ABSTRACT
Planned development of the kind that India has been pursuing since independence is now under severe attack. The attack centres not so much on the objectives as on the way planning has worked and on the role that the State has sought to play in the process. There has never been much disagreement on the necessity for sustained rapid expansion and diversification of economic activity or about the State’s responsibility to ensure that everyone has access to means of satisfying basic minimum needs. Planning is criticised for not accomplishing these aims in the last four decades; for consistently failing to fulfill its targets; and for not checking the deterioration of the fiscal position and the balance of payments position during the 1980s.
