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Saturday, March 14, 2026
TopicFive-Year Plans

Topic: Five-Year Plans

Socialist planners aggravated unemployment problem

Planning Commission couldn't tackle unemployment because new job opportunities in large-scale industries producing consumer goods were not created, wrote GN Lawande in 1963.

Moksha, not motor cars—BR Shenoy’s idea of a truly Indian welfare state

In a 1957 lecture, free-market economist BR Shenoy warned that India's welfare state must stay rooted in Dharma, not drift toward consumerist excess.

35 yrs of Mahalanobis model vs 35 yrs of Manmohan Singh. Two key moments of Indian economy

In 1991, as in 2025, the report cards of these two economic trajectories remain underwhelming. But as economists see it, politics got in the way each time. 

Why did India not fulfil its economic potential? New book outlines ‘economics of non-performance’

In 'The India Story', former RBI governor Bimal Jalan writes that much remains to be done about our economy since the boost of the 1990s.

All about the First Five-Year Plan that was presented by Nehru nearly 70 years ago today

The First Five-Year Plan was presented before the Parliament on 9 July 1951. The target GDP growth of the plan was 2.1%, but the country recorded a growth of 3.6% that year.

Why Ruskin Bond never wrote about Indian politicians

In this excerpt from his book 'Beauty of All My Days', Bond recalls memories of him having seen and heard Nehru as well as his conversations with Morarji Desai, Acharya Kripalani. 

On Camera

What India can learn from the US-Israel war on Iran

Without any air force or navy worth the name, both Iran and Ukraine have held two superpowers at bay.

US strike on Iran’s key oil export island Kharg raises fears of wider supply disruption

President Trump said the US had bombed military targets on Kharg Island in the Persian Gulf, but spared oil infrastructure.

Supreme Leader Mojtaba, the man Iran must keep alive & the secret force ‘tasked with it’—all about NOPO

The Nirouyeh Vijeh Pasdaran Velayat, or NOPO, was the only force Ali Khamenei trusted.It was founded in 1991 and is more feared than the Revolutionary Guards.

Peaceful power transfers followed uprisings in India’s neighbourhood. It’s a sign of mature democracies

Rating democracies is a tricky business. I am only using the simple metric of who in the Indian subcontinent has had the most peaceful, stable, normal political transitions and continuity.