Five Year Plans of India (1951-2017)

Blog Last Updated on 8 months by Siliveru Rakesh

The Indian economy has been developing from the starting stage of Five-year plans or Assessment plans in India. These five-year plans of India target different sectors in each plan and tries to improve their sector growth to the targeted growth rate level. This five-year plans of India we achieved up to 8% of GDP growth rate and we are continuing to improve India’s GDP to 9%.

In this post am giving notes on “Five Year plans of India”.  In this, we discuss the different five-year plans of India and their objectives, growth rates and their improvement in the development of the Indian economy.

Important Notes from Five Year Plan:

1. First Five Year plan (1951-56):

  • This plan was based on the Harrod-Domar Plan Model.
  • The community development program was launched in 1952.
  • This plan focuses on the agriculture sector, price stability in the Indian economy, power, and transportation systems.
  • This Plane became successful in developing agriculture, power and transportation sectors with a growth of 3.6% which is more than the targeted growth.

2. Second Five Year plan (1956-61):

  • This Plan is also called as P.C.Mahalanobis Plan is named after a well-known economist in the world.
  • It mainly focused on rapid industrialization growth in India.
  • During this Plan, prices in India are increased by 30% against all industrial goods.
  • Advocated for huge imports through foreign loans.
  • This plan got 4.1% of the growth rate on the Indian economy.

3. Third Five-year plan (1961-66):

  • This plan was also called as ” Gadgil Yojana ” Plan
  • To make India a “self-reliant” and “self-generating” economy.
  • This plan becomes Complete failure in reaching the targets due to sudden events between- Chinese aggression(1962), Indo-Pak war (1965), severe drought (1965-66) due to this incident this plan didn’t achieve its 5.6% growth rate on the Indian economy.

4.  Three annual plans (1966-69):

  • The duration from 1966-69 is also called as “Plan Holiday for 3 Years”
  • The main focus of this plan is to Recover economic growth from previous failed 3rd Plan due to the Indo-Pak war.
  • During these plans, a whole new agricultural strategy was implemented.
  • It involves the wide-spread distribution of high-yielding varieties of seeds, extent use of fertilizers, exploitation of irrigation and soil conservation.

5. Fourth Five Year plan (1969-74):

  • The main objective of the Fourth Five-year plan is to achieve growth in agricultural sector and also to enable improvement in other sectors’ growth. 
  • The main slogan of the Fourth five-year plan is “ Garibi hatao” which is stated by Indira Gandhi during the 1971 elections.
  • Although the First 2 years of Fourth Five year plans gave record production results last 3 years are disappointed in the agriculture sector because of bad monsoon weather.
  • The fourth five-year plan target was to achieve 5.7% of growth but it didn’t reach the mark. Fourth five-year plans achieved only 3.30% of growth.

6. Fifth Five Year plan (1974-79):

  • Fifth Five-year plan is prepared by D.D.Dhar.
  • The main objective of the Fifth Five Year Plan is to increase Growth rate in agriculture sector, next preference Industrial sector, and Mines
  • Removal of poverty (Garibi Hatao)
  • Attainment of self-reliance
  • Promotion of high rate of growth, better distribution of income
  • This plan is terminated in 1978, which should be continued until 1979 because the Janata party government rises to power in central.

7.Rolling plan (1978-80):

  • There were 2 sixth plans in Rolling Five Year Plans.
  • Janata government started a Five-year plan duration from 1978-83 but the Janata Govt lasted for 2 years in Power. So this plan was terminated in 1980.
  • Congress Government returned to power in Central elections in 1980 and launched a different Five-year plan in 1980.

8. Sixth Five Year plan (1980-85):

  • The main objective of the Sixth five-year plan is to increase national income.
  • Modernization of technology and ensuring a continuous decrease in poverty and  unemployment
  • Population control through family planning.
  • It’s targeted Growth is 5.2% but it achieved 5.66% which is more than targeted growth.

9. Seventh Five Year plan (1985-90):

  • The main objective of the Seventh Five year plan is to gain Rapid growth in food grains production
  • Increased employment opportunities and productivity
  • Seventh five-year plan targeted growth is 5% but it achieved almost 6.01%. This plan is very successful in improving agricultural and industrial growth.

10. Eighth Five Year plan (1992-97):

  • The main objective of Eighth Five Year plan is to focus on Importance for HRD
  • This plan focus on Priority to education, health cleanliness, and nutrition.
  • Liberalization, privatization, and globalization (LPG) were introduced by Manmohan Singh in this plan. This plan is called “Manmohan plan
  • Development of infrastructure.
  • It’s targeted Growth rate is 5.6% but it was so successful gained an almost 6.8% growth rate.

11. Ninth Five Year plan (1997-2002):

  • The main objective of the Ninth five-year plan is to give Qualify of living and Growth with social justice and equity
  • The ninth five-year plan is launched on the 50th Independence day of India.
  • Agriculture and rural development
  • Ensuring food and nutritional security for all.
  • Ensuring environmental sustainability.
  • It’s targeted growth rate is 6.5% but it achieved only 5.35% of growth rate.

12.Tenth Five Year plans (2002-07):

  • The main objective of the tenth five-year plan is to achieve a GDP growth rate of 8%.
  • Reduction of poverty ratio by 5% in 2007.
  • High-quality employment to the addition to the labor force.
  • Universal access to primary education by 2007.
  • The agriculture sector declared as the prime moving force of the economy.
  • To improve literacy percentage to 72% in plan period and to improve 80% literacy rate in the future up to 2012.
  • It focuses on gender gap reduction by 50% under the plan period.
  • The tenth five-year plan achieved 7.2% of targeted growth.

13. Eleventh Five Year plans (2007-2012):

  • The eleventh Five-year plan is prepared by C.Rangarajan.
  • The main objective of Eleventh five year plan is to achieve ” Faster, More inclusive growth”
  • The main target of the Eleventh five year plan is to increase GDP growth from 8% to 10% and also to achieve improvement by 4% every year in the agriculture sector.
  • The eleventh five-year plan created an Extension of 70 million employment opportunities using MGNREGA.
  • It reduced the school dropout percentage to 20% in 2012. which is 52.2% in 2003.
  • It also increased forest development and tree areas to gain growth in environmental sustainability.
  • This plan achieved WHO standards of Air pollution in all cities in India by the year of 2011-12

14.Twelfth Five Year plan (2012-17):

  • The main objective of the Twelfth five-year plan is to achieve ” Faster, More inclusive and sustainable growth”
  • The main Goal of twelfth five-year plan is to reduce poverty by 2% annually throughout the plan period.
  • GDP growth rate target is set to 9%, agriculture growth rate at 4% and manufacturing growth rate at 10%
  • Provide electricity to all villages by the end of the plan
  • Connect road facility to all villages by the end of the plan
  • Increase 30000 MW of renewal energy capacity by the end of the plan.
  • Increasing Banking services to 90% on every Indian household.
  • All subsidies from the central government and other pensions are directly transferred to their banks by Aadhar based direct cash transfer system.
Siliveru Rakesh
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