ABSTRACT
No other under-developed, vast and populous country, with the exception of Communist China, is struggling for development in so determined a fashion as India, The problems being overcome are multitudinous and massive. Both India and China are launched on a series of Five Year Plans, but of very different character. India’s aim is to raise standards generally and increase consumption by an all-round economic development and not to create a monolithic industrial state. Whereas in India’s first plan agriculture and irrigation were earmarked 31 per cent of funds and industry and power 19 per cent, in China no less than 58 per cent was allotted to heavy industry, only 7.6 per cent to irrigation and nothing at all to agriculture. India plans a welfare state by humane methods, based upon the co-operation of a free people, but China alms at rapidly becoming a world power by forced labour and compulsory savings, India’s efforts and progress are watched sympathetically by the Western world: in some senses ideologies are on trial. Economists are particularly eager to watch the first application on a massive scale in a non-Communist country of the relatively new theory of economic growth.
