Planning, agriculture, industry and major economic reforms

Economic planning in India began as a way to allocate scarce resources, set national priorities and coordinate public investment after Independence. The Planning Commission was set up on 15 March 1950, and the First Five Year Plan began in 1951. The First Plan gave priority to agriculture, irrigation, food security, community development and rehabilitation because the economy was facing food shortages and Partition-related pressure. The Second Five Year Plan, associated with P.C. Mahalanobis, shifted the emphasis toward heavy industry, capital goods, steel, machine-building and public-sector investment. Later plans moved through self-sufficiency, poverty reduction, employment, liberalisation, infrastructure and inclusive growth.

The planning system helped build dams, public-sector enterprises, agricultural research capacity and social-sector programmes, but it also became linked with centralised allocation and plan-size bargaining. After the Twelfth Five Year Plan, the Planning Commission was replaced by the National Institution for Transforming India, or NITI Aayog. It was formed on 1 January 2015, is chaired by the Prime Minister and includes Chief Ministers in its Governing Council. Unlike the Planning Commission, it does not allocate plan funds to states; its role is policy advice, monitoring, cooperative federalism, competitive federalism and indicator-based review.

For CET, the key distinction is that planning did not end after 2015. India moved from fixed plan outlays toward targets, dashboards, state rankings, long-term vision documents, SDG monitoring and implementation review. Planning is now less about one central plan document and more about aligning Union ministries, states, markets and welfare programmes around measurable development outcomes.