ABSTRACT
Macroplanning has logical priority, the actual drafting process will inevitably involve a rather complicated interplay between the macro and the micro. Nevertheless, unless the general targets are centrally indicated at an early stage, the available resources estimated and provisionally allocated, and sectoral balances at least roughed out. The status of the planning body as a staff agency, it argued, is undermined by having ministers on it; it becomes something more than advisory but less than executive, inhabiting a sort of unhappy half-world. The really daunting difficulties of planning, in a mixed economy, arise at the points where the administrator, in order to be effective, has to enlist the co-operation of private groups and individuals. The administrator all too often appears to the peasant as the emissary of an alien urban civilization, to be treated with circumspection and suspicion, even when he comes bearing gifts, and perhaps especially then.
