Breaking down the question
The instruction discuss in detail signals that a 20-mark answer must be comprehensive and layered. The subject is development planning in a mixed economy like India — a system that deliberately combined state direction with private enterprise. The phrase main issues asks for the enduring tensions and dilemmas that planning generates, not a chronology of Five Year Plans.
Sociologically, planning in India was a project of directed social change — an attempt to use the state to transform an agrarian, hierarchical society into a modern, equitable one. The issues arise precisely from this ambition: the state sought to steer a society whose caste, class and regional divisions resisted planned transformation.
How to approach it
Frame planning as an instrument of planned social change within a mixed-economy model. Then organise the main issues thematically — the growth versus equity dilemma, the state versus market balance, regional and sectoral imbalance, the agriculture-industry question, the gap between planning and implementation, and the social resistance planning encounters.
Illustrate each issue with recognisable examples and sociological concepts. Draw the analytical thread through development planning and the mixed economy. Conclude with a reflection on the shift from a command-oriented to a market-oriented model after liberalisation.
Model answer
Development planning in India was conceived as the central mechanism of directed social change. In a mixed economy the state assumed the commanding heights while private enterprise operated in the rest, and planning through the Planning Commission and successive Five Year Plans sought to reconcile capitalist accumulation with socialist ideals of equity. The main issues of such planning arise from the contradictions embedded in this design.
The first issue is the tension between growth and equity. Planning aimed simultaneously to raise national income and to reduce inequality, but the two goals frequently pulled against each other. Capital-intensive heavy industry, favoured in the Mahalanobis strategy, generated growth without commensurate employment, so that the benefits accrued unevenly and the poor gained slowly. Andre Beteille's analysis of persistent inequality reminds us that economic growth alone does not dissolve entrenched social hierarchies.
A second issue is the balance between state and market. A mixed economy must continuously negotiate how much to direct and how much to leave to private initiative. Over-regulation bred inefficiency, rent-seeking and the licence-permit regime, while inadequate regulation risked concentration and exclusion. Planning thus struggled to find a stable equilibrium between control and freedom.
Third is the problem of regional and sectoral imbalance. Planned investment tended to flow towards already advanced regions and towards industry, deepening the divide between developed and backward states and between urban and rural India. The neglect of agriculture in the early plans, later corrected through the Green Revolution, illustrates how sectoral priorities produced new inequalities — the Green Revolution itself widening the gap between prosperous and marginal farmers.
Fourth is the recurrent gap between planning and implementation. Ambitious targets confronted a weak administrative apparatus, leakages in delivery, and the capture of resources by dominant groups. M. N. Srinivas's insight into the strength of dominant castes helps explain how planned benefits were often appropriated by locally powerful groups rather than reaching intended beneficiaries.
Fifth is the social resistance to planned change. Planning assumed a pliable society, but caste loyalties, kinship obligations and regional identities mediated and reshaped its outcomes. Development was filtered through existing social structures, so that modernising interventions could reinforce rather than erode traditional hierarchies.
Finally, planning faced the issue of participation and legitimacy. A largely centralised, technocratic model left little space for those it sought to develop, prompting later emphasis on decentralised and participatory planning.
The liberalisation of 1991 marked a decisive response to these accumulated issues, shifting the balance towards the market and eventually replacing the Planning Commission with the NITI Aayog. Yet the core sociological dilemma endures — how a mixed economy can pursue rapid growth while securing social justice in a deeply unequal society.
Examiner's perspective
At 20 marks the examiner expects breadth and depth in equal measure. A high-scoring answer treats planning as a sociological project of directed change rather than an economic exercise, and organises the issues thematically instead of narrating plan periods. Invoking Beteille on inequality and Srinivas on dominant caste to explain implementation failures signals genuine sociological command. Candidates should avoid a purely economic register and must close with the transition to a market-oriented model, showing awareness of how the issues evolved rather than merely persisted.