Planning was seen as a powerful instrument that could be used to remove regional inequality. Examine.

Answer:

After independence, planning was adopted as a central instrument of national development, and one of its declared aims was to reduce the sharp regional inequalities inherited from colonial rule, though its actual record in achieving balanced regional growth remained decidedly mixed over the decades.

Planning against regional inequality

• The Five Year Plans consciously sought balanced regional development and the uplift of backward areas.
• Public-sector steel plants, dams and industries were located to spread development, as at Bhilai, Rourkela and Bokaro.
• Special assistance, backward-area schemes and central transfers aimed to help the poorer states.
• Institutions like the Planning Commission and Finance Commission were meant to guide equitable growth.

The limits of the outcome

• Investment often flowed to already-advanced regions with better infrastructure and returns.
• Regional disparities between states in fact widened in several respects.
• Critics argued that centralised planning underestimated local and regional variation.

Why the aim was only partly met

• Backward regions lacked the infrastructure and skilled labour to absorb investment.
• Private investment, freed after liberalisation, gravitated to the better-endowed states.
• Gadgil formula transfers helped, but were modest against the scale of disparity.
• The Green Revolution's concentration in Punjab, Haryana and western UP widened the gap further.

Planning was thus genuinely conceived as an instrument to remove regional inequality, and it did spread some development to backward areas. Yet, as economists observe, its success was limited and uneven, and the reduction of regional disparity remained a largely unfulfilled aspiration of Indian planning.