Social Policy, Planning and Social Development II: Social Planning and its Relation to Economic Planning, the Five-Year Plans from 1951 to 2017 and the Planning Commission's Replacement by NITI Aayog, Social Development with its Models and Theories, and Sustainable Development, the Sustainable Development Goals and the Human Development Index
2. The Five-Year Plans and NITI Aayog
Several factors led to planning in India: mass poverty and the colonial legacy of stagnation, the nationalist belief that the state must lead development, the example of Soviet planning, and a series of pre-independence plans: the National Planning Committee of the Indian National Congress (1938), chaired by Jawaharlal Nehru; the Bombay Plan (1944) of leading industrialists; the Gandhian Plan (1944) of S. N. Agarwal; and the People's Plan (1945) of M. N. Roy. The Planning Commission was set up by a cabinet resolution on 15 March 1950, with the Prime Minister as chairman, and the National Development Council in 1952. Twelve Five-Year Plans followed, with plan holidays and annual plans between some of them.
| Plan | Period | Emphasis, with social planning highlights |
|---|---|---|
| First | 1951–56 | Agriculture and irrigation; Community Development Programme (1952) |
| Second | 1956–61 | Heavy industry on the Mahalanobis model |
| Third | 1961–66 | Self-reliance; disrupted by wars and drought, followed by annual plans 1966–69 |
| Fourth | 1969–74 | Growth with stability and self-reliance |
| Fifth | 1974–79 (ended early in 1978) | Removal of poverty; Minimum Needs Programme |
| Sixth | 1980–85 | Poverty alleviation; employment programmes |
| Seventh | 1985–90 | Food, work and productivity; annual plans 1990–92 followed |
| Eighth | 1992–97 | Human development after liberalisation |
| Ninth | 1997–2002 | Growth with social justice and equity |
| Tenth | 2002–07 | Monitorable targets for social indicators |
| Eleventh | 2007–12 | Faster and more inclusive growth |
| Twelfth | 2012–17 | Faster, more inclusive and sustainable growth; the last Five-Year Plan |
The Planning Commission was replaced on 1 January 2015 by the National Institution for Transforming India, NITI Aayog, and no Thirteenth Plan was made. NITI Aayog is chaired by the Prime Minister, with a Vice-Chairperson, full-time and ex officio members, a Chief Executive Officer, and a Governing Council of all Chief Ministers and Lieutenant Governors of Union Territories with legislatures. Unlike the Planning Commission, it does not allocate plan funds to states. Its roles are to act as the government's policy think tank; to foster cooperative and competitive federalism through engagement with states; to develop strategic and long-term policy frameworks; to monitor and evaluate programmes, through its Development Monitoring and Evaluation Office; to track the Sustainable Development Goals, including through its SDG India Index, first published in 2018; and to drive initiatives such as the Aspirational Districts Programme (2018).
4. Sustainable development and the Sustainable Development Goals
The Brundtland Report, Our Common Future (1987), of the World Commission on Environment and Development defined sustainable development as "development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs". It is usually described as resting on three pillars, economic, social and environmental. The Rio Earth Summit (1992) adopted Agenda 21; the Millennium Development Goals (2000 to 2015) set eight goals, largely for developing countries; and the Rio+20 conference (2012) began the process that led to the Sustainable Development Goals, adopted by the UN General Assembly in September 2015 in the resolution "Transforming our world: the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development". The SDGs have 17 goals and 169 targets for 2016 to 2030, apply to all countries, and are guided by the pledge to "leave no one behind". The syllabus writes "Strategic Development Goals"; the goals are the Sustainable Development Goals.
Strategies for sustainable development include integrating environmental costs into economic decisions, renewable energy and resource efficiency, sustainable agriculture, protection of common resources and the rights of the communities that depend on them, social protection, and participatory local planning. Its critical issues are the trade-offs between growth and environmental protection, the distribution of responsibility between rich and poor countries (the principle of "common but differentiated responsibilities" from Rio), financing, the measurement of progress, and whether "sustainable development" is a genuine change of direction or a label that leaves growth-first policies intact. The salient features of social development that follow are that it is planned, integrated with economic development, inclusive and participatory, concerned with the whole population rather than only those in need, and attentive to future generations.
