First Five Year Plan
Topic: Politics of Planned Development · NCERT: Class 12, Ch 3 "Politics of Planned Development"
Meaning
The First Five Year Plan ran from 1951 to 1956. Its aim was to pull the economy out of the cycle of poverty. It put agriculture first, because Partition had hit farming hardest. It spent large sums on dams and irrigation. It named unequal land ownership as the main obstacle to farm growth and made land reform the key to development. The economist K.N. Raj argued that India should "hasten slowly", because very fast development might endanger democracy.
Example
The Bhakra Nangal Dam was a major investment under this plan. Beyond NCERT, the reason is that canal-irrigated West Punjab and jute-growing East Bengal had gone to Pakistan, so India had to import food.
Don't confuse with
- Second Five Year Plan (1956-61): it moved the focus from agriculture to heavy industry under P.C. Mahalanobis.