2. National Planning

The official experiment in the area of national planning is rooted in the Bolshevik Revolution of Russia (1917)—the Soviet Union. Dissatisfied with the pace of industrialisation, it was in 1928 that Joseph Stalin announced its policy of central planning for the Soviet Union. The collectivisation of agriculture and forced-draft industrialisation were other radical new policy initiatives announced by Stalin besides economic planning in 1928.10 The

Soviet Union went for its first five year plan for the period 1928–33 and the world was to have its first experience of national planning. The famous Soviet slogan “great leap forward” was initiated for rapid industrialisation through the introduction of economic planning at the national level. The nature and scope of Soviet planning (called the Gosplan) will have its direct or indirect bearings on all those countries which went for economic planning, be state or capitalist or mixed economies. India was to have direct influence of Soviet planning on its planning process. In the first Soviet Plan, heavy industries was favoured over light industry, and consumer goods were the residual sector after all the other priorities had been met. We see the same emphasis in the Indian planning process.11 The Soviet model of economic planning spread to the East European countries, especially after World War II and found its purest form of such planning in the People’s Republic of China (1949). During the early 1940s, the concept of national planning was borrowed by France and the world saw national planning being initiated by a hitherto capitalist economy as well as by a non-centralised political system (i.e., democratic system). France started economic planning at the national level after announcing itself as a mixed economy.