The 'Bombay Plan' of 1944, an important influence on planning in independent India, was prepared by:

The "Bombay Plan" (officially "A Plan of Economic Development for India") was prepared in 1944 by a group of eight leading Indian industrialists and technocrats.

The authors:

The group included J. R. D. Tata, G. D. Birla, Purshottamdas Thakurdas, Ardeshir Dalal, Shri Ram, Kasturbhai Lalbhai, A. D. Shroff and the economist John Mathai.

It was called the "Bombay Plan" because most of the authors were based in Bombay.

Main proposals:

• It proposed a 15-year plan to double India's per capita income (and treble the national income).
• It called for a large investment in industry, agriculture, infrastructure, education and health.
• It accepted an important role for the state in the economy, especially in setting up basic and heavy industries (such as power, steel, chemicals and machinery), which needed large investments.
• It supported state planning, regulation and even public ownership of some sectors, while keeping a large role for private enterprise.
• It called for the protection of Indian industries from foreign competition.

Significance:

NCERT notes that the idea of planning had gained wide acceptance by the 1940s, and that a section of the big industrialists got together in 1944 and drafted a joint proposal for setting up a planned economy in the country; it was called the Bombay Plan.

The Bombay Plan wanted the state to take major initiatives in industrial and other economic investments.

NCERT notes that after Independence, the idea of planning was accepted by almost everyone, and the Planning Commission was set up in 1950.

Other plans of the 1940s:

Several other plans were put forward by different groups in this period, by Gandhian and left-wing thinkers.

Earlier efforts:

• Visvesvaraya wrote "Planned Economy for India" (1934).

Why not the other options?

• ✗The Congress, the CPI and the British government did not prepare this plan.