MPSC 2023 Prelims Paper-I · Question 53 of 100

Correct — option (4), 'a, b, c and d'. The stem is careful to say 'as spelt out in various plan documents', and that phrase settles the question: it is not asking which single objective was paramount, but which objectives have been declared across the whole run of India's Five Year Plans, and every pair printed here has been. Statement a. names economic growth and self-reliance. Growth was the object from the beginning, the Second Plan's heavy industry strategy being the clearest expression of it, while self-reliance became a governing aim from the Third and Fourth Plans onwards, when dependence on imported food and foreign assistance was treated as a vulnerability to be ended rather than a condition to be managed. Statement b. names the removal of unemployment and the reduction of income inequalities. Employment moved from being an expected by-product of growth to an objective in its own right as it became clear that industrial growth was not absorbing labour fast enough, and reduction of inequality has been part of the stated purpose of planning throughout, under the general head of social justice. Statement c. names the elimination of poverty and modernisation. Poverty removal was made the central slogan of planning in the Fifth Plan period, and modernisation — the upgrading of technology and of the structure of production — is one of the four objectives that standard accounts of Indian planning list alongside growth, self-reliance and social justice. Statement d. names inclusiveness and sustainability, which are the objectives of the later plans and are visible in their very titles: the Eleventh Plan was framed as 'Towards Faster and More Inclusive Growth' and the Twelfth as 'Faster, More Inclusive and Sustainable Growth'. Nothing foreign has been inserted into the list, so all four stand and option (4) is the answer. Note that this question prints no closing 'which of the statements' line; the four choices follow the statement list directly.

• (1)a only — This option keeps growth and self-reliance and discards everything else, which is to mistake the objectives of one period for the objectives of planning as a whole. Growth and self-reliance dominate the second and third decades of planning and are what a candidate remembers first, because the Mahalanobis strategy and the drive to end dependence on food aid are the most vividly narrated episodes in the story. But the stem asks what has been spelt out across various plan documents, and poverty removal, employment and equity were declared objectives well before those decades ended, while inclusiveness and sustainability are stated in the titles of the last two plans. Choosing this option means treating the earliest and most famous objectives as the only ones.
• (2)b only — This option keeps employment and the reduction of inequality alone. Both are genuine objectives, and a candidate who has studied the failures of Indian planning may be drawn to them because they are the aims most often described as unfulfilled, which lends them a certain prominence in critical accounts. But an objective that was imperfectly achieved is still an objective, and so are the ones this choice discards. Rejecting growth and self-reliance is particularly hard to sustain, since those two dominate the plan documents of the first two decades and no account of Indian planning omits them. The error here is the same as in the previous option and merely applied to a different pair: a subset of the declared objectives has been mistaken for the whole.
• (3)c only — This option keeps the elimination of poverty and modernisation and drops the rest. It has a superficial attraction, because poverty removal is the objective most closely identified with Indian planning in popular memory and modernisation appears in the standard four-fold list of objectives, so the pair looks authoritative. Yet the stem's own wording defeats it: objectives spelt out in various plan documents cannot be confined to two when the documents themselves declare growth, self-reliance, employment, equity, inclusiveness and sustainability as well. This is the third of three parallel wrong options, and their common structure is itself a signal — when three choices each isolate one line of a list and the fourth accepts all of them, the question is very often testing whether the candidate knows that the list is not exclusive.

Indian planning is usually described as having pursued four long-term objectives — growth, modernisation, self-reliance and social justice or equity — with employment and poverty removal treated as the operative content of the fourth, and inclusiveness and sustainability added in the later plans as the language of development changed. The machinery was the Planning Commission, set up by a cabinet resolution in March 1950, which drew up the Five Year Plans beginning with the First Plan of 1951-56; that plan leaned on the Harrod-Domar framework and gave priority to agriculture and irrigation after the disruption of partition. The Second Plan of 1956-61 adopted the Mahalanobis strategy of building heavy industry and capital goods capacity in the public sector, which set the pattern for two decades. Self-reliance became prominent after the external difficulties of the mid-1960s, poverty removal was made the organising theme of the Fifth Plan period, and liberalisation from 1991 shifted the plans away from allocating investment and towards setting a policy framework. The Eleventh and Twelfth Plans were framed explicitly around inclusive and then sustainable growth. Planning in this form ended when the Planning Commission was replaced by NITI Aayog on 1 January 2015, the Twelfth Plan of 2012-17 being the last of the series.

