Regional planning

Topic: Regional Planning and Sustainable Development in India · NCERT: Class 12, Ch 6 "Planning and Sustainable Development in Indian Context"

Meaning

Regional planning is planning with a spatial perspective: it looks at where development happens, not only what is produced. It picks backward areas and plans all sectors together inside each one to reduce regional imbalance (the gap in development between places).

• It matters because development never spreads evenly across a country. Some places grow fast and others fall behind.
• A country can grow well sector by sector and still have deep gaps between its regions. Regional planning is meant to close these gaps.

Explanation

Sectoral planning vs regional planning

• India plans in two main ways: sectoral planning and regional planning.
• Sectoral planning plans one sector (one branch of the economy) at a time.
• It covers agriculture, irrigation, manufacturing, power, construction, transport, communication, social infrastructure and services.
• Its question is: "How do we grow this sector?"

• It does not ask which districts or states are being left behind.

• Regional planning uses a region or area as the unit.

• It plans all sectors together inside one chosen area.
• Its question is: "How do we develop this place?"

• Its approach is area-specific. This is the NCERT answer.

• Why both are needed: planning only by sector cannot close the gap between places.

Why regional imbalances arise (the problem regional planning tackles)

• Resource base alone is not enough
• Minerals, soil, water and forests need technology and investment before they become wealth.
• Without them, resources stay in the ground or leave the region as raw material.

• Profits, jobs and processing industries settle somewhere else, so the region stays poor. This is the paradox of plenty (rich land, poor people).

• Physical barriers

• In hills and mountains, steep slopes make roads and railways costly. Weak links to markets mean little industry.
• Deserts have little water, few people spread over large areas, and poor soils.

• In drought-prone areas, the rain often fails and so do harvests. Farm incomes rise and fall from year to year, so there is little money to invest.

• Colonial investment patterns

• British investment went to port cities, to plantation and mining enclaves, and to railways that carried raw materials to the ports.

• At Independence (1947), modern industry was packed into a few coastal points. The interior stayed backward.

• Agglomeration in metros

• Agglomeration means industries and services crowding into one place because being close together helps them. They share markets, skilled workers, banks, ports and power.
• New firms go where old firms already are, so those places grow even faster.
• This is a cumulative process: a region that gets ahead tends to stay ahead.

Tools and approaches used in regional planning

• Target area programmes and hill area programmes (Fifth Plan, 1974-79): planning shifted from sectors towards backward places.
• Growth pole theory (beyond NCERT): proposed by French economist François Perroux in the 1950s, with his main paper in 1955.
• The state sets up a propulsive industry at one point. This is a large, fast-growing, technically advanced industry with strong buying and selling links to other firms (for example, a steel plant).
• Linked industries, services and jobs gather around it. This is called polarisation.
• Growth is then supposed to spread to the area around it. This is the spread effect, or "trickle down".

• The risk is the backwash effect: the pole pulls labour, capital and raw materials out of the area around it instead of sending growth in.

• Measuring imbalance (beyond NCERT): planners use three measures together.

• Per capita state income is the Net State Domestic Product per person.
• HDI (Human Development Index) combines health, education and income.

• MPI (Multidimensional Poverty Index) counts people who are poor in health, education and standard of living at the same time.

• District-based planning today: the Aspirational Districts Programme uses the district as the unit. Each district is ranked against its own past progress, not by sector [4].

Where it occurs

• Resource-rich but backward regions (paradox of plenty):
• Chota Nagpur Plateau covers Jharkhand and nearby parts of Odisha, Chhattisgarh and West Bengal. It is India's richest mineral belt, with coal, iron ore, bauxite and mica, yet it is home to a large, poor tribal population.

• KBK region of Odisha covers the old undivided Kalahandi, Bolangir and Koraput districts. It has forests, minerals and the Indravati and Upper Kolab river basins, but it has long been known for poverty, hunger and drought.

• Areas held back by physical barriers:

• Hills: the Himalaya, the North-East, and the Western and Eastern Ghats.
• Desert: the Thar in western Rajasthan.

