Planning (Part – II)

The Second Five Year Plan revolved around the idea of developing the public sector and rapid industrialisation. The plan was allocated nearly 50 billion rupees in various fields to achieve targets. The scale of production and the production method was given a push for good. New technology and efficient investments were made to make sure that India's annual national income grew to 4.5%.

India began bringing in hydroelectric power projects and steel plants with help from the USSR, UK and West Germany to scale up production within India. Even more railway lines were added in the Northeast of India. In addition, research and Atomic centers were opened up, and scholarship programs were funded to find human resources to take the Nuclear power field in India.

Power, irrigation, social services, communication, transport, and miscellaneous expenses, were the fields that saw cash inflow coming their way for expansion and growth purposes.

Though the planned economic development in India began in 1951 (1 April, 1951) with the inception of First Five Year Plan, theoretical efforts had begun much earlier, even prior to the independence. Setting up of National Planning Committee by Indian National Congress in 1938, The Bombay Plan and Gandhian Plan in 1944, People's Plan in 1945 (by post war reconstruction committee of Indian Trade Union) and Sarvodaya Plan in 1950 by Jayaprakash Narayan were steps in this direction.

The first five-year plan was quite a success, according to growth analysis. When the plan was only aiming to achieve a growth of 2.1% GDP, the growth reached up to 3.6%, leading to a huge economic development that India had not seen for years.

There was an improvement not only in the primary sectors of agriculture and irrigation, but also there was price stability, lesser inflation, growth in capital income, better employment chances, and self-sufficiency. The first five year facts also looked into health, infant mortality, transport, technology, and medical science, which witnessed a change in these years.

At the end of the first plan, in 1956, India witnessed a total of 5 inaugurations of new technical institutions named the Indian Institutes of Technology. The University Grants Commission (UGC) funded these incredible academic institutions to see India and its students prosper and achieve higher education.

The first five-year plan was quite a success, according to growth analysis. When the plan was only aiming to achieve a growth of 2.1% GDP, the growth reached up to 3.6%, leading to a huge economic development that India had not seen for years.

There was an improvement not only in the primary sectors of agriculture and irrigation, but also there was price stability, lesser inflation, growth in capital income, better employment chances, and self-sufficiency. The first five year facts also looked into health, infant mortality, transport, technology, and medical science, which witnessed a change in these years.

At the end of the first plan, in 1956, India witnessed a total of 5 inaugurations of new technical institutions named the Indian Institutes of Technology. The University Grants Commission (UGC) funded these incredible academic institutions to see India and its students prosper and achieve higher education.

In the preface of the Fourth Five Year Plan, it was said that a sense of involvement, of participation by the people as whole, is vital for the success of any plan of rapid economic growth and this can only be evoked by securing social justice, by reducing disparities of income and wealth, and by redressing regional balances.

The Fourth Plan thus provides a necessary corrective to the earlier trend which helped particularly the stronger sections in agriculture as well as in industry to enable them rapidly to enlarge and diversify the production base. Hence, statement 2 is also correct.

Statement 3 is incorrect, as the financial sector was not included as an integral part of the Fifth Five Year Plan.