The Mahalanobis model was the basis for which Five-Year Plan?

Correct — B. P.C. Mahalanobis built the model the Second Five-Year Plan (1956-61) was written around, which is why it is also called the Nehru-Mahalanobis strategy.

Its argument: a poor economy that wants fast long-run growth should first build the sector making capital goods — steel, machine tools, heavy engineering — accepting fewer consumer goods in the meantime.

The plan acted on it, with the public sector holding the commanding heights and the Bhilai, Rourkela and Durgapur steel plants as the visible result → option (b).

Why the others are wrong

• (a)
  Fourth Five-Year Plan — The Fourth Plan (1969-74) followed the plan holiday and stressed growth with stability and self-reliance. Its dates sit more than a decade after the Mahalanobis strategy was adopted.
• (c)
  First Five-Year Plan — The First Plan (1951-56) used the Harrod-Domar model and put agriculture, irrigation and power first, with Bhakra and Hirakud as its projects. Mahalanobis shaped the plan that came after it.
• (d)
  Sixth Five-Year Plan — The Sixth Plan (1980-85) marks the turn away from Nehruvian orthodoxy and towards liberalisation, a quarter-century after heavy industry was made the priority.

Prasanta Chandra Mahalanobis was a statistician, not an economist by training. He founded the Indian Statistical Institute in 1931 and gave statistics the Mahalanobis distance.

His plan model split the economy into a capital-goods sector and a consumer-goods sector, and argued that investing in the first raises the ceiling on everything that follows. Applied to India, it meant heavy industry, import substitution and a leading role for the state.

The Industrial Policy Resolution of 1956 was passed alongside the Second Plan and gave that role legal shape, reserving core industries for the public sector.

Key facts

• The Second Five-Year Plan (1956-61) was based on the Mahalanobis model and stressed heavy and basic industries.
• P.C. Mahalanobis founded the Indian Statistical Institute in 1931.
• The First Five-Year Plan (1951-56) followed the Harrod-Domar model, with agriculture and irrigation as its priorities.
• The Industrial Policy Resolution of 1956 accompanied the Second Plan and reserved core industries for the public sector.

Common traps

• Attributing the Second Plan to the Keynesian model, which SSC plants as a false option on 23 Sep 2024, 12:30, GA Q.15.
• Swapping the two models, so that Harrod-Domar lands on the Second Plan instead of the First.

No directly related past PYQ was found.