Second Five Year Plan

Introduction 

Planning is the first step in any and every field. Without planning, all you have is a vision with no real path to walk on. Therefore, the importance of planning cannot be emphasised enough. 

Even a group of friends wanting to go on a trip need a plan to make it work. But, sometimes plans in place also are not enough for them, and so a plan, in fact, a good plan is needed even for something as simple as going on a trip. Now we take it to the macro level as we focus on how a plan needs to be in place for helping the nation grow and develop in more than one aspect.

Ever since India gained its Independence in 1947, 5-year plans became the norm for the nation to focus on more important subjects that needed attention. Out of the numerous plans that came out, we take a look at the Second Five Year Plan under the magnifying glass. Later in the article, we will also look at any questions from the Second Five Year Plan (1956 – 1961) topic that might be left unanswered.

Second Five Year Plan (1956 – 1961)

The Second Five Year Plan revolved around the idea of developing the public sector and rapid industrialisation. The plan was allocated nearly 50 billion rupees in various fields to achieve targets. The scale of production and the production method was given a push for good. New technology and efficient investments were made to make sure that India’s annual national income grew to 4.5%. 

India began bringing in hydroelectric power projects and steel plants with help from the USSR, UK and West Germany to scale up production within India. Even more railway lines were added in the Northeast of India. In addition, research and Atomic centers were opened up, and scholarship programs were funded to find human resources to take the Nuclear power field in India. 

Power, irrigation,social services, communication, transport, and miscellaneous expenses, were the fields that saw cash inflow coming their way for expansion and growth purposes. 

Second Five Year Plan facts and figures

• The Second Five Year Plan was functional between 1956 and 1961
• Prashant Chandra Mahalanobis devices an economic model, the Mahalanobis model in 1953, to design a roadmap for the Second Five Year Plan
• 1957 was the year when scholarships and talent programs were started to find young people to train and work in the Nuclear Power field
• 48 Billion rupees was shelled out for working on the Second Five Year Plan
• India achieved only 4.27% income growth against the target of 4.5% set
• India faced a payment crisis on the external level in 1957
• One of the most interesting Second Five Year Plan facts is that the plan was predicted to be a failure, which turned out to be halfway through the tenure. 

Why did the Second Five Year Plan (1956 – 1961) fail?

While the Second Five Year Plan was a huge step forward, it ultimately felt short, and a lot of the issues that were supposed to be dealt with remained intact. For starters, the plan did not help fight the issue of poverty which was significant back then and remains a big issue in the present day as well. 

The sum of money allotted to the plan did not end up being enough and widened the unemployment problem, which was relevant back then and still a big issue. Other than this, the currency of India had to be devalued 2 times, and a lot of external payments suffered, bringing India into a poor financial condition. 

Agriculture and irrigation saw their share in the budget allocation size shrink from the first five-year plan. Also, the private industries went on the back burner as the attention shifted to the public sector. So a lot of drawbacks became prominently visible as the second plan started showing a lot of cracks midway through the tenure.

Conclusion

The Planning system may have aimed to improve the situation at hand and provide people with basic human rights. The heart of these plans was at the right place, but due to some reason or the other, their implementation was not as good as the thinking was on paper. Similar issues plagued the Second Five Year Plan, so it didn’t bring out the desired effect.

With that, we come to the end of the chapter. I hope most of you now have a fair amount of idea as to why the planning system is not functional anymore and why it had to be replaced. All the necessary details that the students may require have been answered in the FAQ section, and that concludes the story of five-year plans in Indian history and civics.