National Planning Committee

Topic: Politics of Planned Development · NCERT: Beyond NCERT

Meaning

The National Planning Committee (NPC) was the Indian National Congress's own body for drawing up an economic plan for India. Subhas Chandra Bose set it up as Congress president, and it was inaugurated in Bombay on 17 December 1938, with Jawaharlal Nehru as chair [1]. It matters because the NPC was the first national attempt at planning by Indians. It shows that the Planning Commission (1950) grew out of the national movement. It was not a sudden invention.

Explanation

How it was set up

• It was a Congress body, not a government body.
• It had no legal power.

• It drew its authority from the Congress party.

• Bose's initiative:

• Bose became Congress president in 1938. At the Haripura session (February 1938), he spoke about the need for national planning [1].
• He then set up the NPC himself [1].

• He used the authority of the Congress and the expertise of the Congress governments in seven provinces (formed after the 1937 elections) [1].

• Chair: Bose deliberately picked Jawaharlal Nehru. He offered Nehru the chair by a letter in October 1938 [1].

• Secretary: the economist K.T. Shah. He was Honorary General Secretary and edited the Committee's reports [1][2].

Who sat on it

• The NPC brought together industrialists, scientists, economists and Congress leaders [2]:
• industrialists Sir Purshottamdas Thakurdas, Walchand Hirachand, A.D. Shroff and Ambalal Sarabhai [2];
• scientist Dr Meghnad Saha and engineer Sir M. Visvesvaraya [2];
• Gulzarilal Nanda, Vijayalakshmi Pandit and labour leader V.V. Giri [2];

• Gandhian economist J.C. Kumarappa, who resigned from it [2].

• Why the mix matters: it shows the "left to right" consensus at work. Groups that disagreed on many things all accepted that India needed a plan.

Its approach

• It favoured broad industrialisation, meaning many large industries across the economy [3].
• Gandhi and his followers wanted traditional home crafts such as spinning instead.
• This was an early split inside the national movement over what kind of development India should have [3].

How it worked, and why it stopped

• Step 1: it began work early in 1939. It sent questionnaires to its sub-committees (smaller groups, each covering one sector) [2].
• Step 2: the sub-committees sent interim and final reports [2].
• Step 3: the full committee discussed these at plenary sessions (meetings of all members) in 1940 [2].
• The stop: at the end of 1940, Nehru was arrested and jailed for a long term, so the work was suspended [2].
• Other limits:
• During the war, statistics (official figures) were hard to get [2].

• Some members left to join the government's wartime bodies [2].

• Late reports: many reports came out only later. For example, the sub-committee report on River Training and Irrigation, edited by K.T. Shah, was published in December 1947 [2].

In the Constitution and practice

• No place in the Constitution: the NPC was a party committee set up before Independence. No article, Act or amendment created it.
• Why the 1930s favoured planning:
• The Soviet Union seemed to be industrialising fast through Five-Year Plans.
• The Great Depression made people doubt free markets.

• Nationalists blamed colonial rule for India's poverty. They wanted a free Indian state to lead the way out of it.

• What followed it (the chain of planning bodies):

• 1944: the colonial government set up a Planning and Development Department under Sir Ardeshir Dalal.
• October 1946: the Interim Government set up the Advisory Planning Board, chaired by K.C. Neogy. It took over from the NPC and paved the way for the Planning Commission [1].
• March 1950: the Planning Commission was set up with Nehru as chair. It was created by an executive resolution of the Union government (a government order, not an Act of Parliament).

• 2015: NITI Aayog replaced the Planning Commission.

• Lasting effect:

• Nehru chaired both the NPC and the Planning Commission. This carried the NPC's ideas, and its stress on industry, into free India's Five-Year Plans.
• NCERT says the Planning Commission "was not a sudden invention". Its roots go back to the NPC.

Don't confuse with

• Planning Commission (1950): a government body set up by an executive resolution after Independence. The NPC was a Congress party body set up in 1938, with no government power.
• Advisory Planning Board (1946): set up by the Interim Government under K.C. Neogy. It took over from the NPC [1]. Nehru did not chair it.
• Bombay Plan (1944): a plan written by industrialists such as Tata and Birla. The NPC was a Congress body chaired by Nehru, although some members (Thakurdas, Shroff) took part in both.
• Planning and Development Department (1944): a colonial government department under Sir Ardeshir Dalal. It was not a nationalist body like the NPC.

Prelims Hooks

• NPC: inaugurated in Bombay on 17 December 1938, on the initiative of Subhas Chandra Bose as Congress president [1].
• Chair vs. Secretary trap: Nehru was chair, and K.T. Shah was Honorary General Secretary [1][2]. Bose set it up but did not chair it.
• Bose first raised national planning at the Haripura session (February 1938) [1].
• Member who resigned: Gandhian economist J.C. Kumarappa [2]. Other members included Meghnad Saha, M. Visvesvaraya and V.V. Giri [2].
• Why its work stopped: Nehru was arrested at the end of 1940 [2]. Some sub-committee reports came out only in 1947 [2].
• Successor body: the Advisory Planning Board (October 1946), under K.C. Neogy, took over from the NPC [1].

Mains Points

• Indian roots of planning (GS-I):
• The line runs NPC (1938) → Planning and Development Department (1944) → Advisory Planning Board (1946) → Planning Commission (1950).

• So Indian planning grew out of the national movement. It was not simply copied from the Soviet Union.

• Consensus without uniformity:

• Industrialists, scientists, labour leaders and Congress leaders all sat on the NPC, so everyone agreed that India should plan.
• The NPC favoured industrialisation, while Gandhians wanted village crafts. Kumarappa resigned [2][3].

• This split came back after 1950 as the debate between heavy industry and agriculture or village industry, for example over the Second Plan (1956).

• Limits of planning without state power:

• A party committee could study problems and write reports, but it could not carry out a plan.
• Wartime arrests and the lack of statistics stopped its work [2].
• This showed that planning needed a state-backed body, a need later met by the Planning Commission.

Related concepts

• Economic planning
• Bombay Plan
• Gandhian Plan
• People's Plan

Read more

• The planning consensus before 1950: the NPC, the Bombay Plan and alternatives