ABSTRACT
At the time of its independence from British rule in 1947, India was an industrially backward country. The national leadership of independent India was acutely conscious of the need to overcome this industrial backwardness in as short a period of time as possible, in order to make India an economically and politically strong nation. The strategy of planned development initiated in the postindependence period – especially the launch of the Second Five-Year Plan in 1956 – was aimed at speeding up the process of industrialization in India.
