| Abstract: | This paper argues that planning as practiced in India has in many respects failed to achieve national development objectives over the long term. Four different sets of factors can be identified as probably having contributed to this failure: (1) faulty premises and development strategies, (2) problematic and counterproductive implementation mechanisms, (3) the emergence of powerful interest groups that appropriate public resources and blocked needed policy reforms, and (4) the slowness to learn from experience and consequent lack of flexibility and adaptation. These forces were not mutually independent, and hence their relative importance is difficult to gauge precisely. |
