Planning and Sustainable Development in the Indian Context — Class 12 Geography

Planning is the process of thinking, formulating a scheme and implementing actions to achieve economic development. There are two broad approaches: sectoral planning, which develops sectors such as agriculture, industry and transport, and regional planning, which reduces regional imbalance because development is never uniform over space. India adopted centralised planning after independence and later moved to decentralised multi-level planning; the Planning Commission was replaced by the NITI Aayog on 1 January 2015. To help backward areas, the Planning Commission introduced target-area and target-group approaches, including the Command Area Development Programme, the Drought Prone Area Programme, the Desert Development Programme and the Hill Area Development Programme, plus the Small and Marginal Farmers Development Agencies. The Hill Area Development Programme covered hilly districts, and the Integrated Tribal Development Project in the Bharmaur region of Himachal Pradesh aimed to improve the lives of the Gaddi tribe by developing transport, agriculture and social services, raising literacy and the sex ratio. Sustainable development, defined by the Brundtland Report as meeting present needs without compromising future generations, balances ecological, social and economic concerns. The Indira Gandhi Canal command area is a case study where canal irrigation transformed the Thar Desert's ecology and economy but caused waterlogging and soil salinity, so sustainability requires strict water management, suitable cropping, afforestation, reclamation of affected land and diversification of the economy.