PLANNING INTERLOCKED MARKETS AND RURAL DEVELOPMENT

At a general level this book can be read as a review of the government of India’s Integrated rural Development Programme and of the State-level planning system with reference to rural development. On another plane the book examines the phenomenon of interlocked factor markets in rural India and how this interlinking of land, labour, inputs, produce and capital markets can lead to intra-rural relationships based on a “reciprocity of wants” where formal markets become less relevant than the interlocking relationships themselves. An attempt is also made to show how the planning and administrative system responds to interlocked factor markets and the resulting relationships in village India in a segmented manner since the phenomena of interlocking has not been properly understood and analyzed.
A case has also been made out (based on the author’s field experience and academic analysis) that there is need for a better, more systematic understanding on the part of policy analysts and policy makers alike, as well as on the part of administrators and scholars, about the constraints that extant planning practices, styles, the “planning environment” and the existing rural milieu can place on the success of developmental initiatives. Without such an understanding, the desired results may not be obtained-especially in the rural sector where projects are very different in nature than those in the more organized industrial and urban sectors.
Thus the book should greatly interest those involved in rural development and planning—whether as policy makers, planners, administrative change agents, or as academic theory-builders, field researchers, teachers, trainers and students in the various branches of social sciences.