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Unit 11: India Independent to 1964

• The new system, which came to be known as Panchayati Raj and was implemented in Notes
various states from 1959, was to consist of a three-tier, directly elected village or gram
panchayats, and indirectly elected block-level panchayat samitis and district-level zilla
parishads.
• In 1938, under the leadership of Jawaharlal Nehru, the greatest champion of planned economic
development for India, the National Planning Committee (NPC) was set up, which through
its deliberations over the next decade, drew up a comprehensive plan of development, its
various subcommittees producing twenty-nine volumes of recommendations.
• The famous Karachi Resolution of Congress in 1931 (as amended by the AICC) envisaged
that ‘the State shall own or control key industries and services, mineral resources, railways,
waterways, shipping and other means of public transport’. Indian business leaders were
also, along with Nehru and the NPC, among the early proponents of the public sector and
partial nationalization.
• In 1947, for example, when the Economic Programme Committee appointed by the AICC
and headed by Jawaharlal Nehru not only laid down the areas, such as defence, key industries
and public utilities which were to be started under the public sector but also added that ‘in
respect of existing undertakings the process of transfer from private to public ownership should
commence after a period of five years’.
• Even after the Indian parliament in December 1954 accepted ‘the socialist pattern of society
as the objective of social and economic policy’.
• This was the perspective with which the Planning Commission (established on 15 March
1950) functioned, despite the enormous de facto power it exercised with Nehru himself as its
chairperson. The First Plan (1951-56) essentially tried to complete projects at hand and to
meet the immediate crisis situation following the end of the war.
• It is with the Second Plan (1956-61) that the celebrated Nehru—Mahalanobis (Professor P.C.
Mahalanobis played a leading role in drafting the Second Plan) strategy of development was
put into practice and it was continued in the Third Plan (1961-66).
• Another critical element of the Nehru-Mahalanobis strategy was the emphasis on growth
with equity. Hence, the issue of concentration and distribution in industry and agriculture
was given a lot of attention though perhaps not with commensurate success.
• State supervision of development along planned lines, dividing activity between the public
and the private sectors, preventing rise of concentration and monopoly, protecting small
industry, ensuring regional balance, canalizing resources according to planned priorities
and targets, etc.—all this involved the setting up of an elaborate and complicated system of
controls and industrial licensing, which was done through the Industries Development and
Regulation Act (IDRA) of 1951.
• What was particularly creditable was that India, unlike most other countries (such as China,
Japan, Korea, Taiwan, Soviet Union, Britain, etc.) achieved its land reforms and agricultural
growth in the context of civil liberties and a modern democratic structure. However, the
commendable agricultural growth achieved during this period was hot sufficient to meet the
growing demand of agricultural produce, necessitating increasing imports of foodgrains
throughout the first three Plans.

11.5 Key-Words

1. Impeachment : To make an accusation against a formal document charging a
public official with mis conduct in office.
2. Proportional Representation : An electoral system in which parties gain seats in proportion
to the number of votes cast for them.

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