Resource planning in India

Detail

1. What resource planning is and why India needs it

• Resource planning: a plan to use resources wisely. It decides which resources exist, how much to use, who uses them and how fast, so that resources are not wasted and are not used up too early.
• Sustainable use (the Class 8 idea): use resources carefully so that the needs of people today are met and enough is left for future generations.
• Why India needs planning: India's resources are spread very unevenly.
• Some regions are self-sufficient in a resource. Some are acutely short of it.

• The same region can be rich in one resource and poor in another.

• Examples of uneven availability (NCERT Class 10):

Region	Rich in	Short of
Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh	Minerals and coal	— (rich in resources but still poor)
Arunachal Pradesh	Water	Infrastructure (roads, power, markets)
Rajasthan	Solar and wind energy	Water
Ladakh (cold desert)	Cultural heritage	Water, infrastructure, some important minerals

• Levels of planning: because needs differ from place to place, planning must happen at four levels: national, state, regional and local.

2. The three steps of resource planning (Class 10)

1. Identification and inventory - An inventory is a complete list of what exists, how much and where. - It is built by surveying (measuring the land), mapping, and estimating each resource's quality (qualitative) and quantity (quantitative).

2. Planning structure - Make a system that can carry out the plan. - It needs the right technology, skills and institutions (bodies such as ministries, boards and local committees).

3. Matching with national plans - Match resource development plans with India's overall national development plans, so that work on mining, forests, water and land supports the same national goals.

• India has worked on these goals since the First Five Year Plan (1951).

3. Step 1 in practice: the inventory agencies

These agencies do the survey, mapping and estimation work in Step 1.

Agency	Year	What it inventories
Survey of India (SoI)	1767	Topographical (land surface) mapping of the whole country. It is the oldest scientific department of the Government of India [3]
Geological Survey of India (GSI)	1851	Rocks and minerals. It was the second survey agency set up after SoI [3]
Indian Bureau of Mines (IBM)	1948	Mineral resources, mining plans, conservation of minerals
Forest Survey of India (FSI)	1 June 1981	Forest and tree cover [4]
Central Ground Water Board (CGWB)	—	Groundwater assessments (how much is recharged, how much is pumped out)
Soil and Land Use Survey of India	—	Soils and land capability
NRSC/ISRO	—	Satellite maps of land use and land cover, wastelands and land degradation atlases
Census of India	Every 10 years	Human resources: population, literacy, workers

• FSI's history:
• FSI took over from the Pre-investment Survey of Forest Resources (PISFR). PISFR was a project started in 1965 by the Government of India with support from the FAO and UNDP [4].

• FSI has published the India State of Forest Report (ISFR) every two years (biennially) since 1987 [4].

• Remote sensing (collecting information about the earth from satellites, without touching it) lets NRSC map large, hard-to-reach areas such as the Himalaya and the Thar again and again. This shows how land use changes over time.

4. Step 2 in practice: the planning structure

• National level
• The Planning Commission was set up in 1950 and made the Five Year Plans.
• It worked until 31 December 2014. A Cabinet Secretariat Resolution of 1 January 2015 replaced it with NITI Aayog (National Institution for Transforming India) [2].

• The Resolution said the Indian economy had changed. It described NITI Aayog as a catalyst (something that speeds up change) for development, working through a "think tank" model rather than giving out funds [2].

• State level: state planning boards.

• District level: District Planning Committees under Art. 243ZD. A DPC brings the plans of the panchayats and municipalities in a district together into one draft district development plan.
• Village level: Gram Panchayat Development Plans (GPDP). Each village makes its own plan for local resources such as ponds, common land and local roads.
• Result: a chain from village to nation. This chain is the local → regional → state → national planning that NCERT asks for.
• (Indian planning economics is covered in the economy subject. See also planning-sustainable-development.)

5. Class 10's caution: having resources is not enough

• Availability alone does not bring development.
• Without matching technology and institutions, resource-rich regions stay backward.

