4 - Help the Plan – Help Yourself

Summary

Chapter 4 charts the Indian government’s ambition to make planning ‘democratic’ by convincing its citizenry of the need for planning and securing their participation. The government sought to spur grassroots enthusiasm by planting it—a campaign that was self-undermining by its very nature. It examines why public participation in planning mattered to the Indian government and uncovers the many channels through which the state sought to spread the gospel of planning. The means employed by government to instil “Plan-consciousness” included publicity teams on bullock carts and boats, a Khushwant Singh-edited Plan magazine named Yojana, plays by leading Hindi playwrights like Ramesh Mehta, musical and drama troupes, and state propaganda films screened for mass audiences through the Films Division. The chapter concludes with a discussion of how this Plan-consciousness even seeped into commercial Hindi cinema, or Bollywood.