Five Year Plans In India
From 1947 to 2018 in India, the economic system was governed by planning. This was accomplished in the plan for a period of five years. Planning Commission (1951-2014) and Niti Ayog (2016) completed the twelfth Plan’s first three terms in March 2017. The BJP Government announced the Dissolution of Planning Commission which has been replaced by the Thought Tank under his leadership. The Planning Commission has a deputy chairman that holds cabinet office. Ajmal Singh Ahluwalia served for a month until retiring. Check out 11th five year plan in India here.
Eleventh Five Year Plan India
The Eleventh Five Year Plan duration that started on April 1, 2007, and covers the five year period 2007-12. The Eleventh plan document starts on an optimistic note pointing to the robust economic growth registered in the Tenth Plan which was 7.8 per cent per annum ( higher than the rate of growth registered in any other Plan). In fact, the last four years of the Tenth Plan recorded a rate of growth of as high as 8.6 per cent per annum making India one of the fastest-growing economies of the world. However, according to the Plan, “a major weakness in the economy is that the growth is not perceived as being sufficiently inclusive for many groups, especially SCs and STs, and minorities. Gender inequality also remains a pervasive problem and some of the structural changes taking place harm women. The lack of inclusiveness is -borne out by data on several dimensions of performance”.
On account of the above reasons, the Eleventh Plan emphasizes faster and more inclusive growth. According to the plan, its strategy for inclusive growth is not just a conventional strategy to which some elements aimed at inclusion have been added. On the contrary, it is a strategy that aims at achieving a particular type of growth process which will meet the objectives of inclusiveness and sustainability. This strategy must be based on sound macroeconomic policies which establish the macro-economic pre-conditions for rapid growth and support key drivers to this growth. It must also include sector-specific policies which ensure that the structure of growth that is generated, and the institutional environment in which it occurs, achieve the objectives of inclusiveness in all its many dimensions.
Monitorable targets of the eleventh five year plan Achievements and failures
With its strategy of faster and inclusive growth, the Eleventh plan identifies 27 monitorable targets at the national level of which 13 can be disaggregated at the level of individual states. Justifying the adoption of these highly ambitious targets, the plan document states “These targets are ambitious but it is better to aim high and fail than to aim low”.
The 27 monitorable targets at the national level have been divided into 6 main categories:
- Income and Poverty
- Education,
- Health
- Women and Children
- Infrastructure
- Environment
The targets in each of these categories are given below:
1. Income and Poverty:
- The average GDP growth rate of 9 percent per year in the Eleventh plan period
- Agricultural GDP growth rate at 4 percent per year on an average
- General of 58 million new work opportunities
- Reduction of unemployment among the educated to less than 5 percent
- 27 percent rise in the real wage rate of unskilled workers,
- Reduction in the head-count ratio of consumption poverty by 10 percentage points.
2. Education
- Reduction in the drop-out rates of children at the elementary level from 52.2 percent in 2002-03 to 20 percent by 2011-12
- Developing minimum standards of educational attainment in elementary schools, – to ensure quality education
- Increasing the literacy rate for persons of age 7 years or more to 85 percent by 201112
- Reducing the gender gap in literacy to 10 percentage points by 2011-12
- Increasing the percentage of each cohort going to higher education from the present 10 percent to 15 percent by 2011-12.
3. Health
- Infant mortality rate (IMR) to be reduced to 28 and maternal mortality rate (MMR) to 1 per 1000 live births by the end of the Eleventh Plan
- Total Fertility Kale to be reduced to 2.1 by the end of the Eleventh plan
- clean drinking water to be available for all by 2009, ensuring that there are no slip-backs by the end of the Eleventh Plan
- Malnutrition among children of age group 0-3 to be reduced to hand present level by the end of the Eleventh Plan
- Anaemia among women and girls to be reduced to half its present level by the end of the Eleventh Plan.
4. Women and children
- Sex ratio for age group 0-6 years to be raised to 933 Dy 2011 12 and 950 by 2016-17
- Ensuring that at least 33 per cent of the direct and indirect beneficiaries of all government schemes are women and girl children
- Ensuring that all children enjoy a safe childhood, without any compulsion to work
5. Infrastructure
- To ensure electricity connection to all villages and BPL households by 2009 and reliable power by the end of the plan
- To ensure all-weather road connection to all habitations with population 1000 and above ( 500 and above in hilly and tribal areas ) by 2009, and all significant habitations by 2015
- to connect every village by telephone and provide broadband connectivity to all villages by 2012
- To provide homestead sites to all by 2012 and step up the pace of house construction for rural poor to cover all the poor by 2016-17
6. Environment
- To increase forest and tree cover by 5 percentage points
- To attain WHO standards of air quality in all manor cities by 2011-12
- To treat all. urban wastewater by 2011-12 to clean river waters
- To increase energy efficiency by 20 percentage points by 2016-17. –
7. State Specific Targets
Thirteen of the 27 monitorable national targets have been disaggregated into appropriate targets for individual states. These are :
- GDP growth rate
- agricultural growth rate
- New work opportunities
- Poverty ratio
- Drop out in elementary schools
- Literacy rate
- Gender gap in literacy rate
- Infant mortality rate (IMR)
- Maternal Mortality Rate (MMR)
- Total Fertility Rate (TFR)
- Child malnutrition: Anaemia among women and children
- Sex-ratio.