• Example: Jharkhand and Chhattisgarh have a lot of coal and minerals but remain among the poorer states.

• Development also depends on two more things:

• Quality of human resources: skills, education and health of the people.

• Historical experience of the people.

• The colonial lesson:

• Rich resources in colonies attracted foreign invaders.
• The colonising countries had better technology, and this helped them exploit the resources of the colonies.

• In India this caused a colonial drain: raw materials and wealth flowed to Britain, and Indian regions did not develop.

• Lesson for planning: resources become useful only when technology, institutions and skilled people are added to them. That is why Step 2 (planning structure) matters as much as Step 1 (inventory).

6. Region-based resource planning (Mains link)

• Target area planning: plans made for one type of backward region instead of the whole country.
• Hill Area Development Programme: for hill regions whose resources and problems are different from the plains.

• Drought Prone Area Programme and Command Area Development for dry areas and canal-irrigated areas (NCERT Class 12).

• Aspirational Districts Programme (ADP)

• Launched by the Prime Minister in January 2018 for the 112 least-developed districts [5].
• Districts are ranked on improvement across 49 Key Performance Indicators under 5 themes: Health and Nutrition; Education; Agriculture and Water Resources; Financial Inclusion and Skill Development; Infrastructure [5].
• It works through 3 Cs:
  • Convergence: Central and State schemes are brought together.
  • Collaboration: Central and State officers work with District Collectors.
  • Competition: districts compete through a monthly delta ranking, a ranking based on how much a district improved, not where it started [5].
• Progress is tracked live on the Champions of Change portal, set up in April 2018 [5].
• Why it is resource planning: it is the Class 10 idea of local, region-based planning, run with data. Inventory (KPIs) → institutions (district teams) → link to national goals (SDGs).

Prelims Hooks

• Three steps of resource planning (Class 10), in order: identification and inventory → planning structure → matching with national development plans.
• India has pursued resource-planning goals since the First Five Year Plan (1951).
• Oldest scientific department of the Government of India is the Survey of India (1767), not the GSI (1851) [3].
• Order of setting up: SoI (1767) → GSI (1851) → IBM (1948) → Planning Commission (1950) → FSI (1981) → NITI Aayog (2015).
• FSI (1981) grew out of the PISFR (1965), supported by FAO and UNDP. The ISFR is biennial, since 1987 [4].
• NITI Aayog was created by a Cabinet Secretariat Resolution (an executive order), not by an Act of Parliament or the Constitution, on 1 January 2015 [2].
• District Planning Committee is in Art. 243ZD (Part IXA, Municipalities), not Part IX (Panchayats). This is a common trap.
• Pairs from Class 10: Rajasthan has solar and wind energy but lacks water; Arunachal Pradesh has water but lacks infrastructure; Ladakh has cultural heritage but lacks water and infrastructure.
• ADP: January 2018, 112 districts, 49 KPIs, 5 themes, delta ranking [5].

Mains Points

• Why resource-rich regions stay poor (the "resource curse" in India): the mineral belt of Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh and Odisha is rich in resources but has weak institutions, low skills and people displaced by mining. Class 10's point applies here: availability without technology and institutions brings no development. District Mineral Foundations and the ADP try to send resource income back into these districts.
• Planning needs good data: SoI, GSI, FSI, CGWB and NRSC carry out Step 1 (inventory). Regular reports such as the biennial ISFR [4] and satellite land-use maps help find degradation early. Planning without fresh data cannot be sustainable.
• From top-down to bottom-up planning: the Planning Commission (1950) gave way to NITI Aayog (2015) and its cooperative federalism [2]. DPCs (Art. 243ZD) and GPDPs push planning down to the local level. This fits Agenda 21 (1992), which asks for local-level sustainable development, and SDG 15 (life on land).
• Region-based planning works: hill-area and drought-prone-area programmes, and the ADP's convergence, collaboration and competition model [5], show that planning for one type of region fits India's uneven spread of resources better than one plan for the whole country.