Planning

The concept of greenfield new towns is as old as civilisation in the Indian subcontinent. Socio-spatial equity has been at the core of the new town experiment during its origin in the Garden City movement. India has witnessed the new town wave post 1947, with the unstated mandate to serve the constitutional “common good,” in order to address the ills of the colonial inheritance of the divided city. The Indian new town has undergone major changes towards a more exclusive private enclave. The statutory planning discourse in India through the national five-year plans, which have helmed socio-economic–political planning, as well as the evolutionary curve of this discourse holds reasons for the changing face of new towns in India.

The emergence of the COVID-19 pandemic coupled with long-standing systemic, functional, and health inequities put the rural communities at an increased risk. Sustainable long- and short-term measures are suggested to efficiently develop strategies to control the pandemic and strengthen the health system in rural India.

Prior to the long-delayed 2017 census, socio-economic planning in Pakistan had used obsolete data, widening the gulf between the rich and the poor. The new census has not drastically improved the situation either. The collected data remain incomplete, reflecting the infrastructural weaknesses of the underlying institutions. Many provinces have voiced their concerns about the recent census, but these have not been addressed. Without political resolve to compile and make available more exhaustive information, meaningful planning to address societal inequities in Pakistan cannot take place.

The `Kerala model' of development has been facing a serious crisis due to low growth, high cost, low productivity, low investment and low employment in the state economy. This paper analyses the performance of major sectors of the state economy, such as agriculture, industry and the financial sector, during the past two decades and brings out the problems they confront. The paper highlights the lack of a development strategy in Kerala for growth and employment generation.