ABSTRACT
This chapter maps and discusses national policy discourse and institutional developments, focusing on the national government’s Five-Year Plans, as formulated by the Planning Commission. A brief account of the historical context of gender and development planning in India will highlight the constitutive role of contexts, which provide the conditions of possibility for gendered development discourse in the 1990s onwards. The change in policy direction was immediately discernible in Plan discourse. Planning was to become largely ‘indicative’ rather than directive, now advising on the ‘optimal utilisation’ of limited resources. The rationale for investing in human development became more aligned with growth objectives in the Tenth Plan, and human development discourse became more visible in plan discourse thereafter. Notwithstanding some variability across Plans, the subject of women’s welfare, development, or empowerment has been consistently located in the social sector. Mainstreaming gender was interpreted as mainstreaming women’s perspectives and not necessarily gender.
