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Sunday, June 9, 2013

First Class of Foundation Course on 9 June, 2013: Excerpts of the Lecture Materials

What is economic planning?

Economic planning as a technique of achieving certain self-defined and predetermined goals within a given period of time has been very popular amongst the policy makers. Planning is a sort of conceiving, initiating, regulating and controlling economic activity by the State according to set priorities with a view to achieving well defined objectives within a given time span. Planning is a sort of making of major economic decisions on the basis of a comprehensive survey of the economic system as a whole.

In his book ‘Problems of Economic Planning’, E. F. M. Dublin has defined economic planning as follows: ‘To plan is to act with a purpose to choose and choice is the essence of economic planning.’

In the words of Dickinson, ‘Economic planning is the making of major economic decisions of a determinate authority on the basis of comprehensive survey of the economy as a whole.’

The planning commission of India is of the opinion that planning is essentially a way of organizing and utilizing resources to get maximum advantage in terms of defined social ends. The two main constituents of the concept of planning are:
(a) system of ends to be pursued and b) knowledge as to available resources and their optimum allocation to achieve these ends. The availability or resources conditions the ends to be efficiently achieved.

Thus, we can identify the following characteristic feature of economic planning:
(i) formation of objectives or goals;
(ii) fixing targets to be achieved and priorities of productions for each sector of the economy;
(iii) mobilization of the financial and other resources required for the execution of the plan;
(iv) creation of the necessary organization or agency for the execution of the plan;

(v) creating assessment machinery for assessing the progress made;

                                                                                      (For more: keep visiting wbcsstudymat.blogspot.in)

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