The Planning Commission played a crucial role in the type of development that India followed after independence. However, even though most economic analyses of India mention the five-year plans, the Planning Commission as an institution remains little studied. This is why this book proposes to look backward, examining the history of the idea of planning and the history and experience of planning in India. It also looks forward, trying to evaluate, beyond ideologies, which role the practice of planning has and should have in contemporary India. It then proposes that the NITI Aayog, the think tank founded on 1st January 2015 after the demise of the Planning Commission, could learn from this experience. This book addresses three leading questions: why plan economic development? How to plan? And what exactly can/should be planned? These questions are interrelated and the contributors of this volume, each with their own focus, propose elements of replies.

Every country in the world experiences the benefits of its demographic dividend, a period that comes but once in the life of a nation-when the share of the working-age population is larger than the non-working-age share. It has the potential to make a country progress towards higher incomes and development. But it can also become a nightmare if there aren't enough jobs. India entered this period in 1980, and by the time it ends in 2040, ours will be an ageing society. As more and more youth reach working age, an increasing number of workers are moving from agriculture towards industry and services, sectors which have higher productivity and incomes. Higher incomes generate increased savings, which, when invested, convert into GDP growth, leading to development. Since 2012, the number of youth entrants into the labour force has increased at an accelerating pace, while the number of jobs created has decreased. This situation might become graver between 2020 and 2030 as the labour force swells further. Reviving Jobs, the third volume in the Rethinking India series, offers suggestions on how India can make the best use of the remaining period of its demographic dividend-any failure to do so will cause millions to suffer in poverty for decades to come.

This book focuses on the provision of basic social services - in particular, access to education, health and water supplies - as the central building blocks of any human development strategy. The authors concentrate on how these basic social services can be financed and delivered more effectively to achieve the internationally agreed Millennium Development Goals. Their analysis, which departs from the dominant macro-economic paradigm, deploys the results of broad-ranging research they led at UNICEF and UNDP, investigating the record on basic social services of some 30 developing countries. In seeking to learn from these new data, they develop an analytical argument around two potential synergies: at the macro level, between poverty reduction, human development and economic growth, and at the micro level, between interventions to provide basic social services. Policymakers, they argue, can integrate macro-economic and social policy. Fiscal, monetary, and other macro-economic policies can be compatible with social sector requirements. They make the case that policymakers have more flexibility than is usually presented by orthodox writers and international financial institutions, and that if policymakers engaged in alternative macro-economic and growth-oriented policies, this could lead to the expansion of human capabilities and the fulfillment of human rights. This book explores some of these policy options. The book also argues that more than just additional aid is needed. Specific strategic shifts in the areas of aid policy, decentralized governance, health and education policy and the private-public mix in service provision are a prerequisite to achieve the goals of human development. The combination of governance reforms and fiscal and macro-economic policies outlined in this book can eliminate human poverty in the span of a generation.

This book presents longitudinal studies of ten developing countries which have demonstrated successful health and educational development over the last thirty to forty years. Half of them have combined rapid economic growth with social achievement, others slower and interrupted growth coupled with periods of economic decline. All of them have achieved sustained improvement in mortality reduction and educational levels, providing valuable guidance for other developing countries seeking to replicate their successful social experiments.