Question

How has India progressed under the various Five Year Plans?​

Answer 1

The Planning Commission set up in 1950 has been formulating Five Year Plans for India’s development taking an overall view of the needs and resources of the country. The First Plan was launched in April 1951 and the Third Plan ended in March 1966. After this, there were three one year plans from April, 1966 to March 1969.

The Fourth Plan started in April 1969 and the Eighth Plan started in April 1992. The First Five Year Plan (1951-56) was designed to rectify the im­balances created by the Second World War and the partition of the country in 1947 and the maladies persisting in the economy as a legacy of the British rule. Though the plan aimed at achieving an all-round bal­anced development, it accorded top priority to agriculture and irrigation investing 4 4.6 per cent of the total plan budget on this sector.

This was to reduce the country’s dependence on agricultural imports and save for­eign exchange. The industrial sector was not assigned much importance in this plan and less than 5 per cent of the plan outlay was spent on in­dustries. However, the plan did give some importance to the development of power, rural development (community projects) and de­velopment of social welfare programmes. Of the total budget of the plan (Rs. 2,378 crore), only two-thirds (65.6%) was actually spent at the end of the plan, the country’s national income increased by 18 per cent and per capita income by 11 per cent.

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