The formulation and success of a plan require the following :
a. Planning Commission, Statistical data, Objectives
b. Fixation of Targets and Priorities, Mobilisation of Resources
c. Incorrupt and Eff

Question

The formulation and success of a plan require the following :
a. Planning Commission, Statistical data, Objectives
b. Fixation of Targets and Priorities, Mobilisation of Resources
c. Incorrupt and Efficient Administration, Proper Development Policy
d. Economy in Administration, Education base

UnlockIAS · Accepted Answer

Correct — option (4), 'a, b, c and d'. The four statements between them reproduce the standard textbook list of requisites for successful economic planning, and the list is cumulative rather than alternative: nothing in it can be dropped without the plan failing at some stage. Read as a sequence, the statements follow the actual life of a plan. Statement a. covers what is needed before anything can be drafted — a central planning authority to do the drafting, which in India was the Planning Commission; reliable statistical data, because a plan is a set of quantitative decisions and cannot be made from impressions; and a clear statement of objectives, since an authority with data and no aims has nothing to plan towards. Statement b. covers the drafting itself: targets and priorities have to be fixed, because a plan that wants everything at once has decided nothing, and resources have to be mobilised through taxation, savings, borrowing and external finance, since a target with no money behind it is an aspiration. Statement c. moves to execution, where plans most often break down. An honest and efficient administration is what turns an allocation into a completed asset, and corruption or incapacity in the implementing machinery defeats even a well-drafted plan; a proper development policy is needed so that the plan's targets are matched by the surrounding framework of prices, industrial policy and public investment rather than being contradicted by it. Statement d. names two supporting conditions that are easy to overlook. Economy in administration means that the plan's resources are not consumed by the machinery that administers it, an especially serious matter where revenue is scarce. An education base is needed because plans are executed by people: the technicians, administrators, accountants and skilled workers a plan requires have to exist before the plan can use them, which is why human capital is a precondition of development and not merely one of its fruits. Every statement therefore belongs, and option (4) is the answer. This question prints no closing 'which of the statements' line; the choices follow the list directly, and the word 'Incorrupt' in statement c. is as printed and means free from corruption.

Why the other options are wrong — (a) This option keeps only the preconditions of drafting — the planning authority, the data and the objectives — and stops there, which describes what is needed to begin a plan rather than what is needed for it to succeed. The stem asks for both formulation and success, and success is decided in the stages this option discards. A plan drawn up by a competent authority on good data and towards clear objectives will still fail if no resources are mobilised for it, if its targets are never fixed, if the administration that implements it is corrupt or incapable, or if the country lacks the trained people to carry out the work. Choosing this option usually means the candidate has stopped reading at the point where the list ceases to describe institutions and begins to describe conditions.  (b) This option carries the list as far as the drafting stage — authority, data, objectives, targets, priorities and resources — and then stops before implementation, which is precisely where Indian planning has most often been criticised for falling short. The gap between plan outlays and plan achievements is a standing theme in every review of the Five Year Plans, and the reasons given are almost always the ones this option discards: delays and leakages in administration, policies working against the plan's own targets, and shortages of trained personnel. A plan is a statement of intent until it is executed, so a list of requirements for success that omits the conditions of execution is incomplete in the part that matters most.  (c) This is the most attractive of the wrong answers, because it takes the list through drafting and implementation and drops only the last pair, which reads as the least weighty of the four. Neither item in it can be spared, though. Economy in administration matters because the resources a poor country mobilises for a plan are limited, and every rupee absorbed by the administrative machinery is a rupee that does not reach the project; a plan whose overheads grow faster than its outlays defeats itself. An education base matters because the whole apparatus of planning — surveys, engineering, accounting, supervision, technical operation — runs on trained people, and a country that has not built that base cannot execute an ambitious plan however well financed it is. Dropping this statement mistakes an enabling condition for an optional extra.

Concept: Economic planning is the deliberate direction of a country's resources towards chosen objectives over a stated period, and textbook treatments set out its requisites as a chain that runs from preparation through drafting to execution. Preparation requires an authority empowered to plan, a statistical system capable of supplying reliable data, and an agreed set of objectives. Drafting requires targets, priorities among them, an assessment of the resources available and a means of mobilising more, and internal consistency between the parts of the plan so that the output one sector is asked to deliver matches the input another is expected to use. Execution requires an administration that is both honest and capable, a surrounding policy framework that supports rather than contradicts the plan's targets, restraint in administrative expenditure, and a supply of educated and trained people to do the work. Public cooperation is commonly added as a final requisite, on the reasoning that a plan pursued against the grain of the society it governs will be evaded rather than implemented. India's own institutional history illustrates the first requisite: the Planning Commission was created in March 1950 to discharge exactly that function, drew up twelve Five Year Plans, and was replaced by NITI Aayog on 1 January 2015 when the government took the view that a different kind of body was needed.

State PCS 2023 Q54 — Economy PYQ with Answer

State PCS 2023 Q54 — Economy PYQ with Answer