The debate around growth has been an important feature of economic planning in India since Independence. This book deals with the wide range of issues related to the country's growth and development between 1951 and 2011, covering the 11 Five Year Plans formulated and implemented during this period, as well as in the decade after that. The author traces the changing nature of planning over time-from rigid state control on economic activities, to reliance on market-based planning in the time of economic reforms. He has dealt with the transition from growth measures in the 1970s, to the use of a mix of growth and redistribution in the 1980s, and the economic reforms and liberalization measures from 1991 onwards, and the inclusive growth we have seen in the twenty-first century. The central theme of the book is to analyse the role that planning played in maximizing the rate of economic growth and in improving the living standards of the people. Considering India's rapidly changing socio-economic environment, many of the issues around growth and development are contentious. The author discusses them here with academic rigour and an insider's insight, thus enabling a fair assessment.

In its history since Independence, India has seen widely different economic experiments: from Jawharlal Nehru's pragmatism to the rigid state socialism of Indira Gandhi to the brisk liberalization of the 1990s. So which strategy best addresses India's, and by extension the world's, greatest moral challenge: lifting a great number of extremely poor people out of poverty? Bhagwati and Panagariya argue forcefully that only one strategy will help the poor to any significant effect: economic growth, led by markets overseen and encouraged by liberal state policies. Their radical message has huge consequences for economists, development NGOs and anti-poverty campaigners worldwide. There are vital lessons here not only for Southeast Asia, but for Africa, Eastern Europe, and anyone who cares that the effort to eradicate poverty is more than just good intentions. If you want it to work, you need growth. With all that implies.

The Planning Commission played a crucial role in the type of development that India followed after independence. However, even though most economic analyses of India mention the five-year plans, the Planning Commission as an institution remains little studied. This is why this book proposes to look backward, examining the history of the idea of planning and the history and experience of planning in India. It also looks forward, trying to evaluate, beyond ideologies, which role the practice of planning has and should have in contemporary India. It then proposes that the NITI Aayog, the think tank founded on 1st January 2015 after the demise of the Planning Commission, could learn from this experience. This book addresses three leading questions: why plan economic development? How to plan? And what exactly can/should be planned? These questions are interrelated and the contributors of this volume, each with their own focus, propose elements of replies.

Growth Pole Strategy and Regional Development Policy: Asian Experience and Alternative Approaches focuses on theoretical and practical issues in regional policy, including analytical and strategic approaches to regional development and underdevelopment problems. The selection first offers information on Asian case studies in decentralization policy and the growth pole approach, including trends in development planning in Japan and the case study of the Mizushima industrial complex. Topics include the period of post-war reconstruction; plan formulation and implementation of Mizushima industrial complex development; and interregional dispersion of development of national economy. The text also examines the case study of the Ulsan industrial complex in Korea. The book looks at decentralization policy, growth pole approach, and resource frontier development, as well as regional structure and uneven economic development in Southeast Asia; policy responses toward regional development in Southeast Asia; and growth pole approach in Southeast Asia. The text also focuses on growth strategies and human settlement in developing countries and growth poles and regional policy in open dualistic economies. The selection is a vital reference for readers interested in the theoretical and practical approaches in regional development policy.

Reforms and Economic Transformation in India is the second volume in the series Studies in Indian Economic Policies. The first volume, India's Reforms: How They Produced Inclusive Growth (OUP, 2012), systematically demonstrated that reforms-led growth in India led to reduced poverty among all social groups. They also led to shifts in attitudes whereby citizens overwhelmingly acknowledge the benefits that accelerated growth has brought them and as voters, they now reward the governments that deliver superior economic outcomes and punish those that fail to do so. This latest volume takes as its starting point the fact that while reforms have undoubtedly delivered in terms of poverty reduction and associated social objectives, the impact has not been as substantial as seen in other reform-oriented economies such as South Korea and Taiwan in the 1960s and 1970s, and more recently, in China. The overarching hypothesis of the volume is that the smaller reduction in poverty has been the result of slower transformation of the economy from a primarily agrarian to a modern, industrial one. Even as the GDP share of agriculture has seen rapid decline, its employment share has declined very gradually. More than half of the workforce in India still remains in agriculture. In addition, non-farm workers are overwhelmingly in the informal sector. Against this background, the nine original essays by eminent economists pursue three broad themes using firm level data in both industry and services. The papers in part I ask why the transformation in India has been slow in terms of the movement of workers out of agriculture, into industry and services, and from informal to formal employment. They address what India needs to do to speed up this transformation. They specifically show that severe labor-market distortions and policy bias against large firms has been a key factor behind the slow transformation. The papers in part II analyze the transformation that reforms have brought about within and across enterprises. For example, they investigate the impact of privatization on enterprise profitability. Part III addresses the manner in which the reforms have helped promote social transformation. Here the papers analyze the impact the reforms have had on the fortunes of the socially disadvantaged groups in terms of wage and education outcomes and as entrepreneurs.

The result of two years work by 19 experienced policymakers and two Nobel prize-winning economists, 'The Growth Report' is the most complete analysis to date of the ingredients which, if used in the right country-specific recipe, can deliver growth and help lift populations out of poverty.

Tracing the spectacular trajectory of Ahluwalia's life from its humble beginnings in Secunderabad to the corridors of power in New Delhi, this book is a classic insider's account of how the India story was shaped and script Ahluwalia played a key role in the transformation of India from a state-run to a market-based economy, and remained a constant fixture at the top of India's economic policy establishment for an unprecedented period of three decades.