How Five Year Plans Shaped Indias Economy and Democracy, Grand Tamasha

In 2014, soon after coming to power, the Narendra Modi government decided to abolish Indias decadesold Planning Commission, replacing it with a new government think tank meant to facilitate cooperative federalism. For years, the Planning Commission devised detailed, fiveyear, central plans meant to guide Indias economy and allocate funds from the center to Indias states. Eight years later, the Planning Commission may be gone, but it is not forgotten. A new book by the University of Notre Dame historian Nikhil Menon, Planning Democracy: How a Professor, An Institute, and an Idea Shaped India, provides a wideranging history of the marriage between liberal democracy and a socialist economy, uncovering the way planning came to define not just the economy but the nation itself. Nikhil is Milans guest on the show this week. They talk about the legacy of Indias planning infrastructure, the unique influence of pioneering statistician P. C. Mahalanobis, and the ways in which Indias st