POWER 50 · Day 23 — Planning & Economic Development: Nehru to NITI Aayog, land reforms and liberalisation

POWER 50 is fifty capsules across fifty days — the entire PSIR syllabus revised once, in the order the syllabus is actually built, one topic a day. The discipline is simple: read the capsule, write the same day, and don’t break the chain. Running alongside are PSIR Dynamics 2026 and the PYQ Vault — 560 previous-year questions across the fifty days, roughly eleven a day — so that your revision and your question practice move together.

Day 23 — Planning & Economic Development

Today’s capsule takes the whole planning-and-development story in one sitting. We begin with the two founding visions — Nehruvian planning and the Gandhian blueprint of Gram Swaraj — and the debate between them. From there we move through the institutional arc: the legacy of the Planning Commission, the shift to NITI Aayog and its role as a think tank, district planning and the Fourteenth Finance Commission. The second half turns to outcomes and politics — liberalisation and the reforms that were left incomplete, the relevance of the Directive Principles after 1991, land reforms and agrarian relations, the Green Revolution and the case for a second one, and the roots of the present agrarian crisis. It is a large unit, and the trend table shows why: UPSC returns to it year after year.

Write before the evening:

1. With reference to Nehruvian perspective of planning and economic development, examine how the early phase of economic planning in India has laid the foundation of modern India’s economic growth. (UPSC 2025, 15m)
2. The blueprint of Gram Swaraj is the key to understand the Gandhian perspective on planning. Discuss. (UPSC 2024, 15m)
3. Critically examine the politics of Economic growth in India. (UPSC 2016, 20m)

If you go blank on any point above, it is covered in full in the Foundation and OGP class notes and handouts — revise it there, then write.

Download the PDF