The Indian planning project was one of the postcolonial world's most ambitious experiments. Planning Democracy explores how India fused Soviet-inspired economic management and Western-style liberal democracy at a time when they were widely considered fundamentally contradictory. After nearly two centuries of colonial rule, planning was meant to be independent India's route to prosperity. In this engaging and innovative account, Nikhil Menon traces how planning built India's knowledge infrastructure and data capacities, while also shaping the nature of its democracy. He analyses the challenges inherent in harmonizing technocratic methods with democratic mandates and shows how planning was the language through which the government's aspirations for democratic state-building were expressed. Situating India within international debates about economic policy and Cold War ideology, Menon reveals how India walked a tightrope between capitalism and communism which heightened the drama of its development on the global stage.
See Full PDF See Full PDF
Download Free PDF View PDF
Journal of Comparative Economics
Download Free PDF View PDF
Modern Asian Studies
In the middle of the twentieth century statistician P. C. Mahalanobis strove to haul India into the computer age. Convinced that these machines were integral to the future of economic planning in India, he and the Indian Statistical Institute mounted a campaign to bring India its first computers. In the years following Independence, they acquired significant influence in the Indian planning process—culminating in them effectively authoring India’s Second Five Year Plan (1956-61). The tale of the computer’s journey to India demonstrates that the decision to centrally plan independent India’s economy, and the resultant explosion of official statistics, provided the justification for the pursuit of computers. It potentially solved what was considered centralized planning’s greatest puzzle: big data. Mahalanobis persuaded the Indian government of the need to import computers for the purposes of development, and then negotiated the import of these exorbitantly expensive machines during visits to Europe, the United States, and the Soviet Union. Needless to say, the question of which country would provide India its first computers would ruffle Cold War feathers. This paper brings together and identifies a link between the research activities of the Indian Statistical Institute, its deepening association with economic planning, and the installation of India’s earliest computers.
Download Free PDF View PDF
Otto Koenigsberger (1908-1999) is best known for his pioneering work in the fields of tropical architecture and development planning, which he conducted from his base at the Architectural Association and later at the Development Planning Unit of the University College London. However, as part of an effort to revise the accepted histories of those two fields, this paper focuses on the planning projects Koenigsberger worked on during the lesser-known and formative part of his career in exile in India from 1939-1951. In addition to providing an overview of Koenigsberger’s planning work in India, from the Bhadravati and Bangalore development plans of the early 1940s to Jamshedpur (1946) and Bhubaneswar (1948) as well as Faridabad (1949) and Gandhidam (1950), this paper investigates the role of the client in the development of planning concepts and in the advancement of Koenigsberger’s career. In particular, I compare the roles played by the Government of Mysore, the influential industrial concern Tata & Sons, and the Federal Government of India. I frame this analysis with a brief introduction to and assessment of the methodological potential of network visualisation software (in this case Gephi) for research into historical networks. While examining how Koenigsberger adapted modernist planning ideas, such as the band town principle and the neighbourhood unit, to the Indian context, the paper also illustrates how his confrontations and interactions with foreign, rapidly urbanising cultures led to significant shifts in his approach to planning. These include his rejection of the static master plan and the realisation that the supposedly universally applicable Western modern planning concepts were largely obsolete in the context of the developing world, where local problems demanded locally sourced solutions. Furthermore, the paper reveals Koenigsberger’s commitment to improving the living conditions of women and children, creating heterogeneous communities, and facilitating the participation of the inhabitants in the planning process, as well as his efforts towards establishing an educational and institutional planning infrastructure, and developing a planning consciousness within the emerging independent nation.
Download Free PDF View PDF
Journal of Comparative Economics
This paper traces the evolution of planning procedures in India, from the wartime controls to the system of centralized command-type planning which was extended to the private sector through industrial licensing. It was found that although the planners and policymakers in India initially understood the need for the use of a variety of instruments and controls for indicative-type planning in a mixed economy, there has always been a mismatch between planning intentions and the use of instruments in their more appropriate form. A quantitative evaluation of planned performance over the seven Five Year Plans has also been provided.
Download Free PDF View PDF
From Decentralisation of Planning to Peoples Planning - Experiences of the Indian States of Kerala and West Bengal by Charvak, 2000: The Discussion Paper attempts a comparison of the process of decentralisation of planning in the two States that have made significant progress in this area. The study shows that social mobilisation, process of democratisation, mass conscientisation, demand from below, and collective action have been responsible for their success. It also makes a critical review of the evolution of local bodies in these States followed by an analysis of the process, and the new innovative experiments of decentralisation. A detailed account of the Kalliasseri experiment (from Resource Mapping to Peoples Plan Campaign) as well as the KSSP experiment (from Science Popularisation to Local Level Planning) is also given. The study concludes with the observation that instrumentalities such as the total literacy campaign, peoples mobilisation, popular science movements, and mass conscientisation are the necessary conditions for replicating of the Kerala and the West Bengal experience in other States. (http://www.krpcds.org/fellowsh.htm)(http://www.krpcds.org/charvak.pdf. Other related works of Charvak: Background Paper to UNDP, India, 1998, Country Strategy Paper for IDF-1998 and to the UN award winning HDR-2004 of West Bengal).
Download Free PDF View PDF
A new IMFG Forum Paper, Requiem for an Institution: The End of the Indian Planning Commission, brings together commentaries on the birth of the National Institution for Transforming India Aayog (NITI Aayog). While it is early days for this new advisory body, these preliminary commentaries offer insights into its likely direction, and raise universal questions about how to get the relationship between central, state, and local governments right.
Download Free PDF View PDF