5. The Human Development Index and indicators for policies and programmes
The Human Development Index was introduced in the first Human Development Report of the United Nations Development Programme in 1990, conceived by Mahbub ul Haq with Amartya Sen. It measures average achievement in three dimensions: a long and healthy life, measured by life expectancy at birth; knowledge, measured by mean years of schooling for adults aged 25 and over and expected years of schooling for children of school-entering age; and a decent standard of living, measured by gross national income per capita in purchasing power parity terms (on a logarithmic scale). Each dimension is converted to an index between 0 and 1 by the formula (actual value − minimum) ÷ (maximum − minimum), using goalposts; for life expectancy the goalposts are 20 and 85 years, so a life expectancy of 72 years gives (72 − 20) ÷ (85 − 20) = 52 ÷ 65 = 0.8. Since 2010 the HDI has been the geometric mean of the three dimension indices, which means that poor performance in one dimension cannot be fully offset by high performance in another; with dimension indices of 0.9, 0.6 and 0.4, the HDI is the cube root of 0.9 × 0.6 × 0.4 = 0.216, which is 0.6, lower than the arithmetic mean of about 0.63.
Companion indices refine the HDI: the Inequality-adjusted HDI (2010) discounts it for inequality in each dimension; the Gender Development Index compares female and male HDI; the Gender Inequality Index (2010) measures reproductive health, empowerment and labour-market participation; and the Multidimensional Poverty Index (2010), developed with the Oxford Poverty and Human Development Initiative using the Alkire–Foster method, measures overlapping deprivations in health, education and living standards. Indicators for policies and programmes should be valid, reliable, specific, measurable, sensitive to change, disaggregated by sex, caste, region and disability so that exclusion is visible, and linked to goals; India tracks the SDGs through NITI Aayog's SDG India Index and a national indicator framework. For social workers, indicators are the language in which needs are argued and programmes are held to account.
| HDI dimension | Indicator | Goalposts (minimum and maximum) |
|---|---|---|
| Long and healthy life | Life expectancy at birth | 20 and 85 years |
| Knowledge | Mean years of schooling (adults 25+) and expected years of schooling | 0 to 15 and 0 to 18 years |
| Decent standard of living | GNI per capita (PPP), logarithm | $100 and $75,000 |
Key takeaways
- Social planning decides goals and means for meeting social needs; models range from rational expert planning to advocacy (Davidoff 1965), transactive (Friedmann 1973) and participatory planning; social and economic planning are interdependent, and Indian plans moved from welfare as residual to inclusive growth.
- Planning's roots: the National Planning Committee (1938), Bombay Plan (1944), Gandhian Plan (1944, S. N. Agarwal), People's Plan (1945, M. N. Roy); the Planning Commission (15 March 1950); twelve plans from 1951–56 to 2012–17 (Mahalanobis in the Second, Minimum Needs in the Fifth, inclusive growth in the Eleventh and Twelfth).
- NITI Aayog replaced the Planning Commission on 1 January 2015: chaired by the Prime Minister, with a Governing Council of Chief Ministers; a think tank for cooperative federalism, strategy, monitoring (DMEO), SDG tracking (SDG India Index, 2018) and the Aspirational Districts Programme; it does not allocate plan funds.
- Social development (Midgley 1995): planned change for the whole population with economic development; positive and negative ("distorted development") dimensions; individualist, communitarian and statist approaches; theories from Rostow's five stages (1960) and dependency to basic needs (ILO 1976), capability (Sen 1999) and rights.
- Sustainable development (Brundtland 1987); MDGs (8, 2000–15) and SDGs (17 goals, 169 targets, 2016–30; the syllabus's "Strategic Development Goals"); HDI (UNDP 1990): life expectancy, schooling and GNI per capita (PPP), geometric mean since 2010 (0.9, 0.6 and 0.4 give 0.6; life expectancy 72 gives an index of 0.8); IHDI, GDI, GII and MPI.
Practice questions (10)
Attempt each one before opening the answer. Every explanation names the tempting wrong option as well as the right one, because that is where marks are lost.
On what date did NITI Aayog replace the Planning Commission?
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Answer: A — 1 January 2015
NITI Aayog was constituted on 1 January 2015. The Planning Commission had been set up on 15 March 1950, and the Twelfth Plan, the last, ended on 31 March 2017, so 1 April 2017 marks the end of plans rather than the creation of NITI Aayog.A country's three HDI dimension indices are 0.9 (health), 0.6 (education) and 0.4 (income). Using the geometric mean method in use since 2010, what is its HDI? Type the number as a decimal.
Numerical answer — type the value.
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Answer: 0.6
HDI = cube root of (0.9 × 0.6 × 0.4) = cube root of 0.216 = 0.6. The arithmetic mean, about 0.633, was used before 2010; the geometric mean is lower because it penalises uneven achievement.With HDI goalposts of 20 and 85 years for life expectancy, what is the health dimension index of a country with a life expectancy at birth of 72 years? Type the number as a decimal.
