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"This book uses planning as a lens through which to understand the Indian state and the nature of Indian democracy after independence. It interprets planning as a mode of nation-building, state formation, and legitimation in the aftermath of empire. The history of planning, here, is a history of the state - its capacities and posture towards citizens. What follows is a history of the Nehruvian state told through the prism of planning, rather than an economic history of planning or an account of the Five Year Plans per se.While the first part of the book analyses how the drive for data accelerated a drift toward technocracy, the latter reveals the contortions necessary to square that with democracy. Interrogating the government's claim of "democratic planning," I explore the lengths to which the state went to make the public "Plan-conscious" and highlight the failings and paradox of these efforts. Democratic planning was meant to be different from communist planning; persuasion and informed consent were its mantras. Significantly, on a practical level, the government was aware that enthusiastic popular participation in the Plans would be necessary for them to succeed. The Indian state simply lacked the ability to fulfil them otherwise. India's democratic planning was an ideology that claimed to nurture Plan-conscious citizens and produce a new kind of state that would walk the tightrope between capitalism and communism during the Cold War. It was the domestic equivalent of what came to be a non-aligned foreign policy. In this democratic avatar, planning functioned as a grand narrative for the nation - diagnosing the country's ills, charting the course to development, and inviting civic partnership. It was a political vision in which the tension between technocratic decision-making and representative democracy could, in theory, be harmonized. Travelling troupes of musical performers, documentary films, college planning forums, and even enigmatic organizations like the Bharat Sadhu Samaj (Indian Society of Ascetics), all promoted planning. This book is an exploration of how the story of planning became so central to the story of independent India. It does not pass judgment on the economic effectiveness of the Five Year Plans or seek to explain monumental oversights in spheres such as public health and primary education. Instead, it analyses planning as a technology of governance and means of legitimation. Indian planning was historic experiment that sought to fuse democracy and centralized economic planning precisely when the rhetoric of the Cold War pitted them as fundamentally antithetical to each other. It is a history of Third World development in an ex-colony, charting how an underdeveloped nation navigated the global Cold War while unaligned with either superpower bloc. More specifically, it demonstrates how planning was made technically feasible and politically viable in a poor, populous, and overwhelmingly illiterate country"--
List of contents
List of Figures; Acknowledgements; Introduction; Part I. Data: 1. A Nation in Numbers; 2. Calcutta Conquers Delhi; 3. Chasing Computers; Part II. Democracy?: 4. Help the Plan-Help Yourself; 5. Salvation in Service; Epilogue; Notes; Select Bibliography; Index.
About the author
Nikhil Menon is Assistant Professor of History at the University of Notre Dame.
