A4
Hard-cover
•
2003
Pages: 738
ISBN: 8171882900
INR 1995
There has been a tendency in recent years to treat the development strategy followed by India for the first forty odd years after independence as an undifferentiated continuum. Nothing could be farther from the truth, points out K.C. Pant. He emphasises that India’s development strategies have evolved from Plan to Plan in response to the objective conditions of the economy and some of these changes have been strikingly bold and original, others more modest; but change there has been.
Right since independence, we have equated development with industrialisation. The role of the agricultural sector in generating demand for industrial goods, through a wide dispersal of purchasing power, has been seriously under-estimated in the past. It is now clear that unless the incomes of the majority of our people who are engaged in agriculture grow rapidly, acceleration in the growth of industry and most services will simply not be possible. Therefore, unless our agricultural sector grows sufficiently fast, we face the spectre of growing unemployment and of even greater underemployment of our work force. This would place an intolerable burden on the fabric of our society and may eventually thwart all our development efforts.
The Tenth Five Year Plan, therefore, reflects a subtle shift in our development perspective. The agricultural sector can no longer be treated as being a residual or peripheral component of our growth path, but must take centre-stage of all our development efforts. Our experience since the mid-1980s, and more particularly since the initiation of economic reforms in the early 1990s, strongly indicates that the Indian industrial sector has reached a stage of maturity whereby it no longer requires focussed attention of the Government, whether for promotion or protection. But the quality of governance has deteriorated so much that the Planning Commission now considers governance as one of the most important constraint to growth, and a separate chapter is being devoted to this issue in the Tenth Plan.
This publication – a set of two volumes authored by none other than K.C. Pant (Deputy Chairman Planning Commission, Government of India) – provides an all comprehensive picture of India’s development experience during the last 50 years of planning and a vision for the future. Ninety-six chapters, in eleven sections, covering both the ‘macro aspects’ and ‘sectoral aspects’ of development, provide the reader insights into the development experience of the Indian Economy, particularly since the period of economic reforms, and also a vision for the next decade and beyond.
K.C. Pant is presently Deputy Chairman, Planning Com-mission, Government of India.
Born at Bhowali, Nainital District, Uttar Pradesh, K.C. Pant studied at St. Joseph’s College, Nainital (Uttaranchal), and is a Gold Medalist from Lucknow University (M.Sc).
He was Member of Parliament from 1962 onwards for twenty six years (both Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha) and has held several portfolios in the Union Council of Ministers, from time to time, including Finance, Home, Defence, Irrigation and Power, Energy, Steel & Mines, Heavy Engineering, Education, Science and Technology, Atomic Energy, Electronics and Space.
He was Chairman of the 10th Finance Commission. Presently, he is Chairman, Centre for Research and Information Systems for the Non-Aligned and Other Developing Countries (RIS), New Delhi; Chairman, G.B. Pant Social Science Institute, Allahabad; and, Co-Chairman, Indo-UK Round Table.
K.C. Pant has represented India in several International Forums from 1965 onwards. He has widely travelled in India and abroad.