(a) Analyze the idea of developmental planning in India. (10 marks) (b) Comment on the role of co-operatives in rural…

(a) Developmental planning in India

Planning began in 1951 as a state-led project to end colonial stagnation, reduce poverty and build self-reliance. The Nehru-Mahalanobis strategy of the Second Plan (1956) stressed heavy industry and public-sector leadership in a mixed economy.

Sociological readings: Gunnar Myrdal called India a "soft state" that could not enforce discipline or land reform; the Rudolphs contrasted "command politics" of planning with "demand politics" of electoral mobilisation; Pranab Bardhan argued that planning became a site of resource-sharing among industrial capitalists, rich farmers and the professional class, which diluted redistribution.

Criticisms include weak decentralisation, uneven regional gains, and limited benefit to marginal groups. After 1991 the role of the state shifted, and in 2015 the Planning Commission was replaced by NITI Aayog, a policy think-tank in the framework of cooperative federalism.

(b) Role of co-operatives in rural development

Co-operatives were meant to bring democratic, egalitarian rural development by pooling small producers.

• Achievements: the Anand model (Amul), led by Verghese Kurien, removed middlemen in milk and raised smallholder incomes, with women's participation in dairy societies; credit societies (PACS) widened institutional credit and weakened moneylenders; sugar, fertiliser and marketing co-operatives built rural industry.
• Limits: studies, for example of sugar co-operatives in Maharashtra, show control by dominant landed castes, factionalism, politicisation, and weak participation of women, landless and marginal farmers.
• Policy: the 97th Amendment (2011) gave constitutional status to co-operatives, and a Ministry of Cooperation was created in 2021.

Co-operatives thus reduce exploitation where governance is democratic, but can reproduce local caste and class hierarchy.

(c) Urban slums as sites of social exclusion

Slums concentrate the urban poor in housing without secure tenure, sanitation, water and services, so that people live in the city yet are excluded from its entitlements. Census 2011 counted about 6.5 crore slum dwellers, around 17 per cent of the urban population.

• Social composition: disproportionately migrants and members of marginalised castes and minorities, in informal work, as in Jan Breman's description of footloose labour.
• Spatial and legal exclusion: threat of eviction, lack of tenure, and settlements placed near hazards or dumps.
• Lefebvre's "right to the city": slum dwellers sustain the city economically but are denied a voice in how urban space is planned.
• Stigma: slum residents face discrimination in jobs, schooling and housing.

Slums are therefore not transitional spaces of assimilation but sites of lasting socio-spatial exclusion, which housing and tenure policies such as PMAY-Urban seek to address.

(d) Does regionalism lead to decentralisation of power?

Not necessarily; the outcome depends on the form of regionalism.

• Federalising effect: demands from regional parties such as the DMK, and the reorganisation of states on linguistic lines, pushed power towards states; the Sarkaria Commission (1983) examined Centre-state relations, and regional parties now shape coalition governments at the Centre. K. C. Wheare's "quasi-federal" description of India has been tested by this.
• Centralising reactions: movements demanding secession, as in sections of Punjab and Assam in the 1980s–90s, met stronger central control.
• Intra-state centralisation: regional elites may concentrate power in the state capital and hold back real devolution to panchayats and municipalities.

Regionalism has thus both deepened federalism and provoked centralisation, so decentralisation is not its necessary result.

(e) Technology in agrarian change in India

The Green Revolution (from the mid-1960s) introduced high-yielding seeds, fertiliser, irrigation and mechanisation, ended food-grain dependence, and raised yields in Punjab, Haryana and western Uttar Pradesh.

• Social effects: Pranab Bardhan and others noted that capital-intensive technology favoured larger farmers, widening regional and class inequality, displacing tenants and labour, and pushing smallholders towards debt.
• Ecological and critical views: Vandana Shiva highlights soil, water and seed-diversity costs, while biotechnology and seed controversies raise concerns of corporate control.
• Present: digital tools such as the e-NAM market (2016), mobile advisories and drones can improve price discovery and extension, but risk excluding small, digitally unconnected farmers.

Technology has raised productivity, but its benefits depend on the distribution of land, credit and access.