India on the Move Volume-3 Government of India Planning Commission

Abstract

Even though planning has been a central tenet of our approach to economic development since Independence, it has neither become ideologically rigid nor methodologically stultified. Each of our Plans has reflected the changing imperatives of the times and the theoretical and experiential developments from around the world. Some of the changes have been strikingly bold, while others somewhat modest. But change there has been. Never before has this inherent dynamism of the Indian planning process been more in evidence than in the past decade. The economic reforms that came in the wake of the crisis of 1991, and which have progressed steadily ever since, jettisoned some of the basic premises of our development paradigm and practically all of the instruments traditionally used for implementing our Plans. Nevertheless, the need for planning as a unifying strategic approach continued to be felt.