MPSC tests Indian planning both as chronology and as doctrine, and this question belongs to the second kind: it asks whether the candidate understands that the objectives accumulated rather than replaced one another. That understanding is worth more than a list, because it explains the shape of the whole sequence — each new objective was added when experience showed that the existing ones were not delivering something the country needed, employment being added when growth failed to absorb labour, poverty removal when growth failed to reach the bottom, inclusiveness when growth was concentrated in particular regions and sectors, and sustainability when the environmental cost of growth became a policy question in its own right. The format of the options is also worth recognising as a type. Three of them isolate a single line and the fourth accepts everything, which is the classic construction for a question about a non-exclusive list, and it should prompt the candidate to ask whether the statements are really in competition with each other. Here they plainly are not: no two of the four pairs printed contradict each other, and a list whose items do not conflict is unlikely to have exactly one true member.

• The long-term objectives of Indian planning are conventionally listed as growth, modernisation, self-reliance and social justice or equity, with the removal of unemployment and of poverty forming the substance of the last.
• The Planning Commission was established by a cabinet resolution in March 1950 and the First Five Year Plan ran from 1951 to 1956, giving priority to agriculture and irrigation.
• The Second Five Year Plan of 1956-61 followed the Mahalanobis strategy of building heavy industry and capital goods capacity in the public sector, which shaped Indian planning for the next two decades.
• The Eleventh Five Year Plan was framed as 'Towards Faster and More Inclusive Growth' and the Twelfth as 'Faster, More Inclusive and Sustainable Growth', which is where inclusiveness and sustainability enter the stated objectives.
• The Planning Commission was replaced by NITI Aayog on 1 January 2015, and the Twelfth Plan of 2012-17 was the last of the Five Year Plans.

• Treating the objectives of the earliest plans as the objectives of planning as a whole, when later plans added employment, poverty removal, inclusiveness and sustainability
• Assuming an objective that was poorly achieved was never declared, when the removal of unemployment and of inequality were stated aims throughout
• Reading an option set of three isolated lines plus an all-inclusive fourth as though the statements were in competition, when a non-exclusive list rarely has exactly one true member
• Confusing the objectives of planning with the strategies used to pursue them, such as heavy industry in the Second Plan or the green revolution in agriculture

Indian planning appears in MPSC papers as objective and doctrine questions like this one, as plan-by-plan recall asking which plan carried a particular theme, target or model, as institutional questions on the Planning Commission, the National Development Council and NITI Aayog, and occasionally as a question on Maharashtra's own planning machinery and district plans. Because the Five Year Plans have ended, the chronology is now closed and can be learnt once, which makes it unusually good value: twelve plans, each with a one-line theme, plus the four long-term objectives and the two later additions of inclusiveness and sustainability, will answer most of what the Commission asks in this territory.

No directly related past PYQ was found.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  The Eleventh Five Year Plan of India was framed around which of the following themes ?

  • (a)Rapid industrialisation through heavy industry
  • (b)Towards faster and more inclusive growth
  • (c)Removal of poverty and attainment of self-reliance
  • (d)Growth with stability and progressive achievement of self-reliance

  Answer(b) Towards faster and more inclusive growth — inclusiveness enters the stated objectives of Indian planning with this plan, and the Twelfth Plan carried the theme further as faster, more inclusive and sustainable growth. Rapid industrialisation through heavy industry describes the Mahalanobis strategy of the Second Plan, which belongs to an earlier phase of planning altogether.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  The Planning Commission of India was replaced by NITI Aayog with effect from which date ?

  • (a)1 January 2015
  • (b)15 August 2014
  • (c)1 April 2016
  • (d)26 January 2015

  Answer(a) 1 January 2015 — the Planning Commission, which had been set up by a cabinet resolution in March 1950 and had drawn up twelve Five Year Plans, was replaced by NITI Aayog as a policy think tank with an advisory rather than an allocative role. The Twelfth Plan, covering 2012 to 2017, was the last of the Five Year Plans, and no thirteenth plan was drawn up.