ABSTRACT
Historical antecedents to the national development planning that spread around the globe following World War II are few in number. The advent and spread of planning in the third world paralleled that of development theory; in the beginning there were high hopes and ambitious expectations. The core of the problem is that the management of planning never received the attention that the economics of planning attracted. Reflecting Western economic models, planners treated institutions as if they comprised a mystical “black box” and ignored any attention to institutional change. In federal systems, one of the more difficult issues is negotiating the subnational and national planning agreements; experimentation and constant revisions are endemic. Much of the impetus for planning has traditionally come from economic models; they tend to vary according to how much they allocate to various sectors of the economy. The Indian Planning Commission operates in parallel with other ministries and is more comparable to a separate ministry.
