It has been often said, even by dispassionate observers, that our economic policies built on ideological considerations and economic assumptions are far removed from the realities of our situation. For more than three decades, we have been striving to design an economic policy and a planning procedure that are distinctly Indian, but the effort has often resulted in only mixing and merging borro- wed ideas and experiences. However, whatever may have been the ideological elements influencing the thinking on economic policies in the formative period of the pre-independence days, the situation...