite economic targets.

They were mainly concerned with issues like raising standard of living, increasing purchasing power of people, stabilising agricultural prices, developing industries, removing wealth disparities, and raising the level of backward classes. Different provinces were asked to prepare their own plans. There was no resource budget and no priorities.

Answer 2

Answer:

The study of social change in modern India is a vast enterprise, which requires that the same problem areas are explored not only from multi-disciplinary but also from multi-ideological perspectives. This entails fruitful communication and exchange between scholars following not only different disciplines but different, and sometimes conflicting, ideological approaches.

It must be explicitly recognised that no single approach has answers to all the important questions nor has it the monopoly of all the useful insights. There is no master-key to all the secrets of the social reality and the belief that there exists such a master-key is the product of ignorance, intellectual inertia, or vested interests.

One should also make allowance for diversity of perspectives even within one or the other seemingly homogeneous intellectual approach. For instance, there should be scope for diversity of interpretations of social reality even within the framework of the common approach, which is labelled Marxist.