THE BOMBAY PLAN-HB

‘A Plan of Economic
Development for India’, aka the Bombay Plan, written in two parts and
published in 1944 and 1945, generated widespread interest in India and abroad
at the time of its publication. Its authors were none other than J.R.D Tata,
G.D Birla, Purushottamdas Thakurdas, Kasturbhai Lalbhai, Ardeshir Dala, Lala
Sri Ram, John Mathai and A.D. Shroff—well-known business leaders and
technocrats of repute.The Plan is unique in the history of post-colonial
development. Nowhere in the developing world did a group of business leaders
come together to articulate such a comprehensive vision for national
development that simultaneously promoted their own class interests. Nowhere
did the capitalist business class voluntarily invite State control in key sectors.This
book revisits the Bombay Plan to show how it was not only prescient in its
approach to development, but was also influential in shaping economic
planning and public policy in the first decade after India’s independence. It
brings together leading voices from Indian industry and academia—Meghnad
Desai, Sanjaya Baru, Amal Sanyal, Gita Piramal, Omkar Goswami, R.
Gopalakrishnan, Tulsi Jayakumar, Ajay Chhibber and P.S. Lokanathan—in an
effort to evaluate and understand the significance of the Plan in setting the
development planning agenda laid out by successive governments.The Bombay
Plan brings back to focus a historic document that has been all but forgotten
despite its many path-breaking ideas.