• Drought-prone areas: the rain-shadow parts of the Deccan, western Rajasthan, Bundelkhand and KBK.

• Colonial enclaves:

• Port cities: Kolkata, Mumbai and Chennai.

• Plantation and mining enclaves: tea in Assam, and coal in Raniganj–Jharia.

• Growth poles (steel towns):

• Second Plan era: Bhilai (Chhattisgarh, built with Soviet help), Rourkela (Odisha, West German help) and Durgapur (West Bengal, British help).

• Later: Bokaro (Jharkhand, Soviet help).

• Imbalance shown by MPI data:

• MPI poverty fell from 29.17% (2013-14) to 11.28% (2022-23) [2][3].
• The largest falls in the number of poor were in Uttar Pradesh (5.94 crore), Bihar (3.77 crore), Madhya Pradesh (2.30 crore) and Rajasthan (1.87 crore) [2].

• The north-central and eastern belt is still the main zone of deprivation.

• Aspirational Districts Programme (ADP):

• It is run by NITI Aayog, which replaced the Planning Commission in 2015.
• The Prime Minister launched it in January 2018 to quickly change 112 of the most under-developed districts [4].
• A UNDP appraisal (2021) praised the ADP and recommended copying it in other countries [5][6].

Don't confuse with

• Sectoral planning: it is sector-specific and plans one branch of the economy across the whole country. Regional planning is area-specific and plans all sectors inside one backward area.
• Growth pole strategy: this is only one tool of regional planning. It puts growth at a single point (such as Bhilai or Bokaro). Regional planning is the wider aim of developing the whole backward region.
• Industrial corridors (such as the Delhi–Mumbai Industrial Corridor): they follow "concentrated growth" logic along a line. They do not choose areas because those areas are backward.
• Resource-rich region: a region rich in resources is not the same as a developed one. Chota Nagpur and KBK are rich in resources but backward, because they lack technology and investment.

Prelims Hooks

• Regional planning uses an area-specific approach, and sectoral planning uses a sector-specific approach (NCERT).
• Target area and hill area programmes began in the Fifth Plan (1974-79).
• KBK stands for Kalahandi–Bolangir–Koraput in Odisha, a resource-rich but backward region.
• Growth pole theory comes from François Perroux (1950s). Its key terms are propulsive industry, spread (trickle-down) and backwash. Steel towns and their states: Bhilai–Chhattisgarh, Rourkela–Odisha, Durgapur–West Bengal, Bokaro–Jharkhand.
• Aspirational Districts Programme facts [4]:
• Launched in January 2018.
• Covers 112 districts.
• Tracks 49 KPIs under 5 themes.
• Health & Nutrition and Education each carry 30%.

• Works through the 3 Cs: Convergence, Collaboration and Competition (a monthly "delta ranking").

• Trap: "Resource-rich regions are always developed" is false. Technology and investment also matter.

Mains Points

• Causes of regional imbalance (GS-I):
• A resource base without technology or capital. Use Chota Nagpur and KBK as examples of the paradox of plenty.
• Physical barriers: hills, the Thar and drought zones.
• The colonial enclave pattern of ports, plantations and mines.

• Agglomeration in metros, which keeps adding to the lead of regions that are already ahead.

• Policy response:

• National growth in power, steel and irrigation did not reach backward places. This led to the Fifth Plan's (1974-79) target area and hill area programmes.
• It later led to the district-based ADP of 2018, which uses 49 KPIs and a delta ranking [4].

• To show the problem, use per capita income, HDI and MPI together. MPI shows fast falls in UP and Bihar between 2013-14 and 2022-23, but the north-central and eastern belt still holds most of the poor [2][3].

• Growth pole critique:

• Bhilai, Rourkela, Bokaro and Durgapur became islands of growth. Their tribal hinterlands suffered backwash: people lost land and were displaced, and skilled jobs went mostly to migrants.
• Lesson for today's industrial corridors: build local linkages, skills and resettlement into the project from the start.

Related concepts

• Sectoral planning
• Growth pole theory

Read more

• Sectoral and regional planning; why regional imbalances arise