Sectoral and regional planning; why regional imbalances arise

Detail

1. Planning: the basic idea

• Planning means thinking about a job in advance, then drawing up and carrying out a set of steps to reach a goal.
• In India, planning is done in two main ways: sectoral planning and regional planning.
• Why both are needed: development never happens evenly across a country.
• Some places grow fast.
• Others fall behind.
• Planning only by sector cannot close this gap between places.

2. Sectoral planning vs regional planning

Feature	Sectoral planning	Regional planning
Unit of planning	A sector (one branch of the economy)	A region or area (a place)
What it covers	Schemes for agriculture, irrigation, manufacturing, power, construction, transport, communication, social infrastructure and services	All sectors together, inside one chosen area
Main question	"How do we grow this sector?"	"How do we develop this place?"
Gaps between places	Does not deal with them directly	Its main aim is to reduce regional imbalance
Approach	Sector-specific	Area-specific (NCERT MCQ answer)
Indian examples	Plan spending on power or irrigation across the whole country	Target area programmes, hill area programmes, drought-prone area programmes, Aspirational Districts

• Sectoral planning: the government plans and runs schemes for one sector at a time, such as power or transport. It does not ask which districts or states are being left behind.
• Regional planning: planning with a spatial perspective (looking at where development happens, not only what is produced). It chooses backward areas and gives them special help.
• Key point: a country can grow well sector by sector and still have deep gaps between its regions. Regional planning is the answer to this problem.

3. Why regional imbalances arise

(a) Resource base: needed, but not enough on its own

• Development depends partly on the resource base of a place (minerals, soil, water, forests).
• But resources need technology and investment before they turn into wealth.
• No technology or capital → resources stay in the ground or leave the region as raw material.
• Profits, jobs and processing industries settle elsewhere.

• The region stays poor even though it is rich in resources.

• Paradox of plenty (rich land, poor people):

• Chota Nagpur Plateau (Jharkhand and nearby parts of Odisha, Chhattisgarh and West Bengal): India's richest mineral belt (coal, iron ore, bauxite, mica), yet home to a large, poor tribal population.
• KBK region of Odisha (the old undivided Kalahandi, Bolangir, Koraput districts): has forests, minerals and the Indravati and Upper Kolab river basins, but has long been known for poverty, hunger and drought.

(b) Physical barriers

• Hills and mountains (Himalaya, North-East, Western and Eastern Ghats):
• Steep slopes → roads and railways are costly to build.

• Weak links to markets → little industry.

• Deserts (Thar in western Rajasthan): little water, few people spread over large areas, poor soils.

• Drought-prone areas (rain-shadow parts of the Deccan, western Rajasthan, Bundelkhand, KBK):
• Rain fails often → harvests fail.

• Farm incomes swing from year to year → little money to invest.

• These barriers are the reason for target area and hill area programmes (Fifth Plan, 1974-79).

(c) Colonial investment patterns

• British investment went to:
• Port cities (Kolkata, Mumbai, Chennai) for trade.
• Plantation and mining enclaves (tea in Assam, coal in Raniganj–Jharia).

• Railways built to carry raw materials to ports, not to join up the interior.

• Result: at Independence (1947), modern industry and infrastructure were packed into a few coastal points. The interior stayed backward.

(d) Agglomeration in metros

• Agglomeration means industries and services crowding into the same place because they gain from being close together: shared markets, skilled workers, banks, ports and power.
• New firms go where old firms already are.
• These places grow faster still.

• Backward regions find it hard to attract investment.

• This is a cumulative process: once a region is ahead, it tends to stay ahead.

4. Measuring imbalance (beyond NCERT)

• Per capita state income (Net State Domestic Product per person): the most common money measure. It shows gaps between richer states (Goa, Delhi, Haryana, the southern states) and poorer ones (Bihar, Uttar Pradesh, Jharkhand).
• HDI (Human Development Index): combines health (life expectancy), education (years of schooling) and income. Kerala ranks high; the BIMARU-type states ranked low.
• MPI (Multidimensional Poverty Index): counts people who are poor across several areas of life at once (health, education, standard of living), not just poor in income.
• NITI Aayog's discussion paper Multidimensional Poverty in India since 2005-06 (January 2024): MPI poverty fell from 29.17% (2013-14) to 11.28% (2022-23), a drop of 17.89 percentage points [2][3].
• 24.82 crore people escaped multidimensional poverty between 2013-14 and 2022-23 [2][3].
• States with the largest fall in the number of poor: Uttar Pradesh (5.94 crore) > Bihar (3.77 crore) > Madhya Pradesh (2.30 crore) > Rajasthan (1.87 crore) [2].
• Reading the data: the biggest falls came in the states that had the most poor people. The north-central and eastern belt is still the main zone of deprivation.
• The 2013-14 and 2022-23 figures are estimates. They were projected using compound growth rates between survey years, because no data exists for the years in between [2].

