onomi      lannin           4.5
     1. Regional Planning                                       through the introduction of economic planning
     It was at the regional level that planning was used        at the national level. The nature and scope of
     as a part of development policy by any country             Soviet planning (called the Gosplan) will have its
     for the first time. It was the USA which started           direct or indirect bearings on all those countries
     the first regional planning after the Tennessee            which went for economic planning, be state or
     Valley Authority (TVA) was set up in 1916—                 capitalist or mixed economies. India was to have
     for a large-scale rehabilitation in south-eastern          direct influence of Soviet planning on its planning
     USA covering parts of seven states. With the               process. In the first Soviet Plan, heavy industries
     primary aim of flood control, soil conservation            was favoured over light industry, and consumer
     and providing electricity, the TVA/the regional            goods were the residual sector after all the other
     plan was also involved in many related activities          priorities had been met. We see the same emphasis
     such as industrial development, forestry, wildlife         in the Indian planning process.11 The Soviet
     conservation, town planning, construction of road          model of economic planning spread to the East
     and rail, encouraging sound agricultural practices         European countries, especially after World War II
     and malaria control in the defined region.9 The            and found its purest form of such planning in the
     US experience of regional planning became                  People’s Republic of China (1949). During the
     such a success in realising its well-defined goals         early 1940s, the concept of national planning was
     that it emerged as a role model and an object of           borrowed by France and the world saw national
     inspiration for many countries around the world            planning being initiated by a hitherto capitalist
     in the coming decades—the Damodar Valley                   economy as well as by a non-centralised political
     Corporation (DVC) in India (1948), the Volta               system (i.e., democratic system). France started
     River Project in Ghana (1966), etc.                        economic planning at the national level after
     2. National Planning                                       announcing itself as a mixed economy.
     The official experiment in the area of national
                                                                   types of plannIng
     planning is rooted in the Bolshevik Revolution
     of Russia (1917)—the Soviet Union. Dissatisfied            After the first national planning was started by the
     with the pace of industrialisation, it was in              Soviet Union, many more countries followed it,
     1928 that Joseph Stalin announced its policy               but with variations in their methods and practices.
     of central planning for the Soviet Union. The              Though there are many variants of planning the
     collectivisation of agriculture and forced-draft           most important one is on the basis of the type
     industrialisation were other radical new policy            of economic organisation (i.e., state economy,
     initiatives announced by Stalin besides economic           mixed economy). During the course of evolution,
     planning in 1928.10 The Soviet Union went for its          planning has been classified into two types, based
     first five year plan for the period 1928–33 and the
     world was to have its first experience of national           11.  Rakesh Mohan ‘Industrial Policy and Controls’ in the
                                                                       Bimal Jalan (eds), The Indian Economy: Problems
     planning. The famous Soviet slogan “great leap
                                                                       and Prospects, Penguin Books, New Delhi, 2004.,
     forward” was initiated for rapid industrialisation                p. 101. Also see Bipan Chandra et. al., India After
                                                                       Independence, Penguin Books, New Delhi, 2000,
         9.   leong, G.C. and Morgan, G.C., Human and Economic         pp. 341–42, as well as A. Vaidyanathan, ‘The Indian
              Geography, oxford University Press, oxford, 1982,        Economy Since Independence (1947–70)’ in Dharma
              p. 145.                                                  kumar (ed.), The Cambridge Economic History of
       10.    Alec Nove, An Economic History of the USSR, 3rd          India, Vol. II, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge,
              ed., Penguin Books, Baltimore, USA, 1990, p. 139.        1983, pp. 949–50.