Numerical answer — type the value.
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Answer: 0.8
Index = (actual − minimum) ÷ (maximum − minimum) = (72 − 20) ÷ (85 − 20) = 52 ÷ 65 = 0.8. Dividing 72 by 85 (about 0.85) ignores the minimum goalpost, which is the usual mistake."Development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs" is the definition of sustainable development given in:
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Answer: B — The Brundtland Report, Our Common Future (1987)
The definition comes from the World Commission on Environment and Development's report of 1987, chaired by Gro Harlem Brundtland. The Human Development Report introduced the HDI, Rostow's book modernisation stages, and Beveridge the British welfare state.Which of the following indicators are used in calculating the Human Development Index? Select all that apply.
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Answer: A — Life expectancy at birth; C — Mean years of schooling; D — Gross national income per capita (PPP)
The HDI uses life expectancy at birth, mean and expected years of schooling, and GNI per capita in PPP terms. The infant mortality rate is an important indicator but is not a component of the HDI; child mortality appears in the Multidimensional Poverty Index instead.The Second Five-Year Plan (1956–61), which emphasised heavy industry, was based on the model of:
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Answer: D — P. C. Mahalanobis
The Second Plan followed the Mahalanobis model of investment in capital goods industries. M. N. Roy wrote the People's Plan (1945), S. N. Agarwal the Gandhian Plan (1944), and Sen's capability approach came much later.Assertion (A): The Sustainable Development Goals set 17 goals to be achieved by 2030. Reason (R): The Sustainable Development Goals succeeded the Millennium Development Goals, which ran from 2000 to 2015. Choose the correct option.
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Answer: B — Both A and R are true, but R is not the correct explanation of A
Both statements are true, but the reason does not explain the assertion. The number of goals and the 2030 deadline were decided in the post-2015 negotiations; the fact that the MDGs came earlier does not explain why there are 17 goals.In Rostow's The Stages of Economic Growth (1960), the stage in which growth becomes self-sustaining and investment rises sharply is:
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Answer: C — Take-off
Take-off is Rostow's third stage, when growth becomes self-sustaining. Traditional society is the first and high mass consumption the fifth; "the development of underdevelopment" is Andre Gunder Frank's dependency critique of modernisation theory.Which of the following statements about pre-independence plans are correct? Select all that apply.
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Answer: A — The Bombay Plan (1944) was prepared by leading industrialists; C — The People's Plan (1945) was prepared by M. N. Roy
The Bombay Plan was the industrialists' plan and the People's Plan was M. N. Roy's. The Gandhian Plan was prepared by S. N. Agarwal, not Vinoba Bhave, and the National Planning Committee was chaired by Jawaharlal Nehru, not Patel.James Midgley identified three broad approaches to social development. Which set is correct?
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Answer: D — Individualist (enterprise), communitarian and statist
Midgley's approaches are individualist (market and enterprise), communitarian (community participation) and statist (government), combined in his "managed pluralism". The other sets are Titmuss's and Wilensky and Lebeaux's models, Esping-Andersen's regimes and Rothman's community practice models.
1. Social planning: concept, objectives, models and relation to economic planning
Social planning is the deliberate, organised effort to decide in advance on goals and means for meeting social needs and promoting social development, through services such as education, health, housing and social welfare, and through measures to reduce poverty and inequality. Its objectives are to meet basic needs, to ensure equitable distribution of the benefits of development, to protect vulnerable groups, to develop human resources and to promote social integration and participation. Its models range from the rational-comprehensive, expert-led model (Rothman's social planning model, which relies on data and technical analysis) through advocacy planning (Paul Davidoff, 1965, in which planners represent the interests of the poor and excluded in a plural contest of plans) and transactive planning (John Friedmann, 1973, based on dialogue and mutual learning between planners and the people affected) to participatory and radical planning, in which communities plan for themselves and challenge power.
Social and economic planning are interdependent. Economic growth provides the resources for social services, and social investment in health, education and nutrition builds the human capital on which growth depends. Growth alone does not guarantee social development, as "jobless growth" and rising inequality show, and social spending without growth is hard to sustain. The early Indian plans treated social services as a separate, residual sector following growth; later plans increasingly treated social development as integral, from the Minimum Needs Programme of the Fifth Plan to the "inclusive growth" of the Eleventh and Twelfth. Social planning in India has been carried out through the Planning Commission and state planning boards, sectoral ministries, and, since the 73rd and 74th Amendments, district and local planning through panchayats and municipalities, including Kerala's People's Plan Campaign of 1996, which devolved a large share of plan funds to local bodies.