With reference to Nehruvian perspective of planning and economic development, examine how the early phase of economic planning in India has laid the foundation of modern India’s economic growth. (Answer in 250 words)

- With reference to Nehruvian perspective of planning and economic development, examine how the early phase of economic planning in India has laid the foundation of modern India’s economic growth. (Answer in 250 words)
Introduction
The early plans did not deliver fast growth and were never designed to. They were built to create a capital goods base, a scientific establishment and a savings rate, the preconditions on which India's later growth ran.

Body

1. The institutional frame: The Planning Commission of 1950, the Industrial Policy Resolutions of 1948 and 1956 reserving the commanding heights, the Industries Act of 1951 and the Avadi resolution's socialistic pattern gave the state the instruments Articles 39(b) and 39(c) contemplated.
2. The strategy: After a First Plan focused on irrigation and agriculture, the Mahalanobis model of the Second Plan put capital goods first, at Bhilai, Rourkela and Durgapur and through BHEL, HMT and ONGC, accepting deferred consumption for future capacity.
3. The human capital it created: The IITs from 1951, the CSIR laboratories, the Atomic Energy Commission under Bhabha and the space programme under Sarabhai, framed by the Scientific Policy Resolution of 1958. The software and pharmaceutical exports of the 1990s drew directly on that stock.
4. Savings and financial deepening: Gross domestic savings rose from roughly nine per cent to fifteen, aided by the nationalisation of the Imperial Bank and of life insurance and by new development finance institutions.
5. Where it failed: Agriculture was neglected until the mid-1960s crisis forced the Green Revolution; primary education and land reform were left undone, as Dreze and Sen argue; and the licensing system Bhagwati and Desai attacked throttled the industry it protected.

Conclusion
Examined honestly, the Nehruvian phase built both the foundation and the cage. Liberalisation in 1991 succeeded because that base existed, and became necessary because the controls had outlived their purpose.