5. Growth pole theory (beyond NCERT)

• Growth pole theory: put forward by French economist François Perroux in the 1950s (main paper 1955).
• Core idea: growth does not appear everywhere at once. It appears at certain points, or "poles", with different strength.

• Propulsive industry: a large, fast-growing, technically advanced industry with strong links to other firms. It buys inputs from them and sells outputs to them.

• How it is supposed to work:

• The state places a propulsive industry (for example, a steel plant) at one point.
• Linked industries, services and jobs gather around it (polarisation).

• Growth then spreads outward to the surrounding region (spread effect, or "trickle down").

• Indian application:

• Public-sector steel towns of the Second Plan era: Bhilai (Chhattisgarh, with Soviet help), Rourkela (Odisha, West German help), Durgapur (West Bengal, British help); later Bokaro (Jharkhand, Soviet help).

• Industrial estates and growth centres in backward districts.

• Outcome: weak spread, strong backwash

• Backwash effect: the pole pulls labour, capital and raw materials out of the surrounding area instead of sending growth into it.
• The steel towns became modern islands. Tribal people in the hinterland lost land to plants and mines, and skilled jobs went mostly to migrants.

• Result: the pole grew, but the Chota Nagpur–Odisha tribal belt around it stayed poor.

• Link: today's industrial corridors (e.g. Delhi–Mumbai Industrial Corridor) follow a similar "concentrated growth" logic, spread along a line rather than at a point. See manufacturing-industries-india.

6. From regional planning to Aspirational Districts

• Fifth Plan (1974-79): target area and hill area programmes. Planning shifted from sectors towards backward places.
• NITI Aayog (2015) replaced the Planning Commission.
• Aspirational Districts Programme (ADP): launched by the Prime Minister in January 2018 to quickly change 112 of the most under-developed districts [4].
• 3 Cs: Convergence (of Central and State schemes), Collaboration (of Central and State officers and District Collectors), and Competition (monthly "delta ranking" of districts) [4].
• 49 Key Performance Indicators under 5 themes [4]:

Theme	Weight	Indicators
Health & Nutrition	30%	13
Education	30%	8
Agriculture & Water Resources	20%	10
Financial Inclusion & Skill Development	10%	11
Basic Infrastructure	10%	7

• A UNDP appraisal (2021) praised the ADP and recommended copying it in other countries [5][6].
• Why it is regional planning: the unit is the district, and districts are ranked against their own past progress ("delta"), not by sector.

Prelims Hooks

• Regional planning = area-specific approach. Sectoral planning = sector-specific approach.
• Sectoral planning covers agriculture, irrigation, manufacturing, power, construction, transport, communication, social infrastructure and services. It does not directly address gaps between places.
• KBK = Kalahandi–Bolangir–Koraput (Odisha). It is a resource-rich but backward region.
• Growth pole theory: François Perroux, 1950s. Key terms: propulsive industry, spread (trickle-down), backwash.
• Steel towns and states: Bhilai–Chhattisgarh, Rourkela–Odisha, Durgapur–West Bengal, Bokaro–Jharkhand.
• MPI poverty: 29.17% (2013-14) → 11.28% (2022-23); 24.82 crore escaped. Largest fall in number of poor: UP > Bihar > MP > Rajasthan [2].
• Aspirational Districts Programme: January 2018, 112 districts, 49 KPIs, 5 themes. Health & Nutrition and Education carry 30% each [4].
• Trap: "Resource-rich regions are always developed": false. Technology and investment matter too (Chota Nagpur, KBK).

Mains Points

• Causes of regional imbalance (GS-I): resource base without technology or capital; physical barriers (hills, Thar, drought zones); colonial enclave pattern of ports, plantations and mines; and cumulative agglomeration in metros. Use Chota Nagpur and KBK as examples of the "paradox of plenty".
• Limits of sectoral planning: national growth in power, steel or irrigation did not reach backward places. This led to the Fifth Plan's (1974-79) target area and hill area programmes, and later to the district-based ADP of 2018 (49 KPIs, delta ranking) [4].
• Growth pole critique: Bhilai, Rourkela, Bokaro and Durgapur became islands of growth, with backwash in their tribal hinterlands (land loss, displacement, migrant-held jobs). The lesson for industrial corridors is to build local linkages, skills and resettlement into the project.
• Measuring imbalance: 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].