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nomic planning had entered the lexicon
with a tilt on central planning and this
implied driving the entire economic sys-
tem of a nation in accordance with a cohesive
plan made ready for the economy.
This was in contrast to that which was
underscored as competition, for competition
referred to decentralized planning
and wherein this planning was carried out
by those who came onward to carry out
transactions according to preferences that
they had set up for themselves. As regards
tying up the planning process with the
existing knowledge, for that is what planning
was supposed to deal with, it was to
be decided as to which of the chosen systems
turned out to be more effi cient to put
into effect on hand existing knowledge.
For it is with fuller exercise of existing
knowledge that planning for the economy
would work out to be the best for society.
In terms of working out as to how this is
to be carried out in the real frame of an
economy, the germane question is the
feasibility of doing so.
Faced with this situation, the way forwards
is to ask as to whether there would
be success in transferring the knowledge
that is dispersed among many individuals
to a centralized authority such that this
body can make decisions regarding allocation
of resources. Note that in this case
the data that is currently dispersed as
knowledge amongst many individuals
have to be fi rst transferred to the central
agency. The knowledge data fl ow includes
data that is related to even incremental
changes that occur in the economic proc-
ess. Economic transactions are entered
into by individuals and by fi rms, and any
participant in a transaction knows that
incremental changes that constitutes the
day to day level of activities come in a
myriad of forms and very often do come
with a compelling time constraint. The
knowledge data, in other words, has time
relevance and that of place relevance too.
There is an essential relevance of incre-
I NTEGRATED PLANNING
mental changes in knowledge data. Incremental
changes in knowledge data, a
common place event of occurrence, represent
a change in the state of the economic
process and this change in the state
is an important event that has to be provided
for. A steady state situation that
records no incremental changes could be
a theoretician’s delight but a practitioner’s
no-go situation. True as much as a steady
state could be desirable, it still remains
confi ned to an assumed state that is much
away from the realities of economic life.
The knowledge data under reference,
then, is a sum total of all these changes. It
is only on receipt of such knowledge data
that the central agency responsible for
economy wide planning can move ahead
with the task of economic planning. The
resultant economic order is an output of
the aggregation and integration of data
received by the central planner and the
actions that he initiates. A contra to this
would be to determine the feasibility of
transferring such additional knowledge as
would be required to those who already
had knowledge to start with such that
these dispersed individual knowledge
For it is with fuller exercise of existing
knowledge that planning would
work out to be the best for society
holders could arrive at plans that are in
sync with those their collaborating partners
come up with. The point is as to
which of the option would society expect
to more likely succeed when relating to
economic planning to start with and economic
development as a consequence of
the opted planning mode?
Offer of Planning Options to
THE INDIA ECONOMY REVIEW
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