Every Five Year Plan since Indian independence has focussed on eliminating poverty. Yet, 40 years later, about half of the population still lives below the poverty line. The poor are caught in a vicious downward spiral – poverty leading to impoverishment of resources, which in turn leads to increased poverty. Clearly, the interests of the poor can only be safe-guarded if development planning takes into account the inter-relationship between poverty, land use policies and environmental concerns.
Jawaharlal Nehru dreamt of modern India in terms of industrialisation, steel and fertiliser plants, dams and hydroelectric power, modern agriculture, and the introduction of a scientific temper in the country. Today, India can boast of a broad-based scientific and industrial infrastructure. However, its contribution to the well being of the people, especially the rural poor, is in considerable doubt. Professor C.N.R. Rao, Chairman of the powerful Science Advisory Committee to the Prime Minister, in a recent report pointed to the failure of science and technology in the economic and social development of the country.
Decades ago, Gandhiji asked, "Why must India become industrial in the Western sense? The Western civilisation is urban. Small countries like England and Italy may afford to urbanise their systems. A big country like America with very sparse population cannot do otherwise. But one would think that a big country with a teeming population with an ancient rural tradition, which has hitherto answered its purposes, need not, must not, copy the Western model."
If India is to attain true freedom, said Gandhiji, then sooner or later it will have to be realised that the people will have to live in villages not towns, and in huts, not palaces. The India of his dreams was a federation of small village republics providing essential needs of the community, without large scale industrialisation. Such an ideology ensured sustainable development without over-exploitation of natural resources. As he said, the earth has enough for everyone's needs but not for everyone's greed.