The blueprint of Gram Swargaj is the key to understand the Gandhian perspective on planning. Discuss.
How the answer moves
The flow snapshot — the routes in, the body, the counter-view and the routes out.
Route 1 Gandhian planning ≠ conventional centralised/industrial → self-sufficient village as the blueprint → begin here to read his planning
Route 2 Gram Swaraj = village self-rule → the master design from which his whole economic vision follows → hence the key
village as the primary unit (economy / politics / moral life) → local production + local resource control + Panchayati Raj, participation → “India lives in villages” → rural reconstruction at the centre → decentralisation / production by the masses (not mass production) / Swadeshi → machinery: only labour-displacing & wealth-concentrating opposed → Gandhian Plan (Narayan & Agarwal): agriculture, land to tiller, cooperatives, rural credit, khadi — against heavy industry → Kothari: free India took the Nehruvian centralised path, village vision overshadowed
Ambedkar: romanticises villages, ignores caste → modern economists: hard to apply in a globalised industrial economy
Route 1 not an industrial plan but a moral design for self-reliant villages → Gram Swaraj the interpretive key
Route 2 limits notwithstanding → the village republic remains the lens for reading Gandhian planning
Model answer
Handwritten, in the form it would be written in the examination hall.
